Nissan will make good on its $1.4 billion DOE loan, and finally start building the Leaf EV right here in America. In addition to the Leafs going off the assembly line, Nissan will also build the battery packs at a separate plant next door. Nissan hasn’t set production targets for the Smyrna, Tennessee plant, though Leaf sales have been flat over the last year, despite projections of them doubling.

The Globe and Mail’s Greg Keenan explored an interesting conundrum that Canadian governmental officials are facing; is it worth subsidizing auto industry manufacturing facilities, even with austerity programs in place?

The closure of the Oshawa consolidated line last week brought into focus the issues facing Ontario’s once bouyant auto manufacturing sector. On the one hand, there’s the instinct to preserve the auto plants, and the stable, well-paying jobs that come with them, even if it means “investment” from both the provincial and federal government (at a rate of 15 percent of the total cost from each level of government). But with governments imposing wage freezes and layoffs on public employees, subsidizing profitable private businesses goes beyond just poor optics.

Keenan cites upgrades to Ford’s Oakville plant, which builds vehicles like the Edge and Flex, as having the potential to require a total of $400 million in government money. While the sum is steep, the upgrades would preserve the 2,800 jobs currently at the plant, and allow for a global platform vehicle to be built, increasing the potential for exports beyond the U.S. market.

States like Tennessee and Alabama are courting car companies with what Keenen describes as ”… incentives worth hundreds of millions of dollars at auto makers to finance training, infrastructure and real estate purchases and provide tax holidays to land the thousands of jobs created by assembly plants.” Of course, those states tend to have plants that aren’t unionized. Foreign automakers tend to build in the South more than the Big Three, but GM recently moved some production of the Chevrolet Equinox from Oshawa to Tennessee in part because they could pay new hires $14 an hour rather than the $32 an hour paid to Oshawa employees.

High CAW wages and a strong Canadian dollar give the automakers the potential for an easy way out when it comes to packing up and moving their plants elsewhere. Bringing production back to America, at $14 an hour would not only cut costs but provide good optics for American manufacturers. Moving production to Mexico, already a trend among a number of automakers, would provide further costs savings, and if the last generation Ford Fusion is anything to go by, no major drop in quality.

Senator Corker, rest easy: the imports have your back. Tennessee-based Saturn may be shutting down, but Nissan is bringing the manufacture of their electric car, the Leaf, to Smyrna, Tennessee. Nissan made the announcement today as Rutherford County commission member voted to approve the funds required for the project. Under the scheme, Nissan will get $2.5 billion for the project plus a tax holiday of 20 to 40 years. In return, Smyrna will receive, up to, 1300 full time production jobs. That works out to be about $1.92 million per job. Not to mention a drop in tax revenue for the state. Let’s hope this Leaf is attached to an evergreen project and not a deciduous one.