The Motor City is moving south as EVs change the automotive industry

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- Automakers are investing in towns across the American South.

- The new plants bring tax and workforce advantages as the industry moves toward electric vehicles.

- But the expansion south comes with unique challenges.

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Auto executives say they're investing in the South for a combination of reasons: lower energy costs, available workforce and livability among them. Many southern states also come with other benefits, potentially controversial, such as all-in lower pay for workers, millions in tax breaks and a largely non-unionized workforce in many of the Republican-controlled, right-to-work states.

Automakers have announced $45.9 billion of investments in southern states since 2017, according to The Center for Automotive Research, a nonprofit think tank based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. That's the first year the South outpaced the Midwest, or Great Lakes region, for announced investments since at least 2010.

Midwest states such as Michigan, Ohio and Indiana saw $39.9 billion in announced investments in that same timeframe.

Most of the money heading south – $34.2 billion, or 74% – has come in since last year from traditional automakers such as GM, Hyundai and Ford Motor as well as EV startup Rivian. Others such as Volkswagen and Nissan continue to invest and expand their operations in the South, largely for new electric vehicles.

"We are basically undergoing the single biggest industrial transformation, I would say, not to understate it, in the history of America," Scott Keogh, CEO at Volkswagen of America, told CNBC in June at the automaker's new battery lab in Chattanooga, Tennessee. "It's happening right now in this area."

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