Battery wars: Michigan snags $4B investment, 4,500 new jobs

(Detroit News) Michigan is battling back in the state-vs-state battery wars, landing two investments totaling nearly $4 billion and creating close to 4,500 jobs in two parts of the state.

Our Next Energy Inc., a two-year-old battery startup based in Novi with just 160 employees, confirmed Wednesday that it will invest $1.6 billion to create a battery-cell manufacturing plant in western Wayne County’s Van Buren Township. With a $200 million grant from the state’s Critical Industry Fund, the project code-named “Project First” is expected within six years to employ 2,112 new jobs paying an average of $35 an hour.

The investment follows parallel confirmation that Gotion Inc., a Chinese-owned battery maker, plans to invest $2.3 billion to build a battery components plant in Big Rapids that would create 2,350 new jobs with an average hourly wage of nearly $30 an hour. Internally dubbed “Project Elephant,” the Gotion project is expected to receive a $125 million grant from the state’s critical industry fund and $50 million from the Strategic Site Readiness program.

That’s a sharp turnaround from a little more than a year ago, when hometown stalwart Ford Motor Co. shocked Michigan’s business and political leadership with plans that it would head south to partner with South Korean battery supplier, SK Innovation, to invest a combined $11.4 billion to build a battery assembly operation in Kentucky and a battery-and-vehicle assembly campus in west Tennessee. ...............(more)

https://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/columnists/daniel-howes/2022/10/05/michigan-battery-investments-our-next-energy/69540016007/