A Virginia legislative panel has approved a state incentive package to bring a lithium-ion battery manufacturing plant to Lynchburg.
The operation will be headed by Applied Materials Inc., a company based in California.
We talked to Senator Tim Kaine about this and he said while he cannot comment on the commonwealth’s decision, he has shown his support to bring battery manufacturing to the United States.
“There are funds because of the environmental bills that we passed that are available to do this kind of battery production in the United States and we are very happy at the federal level to be putting a significant investment toward U.S. domestic battery manufacturing and production,” said Kaine.
In November, the U.S. Department of Energy gave a $100 million grant to Applied Materials to manufacture lithium-ion batteries in the United States instead of China.