North Carolina is where the rubber meets the road for nearly 300 auto manufacturing establishments, which is no surprise considering our 26,000-strong industry workforce and low tax burden.
Meet some of the automotive, truck and heavy machinery companies doing business in North Carolina:
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- The lowest corporate income tax rate in the U.S.
- 2.5% corporate tax rate
- NC is ranked No. 1 for lowest state and local tax burden in the United States by Ernst & Young and the Council on State Taxation
- Access to four deep-water seaports
- Ports in Wilmington, NC and Morehead City, NC
- NC Ports provide some of the quickest turnaround times on the East Coast, with low costs and easy access to NC’s rail and highway systems
- Easy access to the ports of Charleston, SC and Norfolk, VA
- Access to the largest consolidated rail system in the U.S.
- 3,200+ miles (5,150 km) of track
- Easy access to major seaports and manufacturing hubs in the Southeast
- Reliable, low-cost electricity
- NC’s average industrial electricity rate is more than 8 percent lower than the national average
- The largest manufacturing workforce in the Southeast
- More than 460,000 manufacturing workers in NC
- Tenth-largest manufacturing workforce in the nation
- Fifth-highest gross state product from manufacturing, at 20 percent
- An educated and highly trained workforce
- Three Tier 1 research universities within 25 miles of one another:
- Duke University
- North Carolina State University
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
- 125 public and private colleges and universities across the state
- NC’s 58-campus community college system offers a variety of training and classes within 25 miles of every resident in the state
- Three Tier 1 research universities within 25 miles of one another:
- Customized training programs
- NCWorks, the state’s comprehensive workforce development platform, offers customizable training for new and existing businesses in the state
- A readymade workforce from the military
- NC is home to the third-largest military population in the U.S.
- Every year, approximately 20,000 skilled service members will transition out of the military through NC’s Department of Defense installations
- North Carolina Center for Automotive Research
- NCCAR offers secure assistance to the automotive industry for product development and testing
- A 2-mile, bi-directional road course
- A 2-acre vehicle dynamics area
- A 7-acre dirt facility
- Future Renewable Electric Energy Delivery and Management Systems Center
- The FREEDM Systems Center researches approaches and solutions to optimize the electric grid
- Research and development to support the broader use of electric vehicles
- Research areas include power electronics packaging, controls theory, solid state transformers, fault isolation devices, and power systems simulation and demonstration
- North Carolina Motorsports and Automotive Research Center
- NCMARC houses motorsports research facilities
- Assets include a water tunnel, a wind tunnel, and alternative propulsion dynamometer test cells
- Computational labs and other research facilities also available
- Advanced Transportation Energy Center
- ATEC develops electric vehicle technologies
- Resources include power electronics and power system facilities
- Battery and semiconductor research facilities also available
If you have an automotive industry business project, contact a state economic developer using the webform below.