Georgia’s EV industry expands despite fewer incentives for electric vehicle buyers

Federal policy has reduced incentives to purchase electric vehicles, and the Georgia General Assembly has remained stagnant on policy that could encourage purchases by consumers. 

However, the EV industry in the state has continued to expand, according to WABE.

Gov. Brian Kemp has been welcoming clean-energy manufacturers in the state, and the state has provided tax breaks and a worker training program to attract EV and battery makers.

Several EV manufacturing facilities have been built or added into existing facilities, including by Hyundai in 2022, Blue Bird in 2023 and Kia in 2024. Rivian broke ground on  its manufacturing facility near Atlanta in 2025.

Stan Cross with the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, or SACE, told WABE that nearly $74 billion of manufacturing investments are moving ahead across the Southeast even though more than $4 billion in investment has been canceled or scaled back.

“The state continues to have a lot riding on the success of both the electric vehicle but also the battery market,” said Stan Cross of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, or SACE. 

However, Georgia doesn’t have incentives to encourage EV adoption and does have an extra registration fee for EVs to make up for the lost gas taxes.

“When it comes to electric vehicles, Georgia politics remains utterly confused,” Cross said.

Across the board, CEO Stuart Countess of Kia’s plant in West Point said hybrid vehicles have become more popular among consumers.

“What we’ve seen is a transition back away from maybe full EV vehicle building to this kind of a middle-of-the-road opportunity,” said factory CEO Stuart Countess.

Although Countess said EVs are still the future, several factors are causing consumers to move away from the vehicles, especially the change in federal policy.

“We had a tax incentive credit that did go away,” Countess said. “Sales were really moving in the right direction, but once it went away, it became a much different environment.”

However, industry experts say the EV market is starting to stabilize, and the auto industry as a whole is still going electric.