Ford’s plant in Oakville, Ontario, will begin converting a $1.3 billion (CAD 1.8 billion) electric vehicle assembly plant in the second quarter of 2024. The retooling is expected to take six months to finish, the automaker said Tuesday.
And according to The New York Times, nearly 3,000 workers will be furloughed during the process Auto News. However, Ford says it expects to bring back nearly all of the plant’s workers when the plant is back in operation at the end of 2024.
The plant, which currently produces Edge and Lincoln Nautilus gas-powered crossovers, will be renamed the Oakville Electric Vehicle Complex and will house a 407,000-square-foot battery assembly plant. The facility will use battery cells produced by Ford’s BlueOvalSK Battery Park in Kentucky.
Ford has set an ambitious goal to convert it to electric cars
Ford has set an ambitious goal to convert it to electric cars. The company said that it will produce 600,000 electric vehicles annually starting in 2024, and accelerate to 2 million vehicles annually by the beginning of 2027, with the goal of achieving 50 percent of total sales by 2030.
The automaker said it expects to lose $3 billion this year on its EV sales, but the outlook is definitely improving. Ford recently said that its electric vehicle business grew 41 percent this quarter from sales of 10,866 units. This includes 4,291 F-150 Lightning trucks and a 62.7 percent increase in E-Transit delivery trucks.
Sales of the Mustang Mach-E fell, reflecting factory downtime for changes designed to improve production. Ford said it’s still on track to reach a run rate of 150,000 electric vehicles this year — and hopefully there won’t be any more recalls.