A Volkswagen subsidiary plans to develop a $206 million headquarters in Charlotte, North Carolina, for its line of electric SUVs and trucks, a short drive from its $2 billion manufacturing plant underway near Columbia, South Carolina.
Scout Motors' new office will be located at Commonwealth, a mixed-use development in the Plaza Midwood neighborhood east of Charlotte's central business district, according to a news release.
The company is "an ideal fit for this transformative development in Plaza Midwood," Skylar Huth, director of workplace, retail and mixed-use at Nuveen Real Estate, said in an emailed statement. The work at the undisclosed site wasn't detailed
As consumer demand for EVs has slowed, partly due to the elimination of a federal tax credit for purchasing new EVs, automakers' responses have been mixed. General Motors and Ford have postponed the development of factories to make EVs and batteries, while the EV automaker Rivian plans to start construction in early 2026 on a $5 billion plant near Atlanta.
Meanwhile, Tesla has begun hiring for its $200 million battery plant underway in greater Houston, and Hyundai has already started operations at its new multibillion-dollar EV factory near Savannah, Georgia.
VW's Scout office in Charlotte will ultimately employ about 1,200 workers in "executive leadership, research and development, finance, [technology], sales, marketing and other key corporate functions," according to its statement. Bobby Speir, senior vice president at Crosland Southeast, confirmed Scout will be locating at Commonwealth but declined to make additional comments.
The Charlotte office will be located about 80 miles north of VW's $2 billion Scout manufacturing plant in Blythewood, South Carolina. VW expects to begin producing Scout vehicles in South Carolina in 2027.
In a separate announcement, a previously established joint venture between VW and automaker Rivian said that it may sell a Rivian-designed electrical and software platform to other automakers.
The so-called software-defined vehicle architecture is a central computer that controls all functions of an electric vehicle, according to a news release. An executive with RV Tech, the joint venture, said at an industry conference on Wednesday that selling the software platform to other EV companies could be an opportunity for a new business line, according to Bloomberg.
VW invested $5 billion in Rivian in June 2024 and formed the RV Tech joint venture to develop electric vehicles and software.