Ford Motor Co. and South Korea-based energy company SK Innovations are investing $11.4 billion to build two new enormous manufacturing campuses for electric vehicles, creating more than 10,000 new jobs and representing Ford’s largest-ever single manufacturing investment in the company’s 118-year history.
Ford’s share of the investment will be $7 billion, Ford executives said. Ford previously announced it will spend $30 billion by 2025 on its shift to building more electric vehicles and that it expects 40% of its sales, worldwide, to be fully electric vehicles by 2030.
The two sites, one in Kentucky and one in Tennessee, will employ a total of a total of about 11,000 people, and between them, the sites will include three electric vehicle battery manufacturing plants and a factory to build electric pickup trucks.
The Tennessee site, to be called Blue Oval City — a reference to Ford’s logo — will cover 3,600 acres, three times the size of Ford’s famous River Rouge Complex in Dearborn, Michigan. It will employ 5,800 people and will include a battery manufacturing plant, battery materials recycling facilities, areas for various parts suppliers and an assembly plant for building electric F-series trucks.
Ford’s first mainstream all-electric vehicle, the Mustang Mach-E, went on sale last year, and the Ford E-Transit electric commercial van will be offered for sale later this year. The Ford F-150 Lightning, its first all-electric full-sized truck, is expected to go on sale next year.
The trucks to be built at the new location will not be F-150 Lightnings, Ford Chief Operating Officer Lisa Drake explained, but future electric F-series truck models. Ford is building the F-150 Lightning in Dearborn, and the company plans to put it on sale next year.