Ford Motor Company (F) announced a C$1.8 billion investment to turn the Oakville Assembly Complex in Ontario into a Canadian center of electric vehicle manufacturing, including vehicle and battery pack assembly.
By adapting the facility for EVs, Ford will get closer to its aim of producing 2 million EVs yearly by the end of 2026. According to Ford, the campus, which will be renamed Oakville Electric Vehicle Complex, will begin retooling and modernizing in the second quarter of 2024 to prepare to manufacture next-generation EVs.
Three body shops, one paint building, and one assembly building are currently located on the 487-acre Oakville site. In addition, the renovated property will include a new 407,000-square-foot on-site battery plant that will use cells and arrays from Kentucky's BlueOval SK Battery Park.
Furthermore, Ford announced the establishment of BlueOval City, an all-new EV manufacturing ecosystem in West Tennessee that would house a battery facility and the future home of Ford's next-generation EV truck.
These locations and two battery operations in Kentucky that are part of a joint venture with SK On will create 11,000 new U.S. jobs and are anticipated to begin production in 2025.
Ford announced the construction of a lithium iron phosphate battery factory in Marshall, Michigan. Production will begin in 2026 with 2,500 workers. The business announced modernizing its vehicle assembly plant in Cologne, Germany, and renaming it the Ford Cologne Electrification Center.
The location will be the European production site for the electric Ford Explorer; production will begin later this year.
Ford, LG Energy Solution, and Koç Holding have signed a non-binding memorandum of intent to construct one of Europe's most extensive commercial electric vehicle battery cell manufacturing facilities. The project is expected to commence ground this year outside Ankara, Turkey, with production beginning in 2026.
