When investments in electric vehicles are also investments in rural America

Benyamin Applebaum's New York Times piece last weekend, "Giving Red America a Reason to Love Electric Vehicles," highlights Moses Lake, Washington, population 25,146, which he describes as a "conservative farms-and-factories community [where] few people have the cash or the inclination" to own an electric vehicle.  Here's an excerpt about how the Biden administration's policies may draw places like Moses Lake into the electric car revolution by "giving people an economic stake in the transition to green energy" such that a "durable political consensus in favor of confronting global warming" is built. 

Over the next few years, however, hundreds of Moses Lake residents are going to be entering the electric vehicle business. Two different companies, attracted by cheap hydropower, are opening plants there, each backed by $100 million in federal money, to produce a key ingredient for electric vehicle batteries.

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Instead of delivering electric vehicles, solar panels and other green technologies at the lowest possible cost, no matter their country of origin, the Biden administration is determined to use this opportunity to expand domestic manufacturing. And it is concentrating much of that effort in rural and Rust Belt communities, where reactionary politics have taken hold most strongly. The plan to combat global warming is also a bid for industrial revival and a transformed political landscape.

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In Moses Lake, where one city official described the local version of the American dream to me as “house-boat-truck,” it is possible to imagine that one day in the not-too-distant future, workers at the battery plants will be driving electric pickups.

Now, though, Moses Lake residents are anticipating the economic benefits of these plants.  

Adan Lopez, 20, is studying physics at Big Bend Community College in Moses Lake. He isn’t sure whether he wants to stay in the area. “Jobs are kind of limited around here,” he said. “If you want to do anything, people have to go to Spokane or Seattle.”

Brant Mayo, executive director of the Grant County Economic Development Council, said the Moses Lake region has been chasing factories since the early 1990s to bring higher-paying jobs to the area. “We want our kids and our grandkids, if they want to be in the area, to have an opportunity to do whatever they want here,” he said.

Some prior posts on electric vehicles in rural America are here, here, here, and here.