Panasonic Chooses Kansas For Four Billion Dollar Plant

Japan’s Panasonic Corporation selected Kansas as the location for a multibillion-dollar mega-factory to produce electric vehicle batteries for Tesla and other carmakers, Governor Laura Kelly has announced.

The decision comes five months after the Democratic governor and Republican-controlled Legislature rushed to approve a taxpayer-funded incentive package of as much as $1 billion, the state’s largest ever, to attract the company and the promised “thousands of jobs,” even though most of them didn’t know at the time what company was in play.

Kelly says that the actual incentives will total $829 million over 10 years.

The plant will be located in De Soto, southwest of the Kansas City area.

Administration officials said the company would employ 4,000 people, and that other businesses supplying or supporting it would add several thousand more jobs.

They said the company would pay an average of $50,000.