Gov. Andy Beshear talks EV production advancements in Kentucky
With $11.6 billion in investments since 2020, Gov. Andy Beshear says Kentucky will be the automotive nucleus of electric vehicle production.
Republican state Sen. Damon Thayer isn’t concerned with reducing greenhouse gas emissions. He disputes the scientific consensus on climate change and says he’ll “never own an electric vehicle.”
Still, he wants to see Kentucky’s electric vehicle industry succeed.
Minutes from his home in Georgetown, Toyota Motor is investing more than $1 billion to add electric vehicle production at its behemoth manufacturing plant, adding hundreds of new jobs.
The company has made it a point to hire former coal industry workers at the plant, whose familiarity with mining equipment can be transferred to auto manufacturing, Thayer said.
He’s not seeking reelection but has served in the Kentucky Senate for two decades and co-sponsored legislation to subsidize the EV industry’s investments in the state.
In the last few years, Kentucky has made a generational bet on the electric vehicle industry and the jobs it promises. The Republican-led legislature has approved generous incentives for the industry, while Gov. Andy Beshear declares the commonwealth the “EV capital of the United States.”
Since 2019, announcements of the electric vehicle industry’s investments in Kentucky have totaled $11.7 billion. The coming projects are slated to create 10,000 jobs.
But the surge in economic development tied to electric vehicles has sparked political dissonance in deep-red Kentucky, whose Republican leaders both condemn the federal government’s subsidies and support for EVs and celebrate the industry’s historic investments and job creation in the state.
Conservative voices on the national stage, marshaled by former President Donald Trump, have repeatedly railed against electric vehicles, painting them as a fad forced upon consumers that will ultimately doom U.S. automakers.
Trump has promised to “save the American auto industry” from a transition to electric vehicles, namely by axing new fuel efficiency standards and curbing other federal support for the industry.
Trump’s rhetoric has been echoed by some Kentucky Republicans, who perceive President Joe Biden’s administration’s pro-EV policies as an insult to the free market.
Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman, in mounting legal challenges against federal fuel efficiency standards, called the new policies a “billion-dollar boondoggle to drive gas-powered cars off the road.”
But automakers are betting billions on electric vehicles. Ford Motor Co. and other manufacturers are rushing to gain a foothold, building out a U.S.-based supply chain as China’s grip on the global EV market tightens.
Overwhelmingly, the resulting “battery belt” has grown roots in right-leaning states of the American Southeast and Midwest.
‘The politics can be overcome with good jobs’
Beckoned by employer-friendly labor laws, cheap land, and cheap energy, massive manufacturing projects have sprung up from Michigan to Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, and the Carolinas.
New facilities in Kentucky have promised to bring thousands of jobs to local economies starved by the contraction of other legacy industries.
The BlueOval SK Battery Park in Hardin County expects to employ 5,000 workers — more than the coal industry currently employs statewide.
The explosion of investment represents a weighty prediction by automakers and policymakers: The inevitable destination of the industry is in hybrid and all-electric vehicles.
And Beshear, who has helped usher electric vehicle manufacturing to Kentucky, believes the momentum behind those investments will weather the political storm around the industry.
“I’m not worried about the politics of EVs,” Beshear said in an interview with The Courier Journal. “I’m worried about being in the right place in the automotive sector to preserve the jobs of Kentuckians.”
He also shrugged off the politicization of electric vehicles and reiterated a familiar philosophy of his governorship: Kentuckians’ foremost concerns, he says — long before politics — are the jobs in their communities and the food on their tables.
“What we’ve seen,” Beshear said, “is that any of the politics can be overcome with good jobs.”
But auto industry analysts are listening intently to Trump’s rhetoric on electric vehicles — which could turn into major policy changes if he’s elected.
The former president and the conservative movement have coalesced around a broad opposition to clean energy transition, in favor of fossil fuels.
Federal policies friendly to the budding American EV industry would be rolled back under Trump, he has promised — potentially roiling an industry that’s chosen to put down roots in Kentucky.
EV investment is in red states, but EV ownership hasn’t followed
The electric vehicle industry will provide thousands of jobs to today’s workforce, Beshear said — but also, eventually, to “kids and grandkids, and that’s what’s most important to people.”
The success and longevity of the industry and its jobs will ultimately depend on consumers choosing to make the jump to electric.
That’s happening relatively slowly in red states like Kentucky, where the EV industry is investing billions of dollars.
Just eight states have a lower rate of electric vehicle registrations per capita than Kentucky. The bottom 16 states in per capita registrations all went for Trump in the 2020 election.
Republicans are far more skeptical of electric vehicles, according to national polling. Gallup found 71% of Republicans would not consider purchasing an EV, compared to 17% of Democrats.
And the same polls from Gallup found the highest resistance to EVs among Americans living in the South — 50% said they would not buy an EV.
On electrification, conservatives are skeptical and unhurried
Kentucky is one of only three states where neither the legislature nor local utilities offer incentives for purchasing an electric vehicle, according to a Kelley Blue Book analysis, another potential barrier for the state’s sluggish rate of adoption.
Thayer, as well as Senate President Robert Stivers, R-Manchester, indicated opposition to state incentives for consumers in interviews with The Courier Journal and called on policymakers to leave EV adoption to the free market.
“I think we should be very leery of incentives that cannot be sustained, that cosmetically or artificially change the market,” Stivers said. “Let the market take its course.”
