FROM AN EDITORIAL IN THE DETROIT NEWS

Ford Motor Co.'s decision to take its $11.4 billion electric vehicle investment and 11,000 jobs to the mid-South should jar Michigan to the reality that it's unprepared to achieve its dreams of dominating the automotive future.

Dearborn-based Ford said it picked Tennessee and Kentucky over its home state for the massive new battery and EV production campuses because of lower electricity costs and better weather.

Making batteries consumes five times the electricity of a traditional auto plant, Ford CEO Jim Farley said. Kentucky and Tennessee offer power rates that are roughly one-fourth cheaper than Michigan's, though that's largely because both states are still heavily reliant on coal-fired power plants, which have an uncertain future.

The warmer, more stable weather in those two states apparently is also more conducive to making batteries. Michigan can't do much about its climate, except to harbor the ironic hope the global warming electric vehicles are designed to contain sharply raises its average temperatures.

Nor can it change its peninsular shape, which isolates it from states to the east and west and makes electricity transmission more costly. But it can and should take other steps to improve its competitiveness for the next time Ford or another automaker is searching for an EV production site.

Factories this size will not only lure thousands of workers to staff them, but also bring thousands of construction workers to build these plants and the infrastructure to go with them. Losing this kind of investment can also mean more population loss, less representation and the further dilution of Michigan's influence.