According to a news statement from the Kansas governor’s office, Panasonic has chosen De Soto, Kansas, to be the site of a new EV battery plant that is expected to generate up to $4 billion in investments for the state. According to the news release, the plant is expected to generate up to 4,000 jobs, in addition to an additional 4,000 jobs at suppliers and local businesses.
According to reports, Kansas and Oklahoma were two of the states considered as potential sites for Panasonic’s new battery plant in April. The governor of Oklahoma made a point of pressuring lawmakers to adopt a $700 million rebate plan without specifying which company it may help.
According to a news statement from Kansas, the Attracting Powerful Economic Expansion Act (SB 347), sometimes known as the APEX Act, was what ultimately led to the decision. Representative Ron Ryckman of Kansas stated, “This was the kind of megaproject we had in mind when the Kansas Legislature passed the APEX legislation.”
Now that the agreement has been signed, KCTV5 reports the governor’s office has disclosed the incentive package’s potential value of $829.2 million. This sum includes, among other benefits, a $500 million investment tax credit that lasts for five years and a $234 million payroll rebate paid over ten years. According to The Kansas Reflector, Oklahoma’s offer may have been the deciding factor for Panasonic due to its “lack of financial certainty.” Naturally, all of those figures depend on a set of objectives being accomplished, which isn’t always the case – recall Wisconsin and Foxconn?
According to TechCrunch, the new factory would reportedly be larger than Panasonic and Tesla’s Gigafactory in Nevada. Panasonic declared in February that it would start manufacturing lithium-ion batteries in large quantities for Tesla by 2024.
Read more about this at theverge.com
