Ford to Meet High Demand for Electric SUVs With New Canadian EV Hub
Ford is transforming its Oakville assembly plant in Ontario into an all-electric hub for vehicles and battery packs.
Ford's Oakville Assembly Plant will be gutted and the campus reinvented as one of the automaker's largest electric vehicle campuses, making EVs and the battery packs that power them at the Canadian facility. Ford will spend C$1.8 billion ($1.3 billion) to transform the current buildings, which have built the Ford Edge and Lincoln Nautilus for about 15 years, into the renamed Oakville Electric Vehicle Complex. Retooling begins in the second quarter of 2024.
A family of next-generation electric vehicles will be assembled at the Ontario facility with pre-production to begin in late 2024. The first vehicles will be on the road in 2025 and could include the Ford Explorer and Lincoln Aviator.
Ford of Canada president and CEO Bev Goodman would not say how many or which vehicles we can expect to be assembled in Oakville. Nor will she say if the plans have been downgraded from the automaker's previously announced plans to make five different EVs for Ford in Oakville.
The expectation is the plant will build electric versions of the Ford Explorer and Lincoln Aviator, whose launches have been delayed as Ford has juggled its manufacturing plans to satisfy demand for the unexpected popularity of the Mustang Mach-E. The three-row SUVs initially were slated to be built in Cuautitlan, Mexico, alongside the Mach-E, but were left without a plant when Ford needed all the Mexican plant's capacity to fill Mach-E orders. Moving the Explorer and Aviator to Oakville means they won't be on the road until 2025.
Former Lincoln president Joy Falotico, in 2021, said Lincoln would introduce four new EVs, the first to debut in 2022, to mark the brand's 100th anniversary. Lincoln plans to electrify its entire portfolio by 2030. The four EVs would come from Ford's new rear- and all-wheel-drive electric vehicle platform, meaning none would share the architecture used by the current Ford Mustang Mach-E. Lincoln currently has no pure EVs but does have plug-in hybrid versions of the Lincoln Aviator and the Lincoln Corsair.
Oakville has about 3,000 employees and while most will be furloughed in mid-2024 for the plant retooling, all should be able to return to work six months later, says Tony Savoni, Oakville plant manager. The transformation of the plant calls for consolidating three body shops into one, freeing up space to include a 407,000 square foot battery plant on the site. Ford will use cells from the BlueOval SK Battery Park in Kentucky for the packs.
With this investment, Ford says it is the first full-line automaker committed to making passenger EVs in Canada for the North American market. But it is not alone. Stellantis has pledged to make EVs at its Windsor and Brampton plants, both of which are also in Ontario.
Ford is working to scale up its EV production and increase manufacturing efficiency to reduce costs and make EVs more accessible to customers, says Dave Nowicki, director of Manufacturing Operations, Battery & Electric Vehicles for Model E.
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Oakville, and construction of the Blue Oval City complex in Tennessee to make next-generation electric trucks and battery packs, are among the latest moves by Ford to meet its goal of producing 2 million EVs a year, globally, by the end of 2026. Ford is spending $50 billion to meet this target and wants to take over as the top producer of EVs in the world. Ford is also transforming a site in Cologne, Germany, and building two battery assembly plants in Kentucky.
Alisa Priddle joined MotorTrend in 2016 as the Detroit Editor. A Canadian, she received her Bachelor of Journalism degree from Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, and has been a reporter for 40 years, most of it covering the auto industry because there is no more fascinating arena to cover. It has it all: the vehicles, the people, the plants, the competition, the drama. Alisa has had a wonderfully varied work history as a reporter for four daily newspapers including the Detroit Free Press where she was auto editor, and the Detroit News where she covered the GM and Chrysler bankruptcies, as well as auto trade publication Wards, and two enthusiast magazines: Car & Driver and now MotorTrend. At MotorTrend Alisa is a judge for the MotorTrend Car, Truck, SUV and Person of the Year. She loves seeing a new model for the first time, driving it for the first time, and grilling executives for the stories behind them. In her spare time, she loves to swim, boat, sauna, and then jump into a cold lake or pile of snow.
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