Subscriber Benefit
As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowOhio plans to offer about $156.3 million in tax incentives and infrastructure improvements for a massive battery plant project that Honda says is key to turning the state into its North American electric vehicle hub.
The company had been expected to choose either Ohio, where it has a plant in Marysville, or Indiana, where it has a plant in Greensburg, for the battery factory. It announced Ohio as the location on Tuesday.
Officials say the battery plant, to be built jointly with LG Energy Solution of South Korea, will be located in rural Fayette County, about 40 miles southwest of the state capital of Columbus.
Of $85 million set aside for infrastructure improvements, $75 million will be for water and utility improvements and the rest will be to improve local and state roads, state officials said Wednesday.
The remainder will go toward tax incentives over a 30-year period, according to state officials. However, local tax incentives are not included in the incentives package.
In its announcement Tuesday, Honda said it would build a $3.5 billion joint-venture battery factory in rural southern Ohio and hire 2,200 people to staff it.
Honda also announced its plans to invest $700 million and add 300 jobs at three of its own Ohio factories to prepare them to start making EVs and components.
The battery plant could see a total investment of $4.4 billion, officials said.
Please enable JavaScript to view this content.
So Indiana couldn’t counter what Ohio was offering? Considering the fact Indiana and its fiscal conservative Republican ran government, we should of had plenty of money from our surplus to counter anything Ohio offered, or were we deceived in believing Indiana has all this money leftover every year?
If I’m not mistaken, Honda has the bulk of their operations already in Ohio.
So they were definitely leaning Ohio in my view.
That said, Indiana needs to be far more aggressive in ( including financially )
In attracting economic development projects.
Indianapolis also needs to promote our state much more aggressively in attracting creative talented entrepreneurs.
Our down home aww shucks approach is NOT working.
Keith – we still lack the talent to draw many major corps here to Indy IMO…brain drain continues to be an issue no one is willing to talk about
JJ F. –
Agreed!
What our officials are trying to do today should have been started 30 years
ago.such as
– Developing a world class university in our city
– developing real world research & high tech collaboration with our universities
– Spend money to make money
If you believe the linked story from August, the plan was Ohio all along. Which kind of makes sense, given they have four plants there.
…and given that their Indiana plant is less than an hour’s drive from the Ohio border (and less than two hours from the site they selected).
Batteries for cars are big and heavy; transportation of the finished product to the assembly plant is a significant expense. Since, as pointed out, they make more cars in Ohio than Indiana, the choice was probably always going to be Ohio.