U.S. Electric Vehicle Investments Have Grown to $188 Billion, Almost 200,000 Jobs – New Report

(Washington, D.C. – March 12, 2024) A year and a half after the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) accelerated the U.S. markets for electric vehicle and battery manufacturing, a new report by Environmental Defense Fund and WSP USA finds continued strong growth.

The report, U.S. Electric Vehicle Manufacturing Investments and Jobs: Characterizing the Impacts of the Inflation Reduction Act after 18 Months, finds that in the last nine years manufacturers have announced $188 billion in investments in electric vehicle and EV battery manufacturing in the U.S. and 195,000 direct EV-related U.S. jobs. Most of those announcements occurred in the last 18 months since passage of the IRA.

"American electric vehicle manufacturing continues to race forward, driven by historic federal policies that have catalyzed tremendous investment and job creation,” said Ellen Robo, manager of transportation and clean air policy at Environmental Defense Fund. “The U.S. is creating zero-emitting cars that save money at the gas pump, and communities across the country will benefit from cleaner air and a stronger economy.”

EDF and WSP originally released a report on electric vehicle manufacturing and job growth one year ago, updated it six months ago, and again today. Each update has shown extraordinary increases in both investments and jobs:

• One year ago, EDF and WSP found $120 billion in announced investments in U.S. electric vehicle and EV battery manufacturing facilities over the previous eight years. The report released today found those investments had soared to $188 billion – a more than 50% increase from one year ago.
• 61% of the announced EV investments in today’s report ($114 billion) have occurred since passage of the IRA 18 months ago.
• Electric vehicle-related job growth has also skyrocketed, from 143,000 announced jobs in the EV sector in the report one year ago to 195,000 today.
• 51% of those jobs (about 100,000) were announced since passage of the IRA 18 months ago.
• The announced investments are expected to create more than 876,000 additional jobs in the broader economy.

Today’s report finds that Georgia continues to lead the states in both EV investments ($31.2 billion) and announced jobs (38,700). Michigan has more than $20 billion in announced manufacturing investments, and North Carolina showed a meteoric increase of $9 billion in announced EV investments in the last six months – to more than $19 billion today. Illinois also showed steep increases in both EV investments and announced jobs and is now in the top ten U.S. states for both.

The updated report also finds nationwide EV and battery production capacity remains high. Based solely on concrete announcements already made today, by 2027 U.S. manufacturing facilities will be able to produce:

• Approximately 5.5 million new electric vehicles each year, about 35% of all new cars sold in the U.S. in 2023.
• 1,099 gigawatt-hours of EV batteries, enough to supply 12.3 million new passenger electric vehicles each year, about 80% of all new cars sold in the U.S. in 2023.

You can read the full report here.

EDF and WSP’s earlier analyses are here: March 2023 and August 2023.

EDF also just released a separate analysis, Recent EV manufacturing investments in the U.S. are outpacing every other region, showing that private investments in the U.S. since 2021 are higher than every other region of the world and are more than three times higher than U.S. investments from 2016 to 2020.