Ford Updates EV, Hybrid Plans, Readies Manufacturing Plants

[ice-capades]

Ford Updates EV, Hybrid Plans, Readies Manufacturing Plants

https://media.ford.com/content/fordmedia/fna/us/en/news/2024/04/04/ford-updates-timing-for-next-gen-evs--readies-manufacturing-plan.html

 

 

• Ford continues to invest in a broad set of EV programs as it works to build a full EV line-up. In parallel, Ford is expanding its hybrid electric vehicle offerings. By the end of the decade, the company expects to offer hybrid powertrains across its entire Ford Blue lineup in North America
• Equipment installation is underway at the Tennessee Electric Vehicle Center assembly plant at BlueOval City, which aims to begin customer deliveries of Ford’s next-generation electric truck in 2026
• Expansion progresses at Ohio Assembly Plant in Avon Lake, to produce an all-new electric commercial vehicle for Ford Pro customers beginning mid-decade; construction progressing at BlueOval Battery Park Michigan, and BlueOval SK joint venture battery plants in Tennessee and Kentucky
• Ford reiterates commitment to its Oakville, Ontario, assembly plant as the company retimes the launch of its all-new three-row electric vehicles to 2027 
• Design work continues on future EVs, including a flexible small and affordable EV platform by a skunkworks team in California

 

DEARBORN, Mich., April 4, 2024 – Ford Motor Company said today it is retiming the launch of upcoming electric vehicles at its Oakville, Ontario, assembly plant while continuing to build out an advanced industrial system to produce its next-generation electric vehicles, including greenfield construction and conversion of existing assembly plants. 

 

The company continues to invest in a broad set of EV programs as it works to build a full EV line-up. These initiatives support the development of a differentiated and profitably growing EV business over time while Ford serves customers with the right mix of gas, hybrid and electric vehicles based on demand today. In parallel, Ford is expanding its hybrid electric vehicle offerings. By the end of the decade, the company expects to offer hybrid powertrains across its entire Ford Blue lineup in North America. In the first quarter of 2024, Ford’s electric vehicle sales increased by 86% and hybrid sales rose 42% versus a year ago. 

 

“As the No. 2 EV brand in the U.S. for the past two years, we are committed to scaling a profitable EV business, using capital wisely and bringing to market the right gas, hybrid and fully electric vehicles at the right time,” said Jim Farley, Ford president and CEO. “Our breakthrough, next-generation EVs will be new from the ground up and fully software enabled, with ever-improving digital experiences and a multitude of potential services.”

 

Assembly plant in Oakville, Ontario

The transformation of Oakville Assembly Plant – a comprehensive overhaul of the plant from a gas vehicle assembly plant into an EV manufacturing complex – is set to begin in the second quarter, as planned.  

 

Preparations continue for the market launch of Ford’s all-new three-row electric vehicles at the assembly complex in Oakville, Ontario, which the company said it will re-time to 2027 from 2025. The additional time will allow for the consumer market for three-row EVs to further develop and enable Ford to take advantage of emerging battery technology, with the goal to provide customers increased durability and better value.  

 

“We value our Canadian teammates and appreciate that this delay will have an impact on this excellent team,” Farley said. “We are fully committed to manufacturing in Canada and believe this decision will help us build a profitably growing business for the long term.” 

The company will work with Unifor to mitigate the impact the launch delay will have on its workforce at Oakville. 

 

“We are committed to taking care of our valued Oakville employees through this transition,” said Bev Goodman, president and CEO, Ford Canada. “While this change requires a revision to the timeline, it will support a viable and growing future for our company, employees and dealers.”

 

BlueOval City

The creation of the BlueOval City campus – Ford’s new advanced auto production complex that includes the Tennessee Electric Vehicle Center assembly plant – is progressing on track. In addition to paint shop and vehicle assembly equipment, installation is also underway for nearly 4,000 tons of stamping equipment that will produce the sheet metal stampings for Ford’s next all-new electric truck. 

Ford plans to begin customer deliveries of the new truck in 2026 and gradually ramp up production to help assure quality. The Tennessee Electric Vehicle Center will be Ford’s first Industry 4.0 plant, combining automation and connectivity to help elevate quality and efficiency.

 

Prospective employees can meet with Ford representatives at the new Ford Tennessee Discovery Center in Brownsville, Tenn., once it opens. The plant’s management team brings together strong leaders from around the world, including Ford veterans and talent from Tesla, Amazon, Meta, Toyota, FedEx and more. Community members also will be welcome to experience advanced manufacturing through virtual reality simulations at the Discovery Center.

Ohio Assembly Plant

Additionally, Ford continues its expansion of Ohio Assembly Plant in Avon Lake to produce an all-new electric commercial vehicle for Ford Pro customers beginning mid-decade.

