FOCUS: Toyota announces $8 billion EV battery plant expansion in Liberty, N.C.
North Carolina has been actively courting investments from Japan for more than 40 years. But since the state first opened its economic development office in Tokyo in 1978, no other investment comes close to matching what the Japanese carmaker Toyota announced on the last day of October – $8 billion to add eight EV lithium-ion battery production lines to its fast-growing plant in the small Piedmont town of Liberty.
The project is expected to create 3,000 jobs. Toyota first announced it was building an EV factory in Liberty two years ago. October’s announcement was the third time it expanded on those plans, with the company’s total investments in North Carolina now expected to approach $14 billion. That represents the largest economic development project in North Carolina history, and it will help rejuvenate an area hit hard by the decline of the once-dominant textiles, tobacco and furniture industries.
“Toyota’s latest expansion in North Carolina is monumental,” North Carolina state senator Phil Berger said in a press release.
Toyota’s announcement is also by far the largest in terms of investment dollars that E2 has tracked across the entire country since the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) was signed into law in August 2022. (The second-largest investment E2 has tracked across all states and sectors in that time was also in North Carolina: In September 2022, Durham-based Wolfspeed announced a $5 billion manufacturing facility for efficient silicon carbide materials and devices with applications in industries including renewables, energy storage and EVs.)
Elsewhere in the state last month, a company called Atuel said it will soon begin producing 5,000 fast DC car chargers annually in Greensboro, creating 400 jobs. Along the coast south of Wilmington, Epsilon Advanced Materials Inc. will invest nearly $650 million and create 500 jobs making battery components. Those jobs will have an average annual salary of $52,000 – about 12 percent higher than Brunswick County’s current average wage.
Not to be outdone, Indiana also racked up three big clean economy announcements last month. These include a $3.2 billion joint-venture battery gigafactory in Kokomo from Stellantis and Samsung and an $800 million solar manufacturing plant Canadian Solar is building near the Ohio River in Jeffersonville. That facility will be able to crank out about 20,000 panels a day. Combined, Indiana’s three announcements are expected to create 2,800 jobs.
Notably, all six announcements from both North Carolina and Indiana came from overseas, underscoring just how effective the IRA is at attracting foreign investments to small-town America. In addition to Japan, companies announcing investments in the Tar Heel and Hoosier states last month are based in the Netherlands, Korea, Canada, India, China and Austria.
Since the IRA was signed into law in August 2022, E2 has tracked 251 projects across 40 states representing more than $106 billion in investments that could help create more than 89,000 jobs. Nearly half of the announcements include companies headquartered overseas, creating opportunity and jobs here in the U.S.
For a complete rundown of all announcements E2 has tracked, please see here.
