Ford’s manufacturing facility in Oakville, Ontario, will start its $1.3 billion ($1.8 billion CAD) transformation into an electrical car meeting plant within the second quarter of 2024. The retooling is anticipated to take six months to complete, the automaker mentioned Tuesday.
In the course of the course of, an estimated 3,000 staff will probably be furloughed, in keeping with Automotive Information. Ford, nevertheless, says it expects to convey again just about all of the manufacturing facility staff when the plant comes again on-line on the finish of 2024.
The manufacturing facility, which at the moment produces gas-powered Edge and Lincoln Nautilus crossovers, will probably be renamed the Oakville Electrical Automobile Advanced and can embrace a 407,000-square-foot battery meeting plant. The power will use battery cells produced by Ford’s BlueOvalSK Battery Park in Kentucky.
Ford has outlined an bold objective for its transformation to electric-powered autos
Ford has outlined an bold objective for its transformation to electric-powered autos. The corporate has mentioned it’ll produce 600,000 EVs yearly beginning in 2024, accelerating to 2 million a yr by the beginning of 2027, with the objective of reaching 50 p.c of whole gross sales by 2030.
The automaker has mentioned it expects to lose $3 billion this yr on its EV gross sales, however the outlook is actually bettering. Ford mentioned lately that its EV enterprise grew 41 p.c this quarter on gross sales of 10,866 items. That features 4,291 F-150 Lightning vans and a 62.7 p.c improve in E-Transit supply vans.
Gross sales of the Mustang Mach-E had been down, reflecting downtime on the manufacturing facility for adjustments designed to enhance manufacturing. Ford mentioned it’s nonetheless on observe to hit a run fee of 150,000 EVs this yr — hopefully with out any extra remembers.