Gov. Josh Stein and Charlotte officials said on Tuesday that Scout Motors — a startup electric vehicle maker backed by Volkswagen — will open its U.S. headquarters in east Charlotte.
Scout Motors is also building a 4,000-job manufacturing plant in Blythewood, S.C., north of Columbia. The Charlotte headquarters will be located on Commonwealth Avenue, at the Commonwealth project, a new mixed-use development by Crosland Southeast that’s under construction. The Scout Motors headquarters is expected to bring more than 1,000 high-paying jobs.
It’s one of the biggest economic development projects headed to Charlotte in recent years, and represents a new industry, auto manufacturing, that Charlotte has not traditionally been a hub for. Still, North Carolina has been expanding its footprint in the automaking business — also on Wednesday, Stein celebrated the grand opening of Toyota’s $14 billion EV battery plant in Randolph County…