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Mayor William "Doug" Franklin of Warren, a city a short drive from the plant, understands the personal impact of Mahoning Valley's booms and busts. His father worked in a local steel mill and his mother at a local auto supplier. Before becoming mayor, Franklin himself worked at GM for 25 years. He now describes himself as a "UAW retiree."
距离该工厂只有很短车程的沃伦市市长威廉·道格·富兰克林深知马霍宁谷的繁荣与萧条对他个人的影响。他的父亲在当地一家钢铁厂工作，母亲在当地一家汽车供应商工作。在成为市长之前，富兰克林本人在通用汽车工作了25年。现在他自称是“美国汽车工人联合会的退休人员”。
But Franklin doesn't want to talk about the Mahoning Valley's past. Instead of meeting at the historic mayor's office in Warren, he asked to meet a few blocks away at BRITE, a local nonprofit that supports energy-tech startups, which is trying to build an electricvehicle ecosystem in the area. Franklin wants to see a full-scale rebranding of the region, making the Mahoning Valley a center for electric-vehicle manufacturing that will bring job retraining, private investment and new technical jobs. "We know how to take a punch and how to recover; that's just in our DNA," he says. "This provides us a great opportunity to change our brand from the Steel Valley to the Voltage Valley."
但富兰克林不想谈论马霍宁谷的过去。他没有在华伦市历史悠久的市长办公室会面，而是要求在几个街区之外的BRITE会面。BRITE是当地一家支持能源技术初创企业的非营利组织，正试图在该地区建立一个电动汽车生态系统。富兰克林希望看到对该地区进行全面的重塑，使马霍宁谷成为电动汽车的制造中心，将带来就业再培训、私人投资和新的技术岗位。“我们知道如何承受打击，如何恢复，这是烙在我们的基因里的，”他说。“这为我们提供了一个很好的机会，能够将我们的品牌从钢铁谷转变为电压谷。”
The shift began in earnest in 2019, when Lordstown Motors formed a new firm to take over the GM facility and produce an electric truck. On Dec. 5, GM announced its own EV project just next door: a battery-cell-assembly plant called Ultium Cells, which is scheduled to open next year. With those two anchors, small startups have flocked to the region, working in everything from energy storage to solar power, eager to benefit from the electric-vehicle hub that seems to be taking shape. "There will be a couple thousand jobs that show up here in the next three to five years, based purely on the location," says Rick Stockburger, who runs BRITE.
这种转变在2019年正式开始，当时洛兹敦汽车公司成立了一家新公司接管通用汽车的工厂，生产一款电动卡车。12月5日，通用汽车宣布自己的电动汽车项目就在隔壁：一家名为Ultium Cells的电池组装厂，计划于明年开业。有了这两个支柱，小型初创企业纷纷涌入该地区，涉足从能源存储到太阳能等方方面面，渴望从似乎正在形成的电动汽车中心获益。BRITE的经营者里克·斯托克伯格说：“仅仅基于地理位置，在未来三到五年内，这里将会出现几千个工作岗位。”
More of these hubs could be on the way. Major automakers including GM, Ford and Stellantis are each spending tens of billions to prepare for an all-electric future. "This is transformational," says Gerald Johnson, GM's head of global manufacturing. "It's the biggest technological change this industry has seen in over 100 years. This is going from buggies to engines."
可能还会有更多这样的枢纽出现。包括通用、福特和斯特兰提斯在内的主要汽车制造商都在花费数百亿美元为全电动汽车的未来做准备。通用汽车全球制造主管杰拉德·约翰逊表示：“这是一场变革。这是该行业100多年来最大的技术变革。一场从马车到发动机的变革。”
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