Ford to Invest Billions in Electric Vehicles and Battery Plants

• Ford and SK Innovation are putting more than $11 billion into new EV factories.
• It is the largest manufacturing investment Ford has ever made.
• The three new factories will add nearly 11,000 jobs.

Ford just announced it is putting billions into new EV projects in what's the biggest manufacturing investment the company has made in its 116-year history. Ford is partnering with SK Innovation, and together the two companies will build a total of three new plants in two states. The $11.4 billion investment will result in two new factories in Kentucky and one in Tennessee — Ford is calling the new Tennessee plant Blue Oval City.

Blue Oval City is a $5.6 billion project, and it really is the size of a small city. It will sit on a 3,600-acre plot of land (that's nearly 6 square miles) and will create nearly 6,000 new jobs. Ford says the work done at Blue Oval City will "reimagine how vehicles and batteries are manufactured."

Ford plans on using the plant as a site for the manufacturing of an expanded line of electrified F-Series trucks, a hub for battery manufacturing, and as a supplier park. The new plant in Stanton, Tennessee, will create 6,000 new jobs and Ford says the plant will be carbon-neutral and will send zero waste to landfills once it becomes fully operational in 2025.

In Kentucky, Ford and SK Innovation, which is a South Korean battery manufacturer, are investing $5.8 billion in a dedicated battery manufacturing complex they're calling BlueOvalSK Battery Park. This site will create another 5,000 jobs and will be dedicated to supplying Ford's North American manufacturing plants with batteries for the next generation of Ford and Lincoln electric vehicles. Ford predicts the plant in Kentucky will produce 86 gigawatt hours annually. That's a lot of batteries.

The last part of this huge investment is headed to Texas. Ford will invest $90 million in job training and career-readiness initiatives. The initial investment in Texas is just part of $525 million Ford plans on investing over the next five years across the country to train technicians to be ready for the next generation of battery electric vehicles.

Edmunds says

Ford predicts that by 2030 some 40% of its cars will be electric, which means the Mach-E and the F-150 Lightning are just the start.