This week’s Project Bulletin included a record indicating that a second lithium-ion battery recycling facility from American Battery Technology Co. (whose first plant is in Nevada) would be coming to Abbeville County, South Carolina. This was news to the economic developers of Abbeville County. While multiple reports from the Department of Energy and the company indicate South Carolina is the intended location and the company will be working with Clemson University and other regional stakeholders, a spokesperson for the company confirmed yesterday that the site selection process for the South Carolina plant has just begun. We regret the error. — Ed.
This week’s announcement of 22 new MacArthur Fellows brings the grand total to 1,152 since 1981. Each Fellow receives a grant of $800,000 from the MacArthur Foundation to pursue their work.
Where have all those “genius grant” recipients lived? Where were they born? And what have they been engaged in the most? We scoured the data to find out. And we talked to a MacArthur Fellow in geography for more perspective.
Joby’s electric air taxi in flight above the company’s manufacturing and flight testing center in Marina, California.
Photo courtesy of Toyota and Joby Aviation
Toyota this week announced it will invest an additional $500 million in electric air taxi company Joby Aviation to “support the certification and commercial production of Joby’s electric air taxi, with the aim of realizing the two companies’ shared vision of air mobility.” That brings Toyota’s total investment in Joby to $894 million over seven years of collaboration.
“Joby continues to make important progress towards commercialization,” Toyota’s announcement stated, “recently rolling its third aircraft off its pilot production line in Marina, California, and breaking ground on an expanded facility in California that will more than double the Company’s manufacturing footprint.” As Site Selection has documented, Joby also is investing in manufacturing at Dayton International Airport, where production of the company’s electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) vehicles is projected to begin in early 2025.
A new article in the “Working Knowledge” series from Harvard Business School entitled “How Politics Drives Business Decisions in a Polarized Nation” discusses the findings of a new paper co-authored by Jaime and Raquel Gilinski Associate Professor of Business Administration Elisabeth Kempf that explores political affiliation and finance. “Partisanship seems to be a really important determinant of many decisions made by businesses,” Kempf told the Harvard writer.
Using data from 2018-2022 that links the highest-earning executives at S&P 1,500 firms with voter registration records, the co-authors created a chart of the 15 states with the largest number of firms in order to track political party affiliation. Georgia was No. 1 in Republican affiliations with 79%, followed by Florida at 77%, Texas at 76% and Ohio at 75%. In fact, nearly all 15 states — including California, Colorado and Washington — had Republican percentages over 50%, with New York the only exception at 49%.
Examine all 15 states at the link above, then see how correlated the findings are with Site Selection’s most recent Prosperity Cup and Governor’s Cups rankings.
PHOTO OF THE DAY
Photo courtesy of IFR and ABB Robotics
Last week saw the release of the World Robotics 2024 Report by the International Federation of Robotics, based in Frankfurt, Germany. Among its findings were a recorded 4,281,585 units (including this ABB robot) operating in factories worldwide, an increase of 10%. “By region, 70% of all newly deployed robots 2023 were installed in Asia, 17% in Europe and 10% in the Americas,” the IFR reported, noting that the 276,288 industrial robots installed in China in 2023 represent 51% of the global installations.
.jpg)
