Ford
On Thursday, Ford Motor Company announced that it has secured 60 GWh of battery cells that will allow it to build 600,000 electric vehicles by late 2023. And it says it has contracts for cells that will allow it to build 1.4 million EVs by 2026, 70 percent of the 2 million EVs it plans to build globally that year.
“Ford’s new electric vehicle lineup has generated huge enthusiasm and demand, and now we are putting the industrial system in place to scale quickly,” said Jim Farley, Ford’s president and CEO and president of Ford Model e. “Our Model e team has moved with speed, focus, and creativity to secure the battery capacity and raw materials we need to deliver breakthrough EVs for millions of customers.”
The automaker says that its plan for 2023 will consist of 270,000 Mustang Mach-Es for North America, Europe, and China, 150,000 F-150 Lightnings for North America, 150,000 e-Transit vans for North America and Europe, and it will launch an additional electric SUV in Europe, building 30,000 in 2023 before ramping up production significantly in 2024.
The Blue Oval is also going to add a new battery chemistry to its EVs. The battery company CATL will make lithium iron phosphate packs for the Mustang Mach-E starting next year and for the F-150 Lightning from 2024. And in 2026 it plans to build those LFP cells in the US with a capacity of 40 GWh a year.
But it’s not moving to an all-LFP lineup; Ford will still use nickel cobalt manganese lithium-ion cells from both LG Energy Solution and SK On. Ford and SK have formed a joint venture called BlueOval SK to build three battery plants in the US, each with the capacity to make 43 GWh of cells a year.
