Scout Motors opening applications for electric vehicle assembly line workers

COLUMBIA — Electric vehicle maker Scout Motors plans to open up applications in the coming weeks for its first round of assembly line workers at its South Carolina plant.

The Volkswagen subsidiary is on schedule to roll its first round of test vehicles off the line by the end of the year, and it’s looking for the employees needed to put those first Scouts together, CEO Scott Keogh said Tuesday.

SC is $150M over budget on promises it made to bring Scout Motors to the state

“These will be actual operators on the (assembly) line,” said Clarice Henderson, who heads up Scout’s human resources team.

The automaker will bring these employees on board gradually throughout 2026. It expects to end the year with anywhere between 200 and 400 initial floor workers on staff, Henderson added.

This next hiring round will come on top of 76 factory workers who have already signed on with Scout over the past six months.

Those earlier hires are the people who will set up and keep the factory’s vast array of machinery and robotics operational as the company speeds toward its goal of shipping the first Scout vehicles to customers in 2027. The jobs pay between $30 and $37.50 an hour, depending on the worker’s experience.

Scout picked those first workers from a pool of 600 applicants, Henderson said. Nearly all of those applicants live in South Carolina, she said, rather than people moving in from outside the state for work.

Unlike those earlier hires, which sought applicants with at least three years of prior manufacturing work experience, Henderson said the upcoming hiring round is open to people who have never worked in a factory before. Scout has yet to publicize the salary range for these jobs.

Scout will train incoming workers on the job. Those hired will spend their first two weeks going through general training on company policies and benefits. After that, the employees will branch off into training specific to where in the factory they’re working, Henderson.

Those interested can apply online at the Scout Motors website, where they will be screened by Ready SC, an offshoot of the state technical college system that runs employee training programs for new companies opening up shop in South Carolina.

Once operating at full capacity — sometime in 2030 or 2031 — the $2 billion assembly plant will employ 4,000 workers and produce 200,000 vehicles annually.

That will include a mix of fully electric and hybrid-like models the carmaker announced in October 2024 that it would offer.

Meanwhile, more than 150,000 people have signed up to buy the first Scout vehicles when they come out next year.

Construction also is underway on the Scout campus for three buildings that will house a number of suppliers on site, including a contractor that will assemble the batteries that will go into Scout’s vehicles and a company that will make customized parts, such as off-road bumpers and bike racks.

Keogh estimates on-site suppliers will employ an additional 1,000 workers at the Blythewood campus.