Elio Motors plans to invest a great deal in our area 15,000 new jobs with salaries paying around $47,000 and $100,000 in capital investments. However, state and local governments are helping the company come along with lots of incentives. Caddo Commissioner Ken Epperson says Louisiana will pay up to $150,000 in incentives to Elio, which will be wrapped up in Louisiana Economic Development's FastStart program, payroll incentives, and more. Epperson says they'll be benchmarks too.

"As Elio reaches certain benchmarks, the state will inject certain incentives," Epperson said. "So, the state has a total package of $150,000,000."

Epperson says Caddo Parish will also offer incentives in the form of rebates and $10,000,000 in revenue investment bonds. Centenary College Economics Professor David Hoaas says incentives are the only way to land a company with such economic power.

"Whether you're for or against it, I think this is the situation where if you want to have that type of major player come in, you gotta expect that incentive programs are really necessary," Hoaas said, but he warns incentives might not pay off.

"If you provide incentives, too great of incentives, you kinda dampen that business' opportunity and desire and need to be efficient," Hoaas said.

Hoaas says that inefficiency could make a company unsuccessful. Elio Motors will begin renovating parts of the GM plant for its use later this year. Full production of its vehicles is expected in mid-2014.