Ford is investing heavily in its Oakville, Ontario assembly plant to transform it into an EV production hub, including a battery pack assembly factory. The Canadian plant, which currently produces the Ford Edge and Lincoln Nautilus, will become an important keystone in EV production for North America.

The investment of 1,8 billion Canadian dollars (ca. €1,2 billion) will transform and retool the Oakville plant, which was built in 1953, starting in the second quarter of 2024.

Assembly lines

Along with modernizing the assembly lines, a new 37 800 m² battery plant will be built. Cells and arrays from Ford’s BlueOval SK Battery Park in Kentucky will be assembled into packs and installed into vehicles on-site.

It’s not yet clear which models from Ford will be built at the renovated Oakville factory, although Ford mentions the production of “next-generation electric vehicles beginning in 2025”.

America First

This news reconfirms Ford’s focus on its home market of North America, with Ford Europe suffering from over 10% of its staff, some 3 800 people, being laid off before 2025 because of redundant development costs with the transformation to electric mobility.

Ford has invested in the Cologne factory in Germany to transform it into an “EV excellence center”, with the VW-based electric Explorer entering production later this year. And there are plans for a battery plant in Turkey, in collaboration with LG Energy Solution.

But with European-specific models like the Fiesta, Focus, S-Max, and Galaxy disappearing, and with most of the R&D work being carried out in North America, there is simply less work to do by Ford in Europe.