By Blake Haas

BLOOMINGTON – A downstate Republican lawmaker is praising a bill signed by Gov. Pritzker on Monday that looks to bolster electric vehicles on Illinois roadways.

Earlier this week, Gov. Pritzker put pen to paper and signed the Reimagining Electric Vehicles in Illinois act that provides incentives for electric vehicle production across the state.

State Senator Jason Barickman (R-Bloomington) said he helped negotiate the Act, which received almost unanimous bipartisan support.

“I think it’s a great example of how we can work together and achieve positive outcomes for the state. The success story, which is Rivian (automotive), started to come about a few years ago when the state took a little bit of a leap of faith, and we put some incentives together; minor, very minor that helped bring this startup with very few employees to town, now we know it as Rivian.

Today that success story, I think, is being heard, I used to say, ‘all around the state,’ you know clearly all around the country and the world now with the Initial Public Offering (IPO).”

The Act also pushes Gov. Pritzker’s goal of having one million electric cars on the road by 2030.

“There’s an opportunity for Illinois to see more success with electric vehicles because of the other components that support those vehicles, namely the batteries and the fact that there are manufacturers out in the world who are looking to locate near an electric manufacturer like Rivian.

We put together this incentive package; it’s narrow. I don’t think it’s an overly broad incentive package. It’s designed to attract some of those battery manufactures or others,” Senator Barickman told WJBC’s, Scott Miller.

Earlier this year, U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) said Samsung is considering Normal as a location to build a new battery plant, which would be located near Rivian.

Blake Haas can be reached at [email protected].