Hyundai Commits to $5.54 Billion Investment in Georgia, While Rivian Is Scapegoated
By Edward A. Sanchez — May 24, 2022
Politics is a funny thing. A hero one week is the villain the next. Just within the past week, Texas governor Greg Abbot hailed Tesla CEO Elon Musk for his investment in Texas, and then just as quickly deleted his tweet once sexual harassment charges were alleged against the billionaire gadfly. Similarly, the Hyundai Group was feted at a ceremony involving Georgia governor Brian Kemp for its pledged $5.54 billion commitment to the state to build an EV vehicle and battery plant there, when U.S.-based EV manufacturer Rivian was accused of being a pawn for shadowy leftist billionaire (and favorite punching bag of the conspiratorial right) George Soros by former Georgia Senator (and current gubernatorial primary candidate) David Perdue.
Politicians are nothing if not opportunistic. Pandering to the “base” is the name of the game. Perdue’s fans are also Donald Trump’s fans, and Perdue has unabashedly hitched his car to the MAGA train. As evidenced by Kemp’s presence at the Hyundai Group ceremony, and Perdue’s tinfoil-hat allegations against Rivian and Soros, there is clearly not unanimity within the GOP as to whether they’re pro- or anti-EV.
If new vehicle registrations in California are anything to go by, these fringe comments may be but a quaint footnote in history, with the Tesla Model Y and Model 3 leading sales in the Golden State in the first quarter of 2022. And lest you think California is an outlier in the “electrify all cars” trend, in Germany, a market long known for the predominance of diesels, electrified vehicles, which include hybrids, plug-in hybrids, and battery-electric vehicles, outsold diesels in December 2021, a pattern that is likely to repeat itself in the quarters and years ahead.
Hyundai recently committed to a $5.5 billion investment in Georgia. Almost at the same time in the same state, Rivian fell victim to what was likely politically-motivated accusations.
As The Watt Car Editor-In-Chief Phil Royle has stated more than once, electric cars will soon be “cars,” and the novelty and weirdness of charging will fade into the annals of history. At least that’s the hope. There’s a long way to go to get from here to there. Again, mostly dependent on the buildout of a reliable, ubiquitous, and robust charging infrastructure.
What will the right-wing conspiracy theorists find to scapegoat and demonize in the future? Who knows? But Elon Musk himself, at various times the hero and/or villain of the political right or left, has himself said that government should “get out of the way” of technological progress, and play referee, not odds-maker.
The current paradigm of transportation and energy is being disrupted in front of our own eyes, and is either causing panic or mirth among observers, depending on their political, ideological, or economic interest persuasion. Much like at the turn of the 20th century, you could be a lobbyist and advocate for the horse whip and buggy makers, but the course of history was already in motion, and horses went from mainstream beasts of burden to leisure creatures for the wealthy, much as ICE vehicles are probably destined to become in the decades ahead.
(Images courtesy Hyundai)
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