 

Half of the structural steel is erected on the site, interior slabs are being poured, concrete walls are going up and masonry is beginning on interior walls. Ford expects to begin tool installation at Ohio Assembly Plant in spring 2025. 

 

Employees at the plant, like at other Ford manufacturing facilities, will use wearable technology to support high-quality and efficient manufacturing.

 

Future EVs

Design work continues on Ford’s future-generation EVs. A skunkworks team in California is developing a smaller, low-cost, profitable, flexible EV platform capable of underpinning multiple vehicles at high volumes. Alan Clarke leads the growing team, which includes personnel from Auto Motive Power (AMP) following Ford’s acquisition of the EV energy management startup in late 2023. 

 

In the meantime, construction is progressing at BlueOval Battery Park Michigan, in Marshall, Mich., and at the BlueOval SK joint venture battery plants in Tennessee and Kentucky. 

 

Edited April 4 by ice-capades
Additional Content

[akirby]

Producing more hybrids, scaling back EVs to match demand that has somewhat plateaued and waiting for next gen cheaper batteries.  If only somebody had suggested that 3 years ago……

[Oac98]

10 hours ago, akirby said:

Producing more hybrids, scaling back EVs to match demand that has somewhat plateaued and waiting for next gen cheaper batteries.  If only somebody had suggested that 3 years ago……

Ya, tell me about it! 

[Dequindre]

I love how the PR people at Ford used the word "retiming" instead of "delaying". That's such a PR move. 

[Gurgeh]

11 hours ago, Dequindre said:

I love how the PR people at Ford used the word "retiming" instead of "delaying". That's such a PR move. 

...and until the plant goes back into operation a couple of years down the road, they'll be "rightsizing" their Canadian workforce.

[Oac98]

26 minutes ago, Gurgeh said:

...and until the plant goes back into operation a couple of years down the road, they'll be "rightsizing" their Canadian workforce.

The plan will change multiple times before then. Who knows, maybe by then they’ll just close the plant. I believe those with very low seniority are just gonna quit and move on. I sure as hell won’t be sitting around for that duration of time worrying about Ford. I know I speculate alot but this situation is garbage. 

[Andrew L]

It's irritating, to me anyway, that they aren't building the Nautilus at Oakville and instead importing it from China and now Oakville is idled till 2027.  I know it would need retooling for the new design and would screw up their long term EV plans but still.  I wonder if it could have been a more gradual change over if they did plan for it to have the new Nautilus first then switch over to EV later on.  Of course, hindsight is 2020.  

[Chrisgb]

1 hour ago, Gurgeh said:

...and until the plant goes back into operation a couple of years down the road, they'll be "rightsizing" their Canadian workforce.

You spelled "Teammates" wrong.

 

I was once a dedicated, valued teammate at Whirlpool Corp for 17 years; until they closed our state of the art, seven year old factory and moved out of state.

[akirby]

24 minutes ago, Andrew L said:

It's irritating, to me anyway, that they aren't building the Nautilus at Oakville and instead importing it from China and now Oakville is idled till 2027.  I know it would need retooling for the new design and would screw up their long term EV plans but still.  I wonder if it could have been a more gradual change over if they did plan for it to have the new Nautilus first then switch over to EV later on.  Of course, hindsight is 2020.  

I believe I even said at the time they really should have built that new plant in Mexico or put the new EVs at Cuautitlan with Mach-E instead of converting Oakville.  Or completed the remodel at Flat Rock.  Especially considering how much of an unknown EV volume was back then.  But remember the original plan was 5 EVs and that’s when they decided to drop Edge and Nautilus.  Then it changed to just the two larger ones and now they’re stuck between a rock and a hard place with nothing in Oakville.  They gambled and lost.

 

This happens a lot with business decisions.  You make a decision that makes sense at the time and then things change along the way but by the time you realize it’s no longer viable you have no backup plan.  Ford gets too enamored with new shiny stuff and too often ignores the existing stuff.  Sometimes it works out great - Maverick and Bronco Sport e.g.   Even Mach-E, E Transit and Lightning have been moderately successful for what they are.  But the new EVs starting with the Rivian and VW deals and now with Oakville have been unmitigated disasters.

 

We’ll see what happens.  I think delaying the EVs is just buying time to get a new plan together for Edge and Nautilus hybrids.

 

 

[twintornados]

9 minutes ago, Chrisgb said:

You spelled "Teammates" wrong.

 

I was once a dedicated, valued teammate at Whirlpool Corp for 17 years; until they closed our state of the art, seven year old factory and moved out of state.

