Ford Motor Co. on Tuesday mentioned the beforehand introduced $1.3 billion transformation of its Oakville Assembly Plant for electrical car manufacturing will start within the second quarter of subsequent 12 months and take about six months to finish.
During that point a few of the 3,000 employees on the Ontario, Canada, web site might be furloughed, though the corporate expects to retain just about all the staff when the plant comes again on-line on the finish of 2024.
Ford mentioned the positioning, which at the moment builds the gasoline-powered Edge and Lincoln Nautilus crossovers, might be renamed the Oakville Electric Vehicle Complex and embody a 407,000-square-foot battery pack meeting plant. The battery facility will use cells produced in Kentucky at Ford’s BlueOval SK Battery Park three way partnership.
Officials mentioned the transformation will contain consolidating the positioning’s three physique retailers into one.
“Canada and the Oakville complex will play a vital role in our Ford+ transformation,” Ford CEO Jim Farley mentioned in a press release. “It will be a modern, super-efficient, vertically integrated site for battery and vehicle assembly.”
Executives on Tuesday declined to say what number of totally different EVs the plant will construct or what its annual manufacturing capability might be, though Bev Goodman, CEO of Ford Canada, acknowledged it might produce a number of merchandise. When the plan for the plant was introduced in 2020, Unifor’s then-president, Jerry Dias, mentioned Oakville would get 5 EVs, though forecasting agency AutoForecast Solutions has since mentioned that quantity has dropped to 2 crossovers the scale of the Explorer and Lincoln Aviator.
Ford beforehand deliberate to construct these merchandise in Mexico beginning in mid-2023 however canceled these plans to make room for added manufacturing of the Mustang Mach-E. As a part of the transfer, suppliers have been informed the crossovers can be delayed till December 2024, which strains up with the timing for Oakville.
A Ford spokesman on Tuesday mentioned pre-production of the unidentified EVs will start at Oakville by the top of 2024 with full manufacturing in early 2025.
The EVs might be constructed on Ford’s next-generation devoted battery structure, though a spokesman mentioned it is unclear which is able to come first: the Oakville merchandise or the electrical pickup that might be constructed at BlueOval City in Tennessee.
Source: www.autonews.com