Research Insights

In December the UGA Terry College of Business released its 39^th annual Georgia Economic Outlook, which predicted that—by the end of 2022—Georgia would fully recover from the pandemic-inflicted recession. According to the projection, the state economy will grow by a robust 4.3% this year, and its unemployment rate will fall to about 3.2%, lower than pre-pandemic levels.

One area of the economy that has recently grabbed Georgia and UGA attention is electric mobility. In December, the electric vehicle company Rivian announced that it would site its second manufacturing plant east of Atlanta, a $5 billion investment that will employ more than 7,500 workers. This followed on the heels of SK Innovation’s decision to build a $2.6 billion electric battery facility near Commerce, just a few miles up 441 from Athens.

While those two projects generated a lot of headlines, they’re not the only good news for Georgia in e-mobility. Ascend Elements (formerly Battery Resources) announced in January that it would open the largest North American battery recycling facility of its kind in Covington, a $43 million investment that will add another 150 jobs and process up to 30,000 metric tons of discarded lithium-ion batteries and scrap each year.

Blue Bird, maker of those instantly recognizable yellow school buses, is now producing hundreds of all-electric buses at its two facilities in Fort Valley. To provide infrastructure in Georgia for all this electric mobility, other companies are building e-charging stations and establishing parts suppliers.

While electric vehicles traditionally attract all the attention—automakers alone are expecting to invest $250 billion in them by 2023—e-mobility is no longer just about electric cars. Aircraft, boats, bicycles and drones are all moving toward electric propulsion technologies. Autonomous software, batteries and storage technology, and network and cybersecurity infrastructure are all needed to support this sector.

That’s where UGA comes in. Last summer our Carl Vinson Institute of Government partnered with the Governor and the Georgia Department of Economic Development on the Electric Mobility and Innovation Alliance. The alliance brought together public officials and business leaders to identify and develop a comprehensive, statewide strategy to recommend policy that will boost our workforce, research and innovation, supply chain, and infrastructure for this sector.

Recently UGA announced its Electric Mobility Initiative, which will bring together students, faculty and staff together from various disciplines to support research and development, sustainability, security and regulation, community and economic development, and business impacts from this industry. Together with private funding, UGA will invest $1 million to create new initiatives to support e-mobility research and development, including a new certificate program in the College of Engineering and battery research in our new I-STEM complex.

So how do researchers connect with economic development? From his office in Atlanta’s Technology Square, Matt Colvin, UGA’s director of economic development, works to help connect state industries with UGA research talent. Matt has worked for both the University System of Georgia and the Georgia Department of Economic Development, and he has the experience and contacts to help turn potential research collaborations into reality. If your research aligns with our Electric Mobility Initiative, or if you have other ideas about how to connect your research program with industry needs, I encourage you to reach out to Matt at mcolvin@uga.edu.

I look forward to supporting many of you who are involved in this work. The Electric Mobility Initiative is so vitally important not just to Georgia’s future, but to that of our country and our planet. We are excited to partner with the state on this initiative and leverage our academic and research expertise to help Georgia become a world leader in e-mobility technologies.

Karen J. L. Burg
Vice President for Research
Harbor Lights Chair in Biomedical Research