 

What happened to the plant? Sold? Demolished? Sorry to see stuff like this

[Chrisgb]

53 minutes ago, twintornados said:

 

What happened to the plant? Sold? Demolished? Sorry to see stuff like this

The Floorcare plant was built on an 86-acre site in Cottage Grove, MN, that was to eventually include a 400,000 sq ft Chest Freezer plant and a warehouse/rail/distribution facility. The FloorCare plant opened to great fanfare in 1977 and closed December 1984. We had no national seniority, and there was no other development of the land at that time. Today, the facility is owned by Up North Plastics, which has expanded twice, and there is a GM Distribution Center and rail yard adjacent, but I'm  not sure if that is on the original Whirlpool property. I sold insurance for a short time before getting into car sales and later truck driving. I am now comfortably retired with my wife of 45 years (in a row) and my hobbies include hijacking threads.

 

[Oac98]

2 hours ago, akirby said:

I believe I even said at the time they really should have built that new plant in Mexico or put the new EVs at Cuautitlan with Mach-E instead of converting Oakville.  Or completed the remodel at Flat Rock.  Especially considering how much of an unknown EV volume was back then.  But remember the original plan was 5 EVs and that’s when they decided to drop Edge and Nautilus.  Then it changed to just the two larger ones and now they’re stuck between a rock and a hard place with nothing in Oakville.  They gambled and lost.

 

This happens a lot with business decisions.  You make a decision that makes sense at the time and then things change along the way but by the time you realize it’s no longer viable you have no backup plan.  Ford gets too enamored with new shiny stuff and too often ignores the existing stuff.  Sometimes it works out great - Maverick and Bronco Sport e.g.   Even Mach-E, E Transit and Lightning have been moderately successful for what they are.  But the new EVs starting with the Rivian and VW deals and now with Oakville have been unmitigated disasters.

 

We’ll see what happens.  I think delaying the EVs is just buying time to get a new plan together for Edge and Nautilus hybrids.

 

 

I like your assessment and do I ever hope you’re right. I know you read their statement and it seems that they still plan to go all EV at Oakville if it even happens at this point. Edge Nautilus Hybrids are what should’ve been placed there. How many more times are these guys gonna switch up plans? This is ridiculous now. Makes me wonder if building Blueovalcity was even required. Unless something changes it seems like they will have overcapacity problems. 

[akirby]

1 minute ago, Oac98 said:

I like your assessment and do I ever hope you’re right. I know you read their statement and it seems that they still plan to go all EV at Oakville if it even happens at this point. Edge Nautilus Hybrids are what should’ve been placed there. How many more times are these guys gonna switch up plans? This is ridiculous now. Makes me wonder if building Blueovalcity was even required. Unless something changes it seems like they will have overcapacity problems. 

Working in corporate America for almost 38 years you learn to read between the lines and understand how things work.  IF they’re working on a plan to bring Edge and Nautilus back it’s not far enough along to announce yet.  And they may truly have not yet decided what to do.  Announcing this delay essentially buys them time to figure out what they want to do.  I’m sure a lot of the remodeling is needed regardless of what they decide to do so that will continue to some point.

[Oac98]

I agree, they are buying time that’s forsure. Carry on with the retooling and reconstruction of the plant and then take it from there. They’re still working away I seen a big freight helicopter there and it was bringing in structural beams. If ford had no intention to do anything there then it would be pointless to upgrade the site. 

[Dequindre]

8 hours ago, Oac98 said:

I agree, they are buying time that’s forsure. Carry on with the retooling and reconstruction of the plant and then take it from there. They’re still working away I seen a big freight helicopter there and it was bringing in structural beams. If ford had no intention to do anything there then it would be pointless to upgrade the site. 

It may be hard to tell from your vantagepoint, but are these general structural changes to the plant that could benefit any future product lines? In other words, maybe Ford is proceeding with necessary changes to the building to get it up to modern spec without installation specific tooling for the 3-row EVs. 

[Oac98]

18 hours ago, Dequindre said:

It may be hard to tell from your vantagepoint, but are these general structural changes to the plant that could benefit any future product lines? In other words, maybe Ford is proceeding with necessary changes to the building to get it up to modern spec without installation specific tooling for the 3-row EVs. 

That seems to be the plan, even in my area in the body shops they’ve made structural improvements and have ran electrical conduits. There are huge spools of wiring lying around and the contractors are there business as usual doing prep work.

[Oac98]

On 4/5/2024 at 12:03 PM, akirby said:

Working in corporate America for almost 38 years you learn to read between the lines and understand how things work.  IF they’re working on a plan to bring Edge and Nautilus back it’s not far enough along to announce yet.  And they may truly have not yet decided what to do.  Announcing this delay essentially buys them time to figure out what they want to do.  I’m sure a lot of the remodeling is needed regardless of what they decide to do so that will continue to some point.

At this point anything can happen in regards to this project. I agree that it should’ve just been a new Edge/Nautilus redesign. I suppose Ford is playing the long game as Electric is supposedly the future.