Ford funded nearly $1.3 billion to create an E.V. manufacturing seat in Canada

April 12, 2023: Ford Motor is investing 1.8 billion Canadian dollars in its Oakville Assembly Plant in Canada, transactional the facility into a recent electric vehicle hub, the automaker said Tuesday.

The plant renamed the Oakville Electric Vehicle Complex, will build the company’s next-generation E.V.s, expected to arrive on the market around mid-decade. Ford state that the retooling is expected to take six months and start in the second quarter of the upcoming year.

“We’re reusing every its infrastructure, from the land itself to the buildings, to prepare for a recent generation of manufacturing quickly,” stated Dave Nowicki, director of E.V. manufacturing at the automaker, in a media call.

Ford refused to disclose the plant’s expected production capacity or how many E.V. models the retooled facility will build. When the automaker initially dealt with the investment agreement with Canadian auto union Unifor in 2020, the plant anticipated producing five E.V. models. However, according to Automotive News, those plans may have been scaled back to two vehicles.

Ford said the changes to the Oakville complex would include combining three body shops into one and adding battery pack assembly. The facility will utilise cells from a battery plant presently under construction in Kentucky.

The Oakville complex will be the firm’s first time completely retooling a North American facility is gaining gas-powered vehicles into one that manufactures E.V.s. It is rolled parts of plants, built onto existing plants or announced the recent production facilities for E.V.s.

The Oakville plant will build the gas-powered Ford Edge and Lincoln Nautilus crossovers up from the plant’s downtime next year. After completing the investment, a company spokesman refused to disclose its production areas for those vehicles.

The investment is the area of Ford’s plan to have a display capacity for 2 million E.V.s internationally by the end of 2026.