https://www.wkyufm.org/news/2026-02-09/a-kentucky-town-bet-big-on-fords-ev-strategy-then-the-battery-plant-closed

Hardin County was projected to grow by 22,000 residents. The community spent hundreds of millions of dollars to build a workforce training center, redesign the Glendale exit off Interstate 65, build more homes, expand the hospital, and upgrade electric, water, and sewer systems.

Now, this metro with momentum is in a slowdown.

The Glendale plant shuttered six months after the first electric vehicle batteries rolled off the assembly line.

BlueOval SK restructured the project after Congress ended the $7,500 tax credits to buy electric vehicles, changes to a manufacturing credit program that denied tax credits to projects owned by foreign entities, and declining EV sales.

Kentucky Senate President Robert Stivers has called the battery plant “the biggest boondoggle of economic recruitment in the state’s history.”