Ford and Korean energy company SK Innovation on Monday announced a comprehensive investment plan for electric vehicle and battery production in the U.S.
The investment plan totals $11.4 billion and will see the construction of major industrial hubs in Kentucky and Tennessee. Both sites are scheduled to come online by 2025.
Approximately $5.6 billion will be spent on the Tennessee site, to be located in Stanton and called Blue Oval City. The site will span almost six square miles, which will make it one of the biggest auto manufacturing hubs in the world, and it will house both a vehicle plant and battery plant. It will be used to build electric next-generation F-Series pickup trucks and create around 6,000 jobs.
The remaining $5.8 billion will be spent on a site in central Kentucky and called BlueOvalSK Battery Park. Here, Ford and SK Innovation will construct two battery plants to be used to supply batteries for electric vehicles from Ford and Lincoln. Around 5,000 jobs will be created at the site which at full capacity should deliver 86 gigawatt-hours of batteries annually.
Electric Ford F-Series outline from Ford Capital Market Day presentation via Mike Levine on Twitter
All battery plants will be operated by a new joint venture between Ford and SK Innovation called BlueOvalSK.
Both sites will be carbon neutral and efforts will be made in the areas of wastewater management and reuse of materials. One of the initiatives is a collaboration between Ford and Redwood Materials, a company that specializes in battery recycling.
“This is a transformative moment where Ford will lead America’s transition to electric vehicles and usher in a new era of clean, carbon-neutral manufacturing,” Bill Ford, Ford executive chair, said in a statement.
The news comes just weeks after Ford started pre-production of its F-150 Lightning at the famous Rouge plant in Dearborn, Michigan. While this electric pickup is based on the platform of the current F-150, a platform originally designed for internal-combustion engines, the electric F-Series pickups to be built at the new Blue Oval City will be based on a dedicated EV platform announced in May as part of a $30 billion total investment in EVs running through 2025.
