Hauke-Christian Dittrich/picture alliance via Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — You won’t find many electric vehicles on the back roads in Alabama and Tennessee yet thousands of residents in these states are building them to meet growing demand.
Automakers such as Mercedes-Benz, Ford and Volkswagen are investing billions of dollars in high-tech plants that will supply the battery packs necessary for the transition to EVs.
Last month, Volkswagen of America opened a $22 million Battery Engineering Lab (BEL), a 32,000-square-foot facility located near its Chattanooga, Tennessee, plant. Engineers at the lab test batteries for safety, durability and quality in extreme climate conditions and the company’s compact ID.4 SUV, currently imported from Germany, will roll off assembly lines for U.S. consumers later this year. More than 4,000 workers are employed at the Chattanooga plant and…
Automakers look to the South to build electric vehicle batteries
