Ford announces it is investing $1.8 billion to prepare its Oakville, Ontario plant for the assembly of electric vehicles. To support the transition to electrification, several manufacturers have recently announced significant investments in the preparation and transformation of factories. This is the case of Ford, which has just announced that in 2024 it will invest 1.8 billion Canadian dollars in the transformation of its plant located in Oakville, Ontario.
This investment will allow Ford to increase its production of electric vehicles and thus reduce waiting times. The Oakville plant, which will be renamed the Oakville Electric Vehicle Assembly Plant, will become the first in Canada to mass-produce only electric vehicles. The transformation should extend over 6 months during which approximately 3,000 employees will be temporarily furloughed.
A new battery factory
The current 487-acre site in Oakville includes three body shops, a painted building, and an assembly building. Once the transformation is complete, the plant will include a new section of 407,000 square feet which will be dedicated to the assembly of batteries. Ford will use cells and arrays produced at its BlueOval SK battery plant in Kentucky; Oakville workers will assemble the battery packs which will then be installed in the locally built vehicles.
“Canada and the Oakville plant will play a vital role in our transformation under the Ford+ program. It will be a modern, ultra-efficient, and vertically integrated site for battery and vehicle assembly, said Jim Farley, Ford president, and CEO. I can’t wait to show the world the incredible next-generation, fully digitally connected electric vehicles that will be produced in Oakville. »
No details on the vehicles that will be assembled there
Ford did not mention which new electric vehicles would be assembled there and in what quantity. For the moment the Oakville plant is used for the production of the Ford Edge and Lincoln Nautilus.
Ford wants to produce 600,000 electric vehicles per year globally from 2024. Its goal is to increase to more than 2 million by 2027. Ford currently markets three electric models, the Ford Mustang Mach-E, F-150 Lightning, and E-Transit.
