The battle for America’s automotive future is now under way in places like a cotton farm in the small South Carolina town of Florence, where, every day, yellow and red excavators are digging up enough dirt and stone to bury an entire football field under 5ft of earth.

Last December, Envision AESC, a Japanese manufacturer, announced it would invest $810mn to assemble lithium-ion battery cells in Florence, a railroad hub that was once dominated by the state’s agriculture industry. The batteries will be used in BMW’s electric vehicle plant, 160 miles up the road in Spartanburg.

“We’re taking fields and turning them into manufacturing,” says Gregg Robinson, head of Florence County’s Economic Development Partnership. A shiny silver shovel from the plant’s groundbreaking ceremony stands like a trophy in his office. “This is a generational change.”