Stivers said he is not in disagreement with the state’s incentives to manufacturers seeking to build up parts of the EV supply chain in Kentucky, because they are “in conformity with what we have done in the past” and help make the state competitive in economic development.
Kentucky’s Republican supermajority has also consistently disregarded climate priorities as “radical,” including reducing carbon emissions and shifting toward a clean energy economy.
“I don’t wake up every day considering decarbonization,” Thayer said. “As a matter of fact, I never think about it.”
Stivers said discussions around climate change and decarbonization are “worthwhile,” but did not share scientists’ sense of urgency on the issue, and disputed the idea of a scientific consensus on climate change.
Agreement among scientists that humans are causing climate change “is high (91% to 100%) and generally increases with expertise” — with climate experts being the most likely to agree on the issue, roughly 99-100% of the time —according to research published in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Research Letters.
More left-leaning states are approaching the EV transition as a necessary path of decarbonizing transportation in communities whose infrastructure has long been designed for automobiles, and in an ever-narrowing window of time to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.
In California, which has adopted strict vehicle emission standards, more than 1 million light-duty electric vehicles are on the road, and a quarter of new car sales last year were electric vehicles.
“I really kind of want to get people focused on the practicalities and problem-solving around EV adoption, and less on, ‘Well, should we even do this?'” Liane Randolph, chair of the California Air Resources Board, told environmental journalists at a conference this year, “because it’s just not optional.”
Kentucky’s U.S. Sens. Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul, both Republicans, have opposed the Biden administration’s push toward electrification and electric vehicle incentives while lauding Kentucky’s history — and future — in auto manufacturing.
“Kentucky’s automotive industry is central to our economy, and we hope automakers will continue to choose our state as they expand electric vehicle production,” McConnell said in a statement to The Courier Journal.
But EVs remain “a luxury millions of Americans can’t afford,” McConnell added. “The Biden Administration should focus more on policies that drive down the cost of owning a car instead of forcing working families to foot the bill for its green energy transition.”
“Kentucky has a long and rich history of building cars, trucks, and parts,” Paul said in a statement. “Ultimately, the consumer will vote with their dollars for either gas or electric or a hybrid of the two.”
U.S. automakers brace for a potential Trump presidency
As Trump lambastes electric vehicles on the campaign trail, the auto industry is watching closely, and some analysts are wondering if another Trump presidency would endanger large investments by the industry, propped up by key federal incentives.
“If there is a change in administration, there’s concern that those (Inflation Reduction Act) credits could go away, the EPA guidelines could be changed,” said Stephanie Valdez Streaty, an analyst at Cox Automotive. “I definitely think that could influence the pace of adoption.”
In light of massive investments in electric vehicles, new hurdles for consumers could hurt automakers, who are currently seeing growing EV demand but at a slower pace than originally forecasted.
“From an EV perspective, a lot is riding on this,” Dan Ives, an analyst at WedBush Securities, told the Detroit Free Press recently. “If Trump gets in, it will be a gut punch to the auto industry, which has bet a big future on EVs.”
In addition to his public speeches on electrification, Trump reportedly offered oil executives favorable policy from the White House and encouraged them to put together a $1 billion donation to his 2024 presidential campaign.
And Project 2025, a prominent conservative playbook from the Heritage Foundation offering a “mandate for leadership” in the next administration, outlines similar positions on electric vehicles as Trump.
The report criticizes the Inflation Reduction Act and the Biden administration’s electrification priorities as part of “an anti-fossil fuel climate agenda never approved by Congress,” and claims electric vehicles would place “a major strain on America’s vulnerable power grid,” a concern echoed by some Kentucky Republicans.
Counting on an electric future
In a July earnings call, an analyst asked Ford CEO Jim Farley to “address the electrification strategy in light of the November presidential elections,” citing Trump’s past rhetoric on EVs and the potential for whiplash in federal policy and regulation.
Farley said he’s “been to the Hill many times in the last month, talking to many Republican leaders of the country” — but added Ford’s long-term electric vehicle strategy “can’t really count on administrations changing this way or that way.”
Instead, the company is making a long-term bet on electric vehicles, Farley said, as it tries to stay competitive with Chinese automakers.
Michael Adams, CEO of battery manufacturer BlueOval SK, anticipates the politicization of electric vehicles will fade as the industry matures.
“The political discussion regarding EVs will go away,” Adams said, “because, at some point in time, the market is going to take over and drive the demand and the production of the vehicles.”
Experts aren’t in agreement on a timeline for the market’s success, especially as future federal policy hangs in limbo, and range anxiety and spotty access to charging infrastructure still pose barriers for consumers.
But Gov. Beshear said the state’s embrace of electric vehicle investment came after “seeing Kentucky being left behind in the past, losing jobs when different sectors were changing, and what that can mean for a region, how it can be devastating for families.”
In conversations with automakers and battery manufacturers looking to Kentucky for new projects, Beshear told companies their success would be intertwined with the state’s.
“It is just as important for us, Kentucky, that you succeed, as it is for you,” Beshear recalled telling company officials. “We needed them here.”
Contact environmental reporter Connor Giffin at [email protected] or on X @byconnorgiffin. Contact business reporter Olivia Evans at [email protected] or on X at @oliviamevans_.
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Publish date : 2024-08-25 22:01:00
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