South Carolina Incentivizes Electric Vehicle and Battery Production

FILE PHOTO: Machines on a battery tray assembly line during a tour at the opening of a Mercedes-Benz electric vehicle Battery Factory, marking one of only seven locations producing batteries for their fully electric Mercedes-EQ models, in Woodstock, Alabama, U.S., March 15, 2022. Reuters/Elijah Nouvelage/File Photo

South Carolina has joined the growing list of states that are incentivizing the production of electric vehicles and their batteries.

On Dec. 6, Republican Gov. Henry McMaster and Envision Automotive Energy Supply Company—a Japanese electric vehicle battery technology company—announced an $810 million investment in Florence County to build a battery cell plant that McMaster said will create 1,170 jobs while fulfilling a multi-year partnership with the BMW Group.

In October, the BMW Group announced a $1.7 billion investment in its U.S. operations, including $1 billion to prepare for the manufacturing of electric vehicles at its Plant Spartanburg in South Carolina, as well as an investment of $700 million to build a battery assembly facility in Woodruff.

The future battery cell plant in Florence County will encompass 1.5 million square feet, building on Envision’s existing network that includes a battery manufacturing plant in Tennessee and one under construction in Kentucky.

The plant will supply Plant Spartanburg’s production of electric vehicles. In 2021, the BMW Group said nearly 70,000 electrified BMWs were built at the plant.

“For decades, Plant Spartanburg has been a cornerstone of the global success of the BMW Group. The home of the BMW X models that are so popular all over the world,“ said Oliver Zipse, U.S. BMW Group chairman of the board of management, in October. ”Going forward, it will also be a major driver for our electrification strategy, and we will produce at least six fully electric BMW X models here by 2030. That means: The ‘Home of the X’ is also becoming the ‘Home of the Battery Electric Vehicle.’”

“In addition, we can showcase BMW Group’s ‘local for local’ principle: Our newly developed sixth generation battery cells, which were specifically designed for the next generation electric vehicles, will be sourced here in South Carolina—where X goes electric.”

According to the BMW Group, Envision will produce newly developed lithium-ion battery cells for the sixth generation of BMW eDrive technology.

The BMW Group stated that the new battery format will increase energy density and improve charging speed while reducing CO2 emissions from cell production through the partial use of secondary lithium, cobalt, and nickel.

National Incentive

President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act has emphasized a crusade to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, an act providing federal incentives to companies that create policies that cater to the theory of man-made climate change.

This had led to corporate demand for renewable technology that proponents of climate change say has less of an impact on the environment than nonrenewables.

On Nov. 28, the Tennessee State Funding Board approved one of the largest cash grants in Tennessee history to win an economic development deal with LG Chem Ltd., a company that plans to invest $3.2 billion to develop a cathode materials plant for electric vehicle batteries.

LG Chem, a South Korean corporation, announced its plans to build a plant in Clarksville, Tennessee, on Nov. 21.

Critics who challenge the use of renewables as environmentally friendly argue that extraction of the rare earth minerals used to make the battery rely on methods that leave a deeper carbon footprint while contributing to social instability and violations of human rights.

The governor’s office said the company will use “responsible sources for its critical battery components—cobalt, lithium, and nickel—providing full transparency of extraction methods and increasing reliance on recycled materials, which will contribute to a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions from cell production in the new plant.”