Ingram's November 2022

arterials will be required to feed that traffic flow. And traffic will be an issue: while Johnson County has a population 20 percent greater than Nevada county, where Panasonic already produces bat teries for Tesla, the vast majority of residents here live well to the east and will have to commute. It will take years for the housing situation in sparsely populated western JoCo to meet the need—and that’s before any vendor/ suppliers or other manufacturing com panies decide that Panasonic is onto a good thing and follow suit with major workforce additions of their own. Business advocates in other cities say a manufacturing facility of that scale will exacerbate a tight housing market; schools and universities will be compel- led to adjust academic tracks from secondary school through advanced degree programs, and new classroom space will be a given in the public schools. Owners of retail and blue-collar businesses, most immediately within a 10-mile radius but in some cases well beyond that, can expect the thorny choice between a constant turnover or significantly higher wage structures needed to keep staff in place. For each of those challenges, oppor tunities abound for companies built to address those rapid-growth factors. And the Kansas City region is just the place to do it, Panasonic says. “In addition to its skilled talent and central location, Kansas values many of the same principles on which Panasonic was founded, including cooperation, gratitude, and contributing to society,” said Allan Swan, president of Panasonic Energy of North America. “We could not be more excited to work together and invest in this community as we strive to advance EV battery manufacturing capacity and innovation in America.” The exciting part for this region has been the growth arc for electric vehicles over the past decade, especially the past two years. All-electric and plug-in hybrid electric vehicle sales nearly doubled from 308,000 in 2020 to 608,000 in 2021—up 85 percent for the straight EV and 138 percent for hybrids, year over year. By compar- ison, overall sales of light-duty vehicles were up just 3 percent during the same period.

Supercharged | A rendering of the Panasonic Energy battery plant, which is expected to employ 4,000 people in DeSoto, Kansas--including as many as 1,000 engineers--when this plant opens in 2025.

Another big plus is that a region long known as a national center of excellence in engineering will soon add another arrow to that quiver: Panasonic expects to include between 800 and 1,000 en gineers at the new plant starting in 2025. Put that into perspective: The reg ion’s 25 largest design firms, combined, employed fewer than 5,000 engineers at the start of 2022. Allan Swann, sharing the stage with Burns & McDonnell chairman/CEO Ray Kowalik, announced that hiring target at the Kansas City Area Development Council annual luncheon, just a week after the groundbreaking. As the big screens overhead flashed the website for

The two industrial giants have been on uneasy terms in the years since, and it’s worth noting that the DeSoto plant will be producing for EV makers in addition to Tesla. That speaks to broadening demand from other vehicle makers and the potential for longer-term stability. But before any of that production ramps up, there’s the small matter of workforce. Where, exactly, in a state with an unemployment rate of 2.6 percent, will 4,000 skilled employees come from? THE WORK-FORCE RESPONSE That’s not merely a rhetorical ques tion for the here and now. The regional

“In addition to its skilled talent and central location, Kansas values many of the same principles on which Panasonic was founded.”

— ALLAN SWAN, PRESIDENT, PANASONIC ENERGY

employment inquiries, Kowalik wise cracked: “That’s another website we’ll have to block” to deter folks from mi grating west. The battery-production world has changed profoundly since Panasonic En- ergy opened its first U.S. production facility in 2016 in Sparks, Nevada. Those changes may stand this region in good stead—Gigfactory 1, as it’s known, incorporates both the battery production as well as vehicle assembly for the target buyer, Tesla.

response to filling Panasonic’s needs will go a long way toward fulfilling the pro phecy that the new plant is the start of a truly transformative period in the regional economy. “Once Kansas shows that it can support Panasonic, supplier companies will be attracted, but other major man ufacturers will start to take note,” says Elisa Waldman, director of workforce training for Johnson County Community College. “Obviously, we have the land; the hope is that this economic-devel-

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Kansas City’s Business Media

November 2022