Ford to upgrade its Oakville, Ontario, plant to build electric vehicles

Ford says it will start the process of retooling and transforming the Oakville complex in the second quarter of 2024 to prepare for production of next-generation electric vehicles beginning in 2025. The OEM says the new facility will be renamed Oakville Electric Vehicle Complex and it will repurpose existing buildings into a state-of-the-art facility that leverages Oakville’s experienced workforce.

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 utilise cells and arrays from BlueOval SK Battery Park in Kentucky. Oakville workers will take these components and assemble battery packs that will then be installed in vehicles assembled on-site.

In addition to the Oakville Electric Vehicle Complex upgrades, Ford also has announced: 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.

Through a wholly owned subsidiary, Ford is building a lithium iron phosphate battery plant in Marshall, Mich. Production is slated to begin in 2026, with 2,500 employees. Ford is the first automaker to commit to build both lithium iron phosphate and nickel cobalt manganese batteries in the U.S., helping America’s No. 2 EV company in 2022 diversify its U.S. supply chain.

It is modernising its vehicle assembly campus in Cologne, Germany, transforming it to become the Ford Cologne Electrification Centre – the company’s first EV centre of excellence in Europe. This 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.

Ford this year is expanding production of the F-150 Lightning at the Rouge Electric Vehicle Centre in Dearborn and the Mustang Mach-E at its Cuautitlan facility on Mexico