Southern California Draws Electric Vehicle Industry

While the Next Biggest Thing our Governor seems capable of thinking up for economic development is to quarter-heartedly fund a shooting range where West River folks can waste lead on the weekend, California is recruiting talent to build the cars of the future. Ridiculed by our fact-free Governor as a place with too little Freedom™ and too much sucky Communism, California is enjoying a boom in its electric car industry, because it has lots of things South Dakota has never had and, given current leadership, never will:

“Greater L.A. has a unique and fast-growing EV industry ecosystem,” Lawren Markle, spokesman for the economic development corporation, said in an email. “SoCal’s gravitational pull on EV companies has increased, and it makes sense for them to grow here.”

By moving to Southern California, startups gain access to EV talent, EV suppliers, conventional and electric carmakers and R&D of all kinds, he said. And they get access to “a big EV market that is accelerating, thanks to forward-thinking public policy.”

Southern California’s EV cluster is heavily concentrated in Downtown Los Angeles, the South Bay and Orange County, the report said.

And there’s good reason.

California already accounts for nearly half of EV sales in the United States, with much of those cars now driving on Southern California roads [Jeff Collins, “Southern California Continues to Dominate EV Industry,” Governing, 2021.08.02].

Hopeful electric truck maker Rivian started in Florida, built a factory in Illinois, and moved into Michigan to tap auto industry talent, but last year the company moved product development to California. Rivian plans a second manufacturing plant, for which multiple states have bid. No word on whether South Dakota is making any effort to land the five-billion-dollar, 10,000-acre project, but we’d have to work extra hard to compete with southern California’s talent pool, market, and 21st-century public policy.