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Toyota North Carolina update

Japan’s Nikkei Asia reported Thursday that Toyota is slowing some of its plans to build new EVs, but it’s not looking like that has any immediate fallout for the company’s $13.9 billion battery factory in Randolph County. “There is no impact to Toyota North Carolina’s production schedule,” said Emily Wilemon-Holland,...

By Ray Gronberg

October 4, 2024

Flying into the storm zone

On Monday evening, some random Reddit scrolling amid the second game of the Braves-Mets doubleheader called to my attention that a car-modding YouTuber who calls himself Cleetus McFarland was using his personal helicopter to fly supplies to Hurricane Helene victims near Asheville. By Tuesday, Cleetus — the nom de guerre of...

By Ray Gronberg

October 3, 2024

LGC sides with Cabarrus

Speaker Moore isn’t the only one taking shots at Folwell. The treasurer is having a tough go of things at the Local Government Commission, which he chairs. LGC members on Tuesday voted 6-3, over the treasurer’s dissent, to give Cabarrus County permission to borrow up to $85 million to pay...

By Ray Gronberg

October 3, 2024

Roads, food and water

The water-system failures are combining with road blockages of various sorts to throw the relief effort probably its biggest curveball, the need to bring in massive loads of supplies and get them distributed. An illustration of that came from the N.C. National Guard, which loaded 100,000 pounds of food and...

By Ray Gronberg

October 3, 2024

Power and communications

Meanwhile, Duke Energy says it expects to have the power back on for “the majority of customers” in western North Carolina and upstate South Carolina by Friday evening. As of the mid-afternoon on Monday the company was reporting about 308,000 customers in western North Carolina were without electricity. Another 438,000...

By Ray Gronberg

October 3, 2024

Water supplies and power

Water supplies and power remained the key deficits in western North Carolina on Monday as the region continues to pick up the pieces from Hurricane Helene. The water situation bears a closer look, given that one of the major logistics problems the state faces is the need to truck bottled...

By Ray Gronberg

October 3, 2024

Johnson & Johnson to build in Wilson

Finally, a bit of good non-Helene news. Pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson plans a $2 billion investment at a plant in Wilson, about 50 miles east of Raleigh, the company and state announced Tuesday. Janssen Biotech, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson would employ at least 420 people by 2031...

By Ray Gronberg

October 3, 2024

Duke reports progress on power restoration

Duke Energy appears to have made considerable inroads on the power-outage situation in the Carolinas. There are still almost 677,00 customers without power across North and South Carolina, and the utility is still promising to have the lights back on for most by Friday night. It’s worth noting here that...

By Ray Gronberg

October 3, 2024

An abandoned flood-control fix

Reader Matthew Eisley points out that flooding has been an issue in the mountains for a long time, and that the Tennessee Valley Authority once had a plan for an extensive series of flood-control dams in the French Broad River basin. But it got killed by environmentalist opposition, he says....

By Ray Gronberg

October 3, 2024

Hurricane Helene’s flooding effects on Asheville’s water system

We’ve begun to get a little clarity on why Asheville’s water system is in such dire straits after Hurricane Helene’s flooding. City officials told the Asheville Citizen-Times that the storm washed out transmission lines at the North Fork Water Treatment Plant and the road leading to the William Debruhl Water...

By Ray Gronberg

October 3, 2024

Helene devastates N.C.; 30 dead in Buncombe, officials say

It’s going to be a while before the full extent of Hurricane Helene’s toll on western North Carolina is known, but it’s going to be historic. “People are desperate for help, and we are pushing to get it to them, a massive effort,” Gov. Roy Cooper told reporters Sunday afternoon....

By Ray Gronberg

September 30, 2024

Turning the lights on

As for electricity, Duke Energy reported hat about 375,000 customers in the west were without power as of 3 p.m. Sunday, along with 14,000 or so to the northeast of Charlotte. The largest cluster of Duke outages was in the Asheville area. There are also six electrical co-ops in the...

By Welcome

September 30, 2024

Getting the roads open again

The biggest problems, for the moment, are all related: Road, power- and water-supply outages. The storm closed about 280 roads, most prominently Interstate 40. A mudslide blocked the interstate near Old Fort Mountain to the east of Asheville. By early Sunday afternoon crews had opened “a path through the slide”...

By Ray Gronberg

September 30, 2024

America’s car-dealer networks’ future is focus of new report

The future of America’s car-dealer networks is a perennial question for North Carolina’s and every other legislature in the country, Congress included, so the National Automobile Dealers Association keeps the wheels of advocacy rolling. To underscore the continuing value of local-level dealerships, NADA asked the OliverWyman consultancy to have a...

By Welcome

September 26, 2024

New train service to Chicago

f you want to take the train, instead of dealing with all the hassles associated with air travel, it’s fairly easy to get to major cities like New York and Atlanta from North Carolina. But if your destination is Chicago, it’s been good luck. Up to now. Currently, your only...

By Ray Gronberg

September 26, 2024