Ford To Transform Ontario Plant Into Electric-vehicle Site

(RTTNews) - Ford Motor Co. (F) said that it will invest C$1.8 billion to transform Oakville, Ontario, Assembly Complex into a Canadian hub of electric vehicle manufacturing that will include vehicle and battery pack assembly.

By converting the complex for EVs, Ford will come closer to reaching its goal of an annual production run rate of 2 million EVs by the end of 2026.

The campus, to be renamed Oakville Electric Vehicle Complex, will begin to retool and modernize in the second quarter of 2024 to prepare for production of next-generation EVs, Ford said in a statement.

The current 487-acre Oakville site includes three body shops, one paint building, one assembly building. The transformed campus will feature a new 407,000 square-foot on-site battery plant that will utilize cells and arrays from BlueOval SK Battery Park in Kentucky.

In addition, Ford said it is creating an all-new EV manufacturing ecosystem in West Tennessee - called BlueOval City - the home of a battery plant and the future home of Ford's next-generation EV pickup. Together with two battery plants in Kentucky, which are part of a joint venture with SK On, these sites will create 11,000 new U.S. jobs and expected to begin production in 2025.

Ford noted that it is building a lithium iron phosphate battery plant in Marshall, Mich. Production is slated to begin in 2026, with 2,500 employees. The company stated that it is modernizing its vehicle assembly campus in Cologne, Germany, transforming it to become the Ford Cologne Electrification Center . The site will be the production home of the electric Ford Explorer for European customers; production begins later this year.

Ford, LG Energy Solution and Koç Holding have signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding to build one of the largest commercial electric vehicle battery cell production facilities in the European region. The project is on track to break ground near Ankara, Turkey, later this year, with production to start in 2026.