Ford Motor Co. recently broke ground on a $5.6 billion electric vehicle (EV) manufacturing complex in western Tennessee, the largest factory project in the automaker’s 119-year history.
The site stretches 6 square miles and is three times the size of the automaker’s Rouge complex in Michigan, which the company built to make Model Ts over a century ago. By 2025, the new site, known as BlueOval City, will employ 6,000 workers building electric pickup trucks and batteries in a joint venture with SK Innovation.
Ford and SK Innovation also plan to build two battery factories in Kentucky that will employ another 5,000 workers.
The expansions will further Ford CEO Jim Farley’s goal to build 2 million EVs annually by the end of 2026.
The Detroit automaker will spend $50 billion on EVs through 2026 to accommodate expectations that battery-powered vehicles will comprise over of half the company’s sales by 2030. Ford sold 27,140 EVs in the U.S. in all of 2021.
“This facility is the blueprint for Ford’s future manufacturing facilities and will enable Ford to help lead America’s shift to electric vehicles,” Eric Grubb, Ford’s director of new footprint construction, said in a statement.
The Tennessee site represents the first all-new assembly plant for Ford since 1969. The company will build power packs for Ford and Lincoln models in the battery factory.
Construction crews began erecting the steel framing of the battery plant earlier this month and will start setting structural beams on the assembly plant in October, according to Donna Langford, Ford’s project supervisor.
