- Ford will create Blue Oval City, a $5.6 billion, 3600-acre campus outside Memphis, Tennessee, that includes a battery plant and will build an expanded lineup of electric F-series trucks starting in 2025.
- Ford is also building a $5.8 billion, 1500-acre battery manufacturing complex in Kentucky to produce the batteries for future Ford and Lincoln EVs starting in 2025.
- The battery plants are part of a new joint venture, still pending approval, with partner SK Innovation.
The Ford Mustang Mach-E launched earlier this year has been a strong seller so far, and the F-150 Lightning revealed this summer garnered so much interest that Ford is already preparing to double the electric truck’s production for 2024. Now Ford has announced that it will, together with energy company SK Innovation, invest $11.4 billion into its electric future, including building an all-new factory to produce the next generation of electric F-Series trucks.
John RoeCar and Driver
These future electric F-Series models will be the product of Blue Oval City, a $5.6 billion, 3600-acre campus that Ford will build in Stanton, Tennessee, outside of Memphis. Ford says Blue Oval City will be vertically integrated for building “an expanded lineup of electric F-Series vehicles,” suggesting that electric powertrains could proliferate throughout the F-Series range, including perhaps the Super Duty lineup, by the time the plant is operational in 2025. The campus will also include a battery plant built with SK Innovation, spaces for important suppliers, and recycling facilities. The new plant is expected to create around 6000 new jobs and is designed to be carbon neutral, minimize landfill waste, and make zero freshwater withdrawals for manufacturing processes by treating and recycling water on-site. Ford will also work with Redwood Materials, a battery materials company, on recycling batteries once they’ve reached the end of their life.
Ford will also build a $5.8 billion, 1500-acre battery manufacturing complex with SK Innovation in Glendale, Kentucky called BlueOvalSK Battery Park. The two plants on the site will assemble batteries for the next generation of Ford and Lincoln EVs and are expected to create 5000 jobs. The first plant will open in 2025 with the second factory starting production the following year. Ford is also investing $525 million across the United States over five years to train the next generation of automotive technicians to work on connected, electric vehicles.
Of the overall $11.4 billion investment, Ford is contributing $7 billion, the largest investment in manufacturing in the company’s history. The investments in the battery plants in Tennessee and Kentucky will, pending approvals, be made via a new joint venture between Ford and SK Innovation called BlueOvalSK. These new manufacturing sites are a major step towards Ford’s electric future, with the company predicting that 40 to 50 percent of its global vehicle output will be electric by 2030.
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