Ford Motor plans to invest 1.8 billion Canadian dollars, which is about $1.3 billion, in its Oakville Assembly Plant in Ontario, Canada, to transform it into an electric vehicle (EV) hub, the automaker announced on Tuesday.
The company aims to build its next-generation EVs at the plant, which will be renamed the Oakville Electric Vehicle Complex. The retooling process is expected to take six months, beginning in the second quarter of next year, with the first vehicles set to arrive in the market around mid-decade.
The Oakville Electric Vehicle Complex will be the first North American facility that Ford will convert from manufacturing gas-powered vehicles to EVs entirely. Ford plans to combine three body shops into one and install battery pack assembly as part of the transition. The complex will also use cells from a battery plant in Kentucky, which is currently under construction.
Ford has not revealed the expected production capacity of the retooled facility or how many EV models it will produce. In 2020, the company had announced that the plant would produce five EV models, but that plan may have been scaled back to two vehicles, according to Automotive News.
The Oakville plant will continue to produce gas-powered Ford Edge and Lincoln Nautilus crossovers until the plant’s downtime next year. The company has not disclosed any production plans for those vehicles after the investment is completed.
The investment is part of Ford’s plan to increase its production capacity for EVs to 2 million units globally by the end of 2026. “We’re reusing all of its infrastructure, from the land itself to the buildings and even its roads to quickly prepare for a new generation of manufacturing,” said Dave Nowicki, director of EV manufacturing at Ford, during a media call.
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