Nearly 18 months after a Florida-based EV manufacturing startup tried to woo city leaders in Langston, Oklahoma into helping build a factory, the project and its promoters have mostly disappeared into thin air.
Langston, home of Langston University, isn’t the only town where Imola Automotive USA came in with promises of jobs, big salaries and a foothold in the electric vehicle market. Other pie-in-the-sky promises were made to other struggling towns in Arkansas and Georgia. But nothing’s happened after Imola leaders promised to build six EV plants, create 45,000 jobs and help the improverished towns.
In the 18 months since the company tried to get free land and municipal financing, ground has not been broken on a single site. In Langston where Magnus Scott is a member of the city council, he recalled how Imola tried to convince the city to issue municipal bonds.
“I guess maybe they ran into financial problems,” Scott said in an interview with Floodlight, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powers stalling climate action.
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