Ford is Investing $1.8 Billion to Prepare its Oakville Factory for the Production of EVs

• Ford will manufacture electric vehicles and their batteries in Ontario.

• Retooling will begin in the second half of 2024, with production starting in 2025.

• Battery packs will be assembled in Oakville from cells produced in Kentucky.

Ford has announced it will remodel its Oakville production facility in Ontario in order to produce electric vehicles there starting in 2025.

The current factory will receive $1.8 billion in investment that will allow it to install new tooling and modernize its facilities ahead of the arrival of EVs on its production line, which builds the Ford Edge and Lincoln Nautilus at the moment.

While a new 407,000-square-foot battery plant will be installed on the 487-acre lot, no other new buildings will need to be built in order to reach the undisclosed EV production rate.

This might be why the delay between the start of the retooling and the beginning of production will be quite short.

The new battery plant will manufacture the packs that will be installed in the vehicles, but not the cells that will go in each battery.

This is because Ford will produce these cells at its BlueOval SK battery park in Kentucky and ship them up to Ontario for assembly.

Once the modernization work is completed, the Oakville assembly complex will be entirely dedicated to the production of electric vehicles, which is why its name will change to the Oakville Electric Vehicle Complex.

The company has yet to announce which models will be produced at this factory starting at the middle of the current decade, nor how many of these models are expected to be made.

The Canadian Minister of Innovation, Science, and Economic Development, as well as the Prime Minister of Ontario, have both said that this new factory will help the country and the province become a leader in terms of electrification and automotive manufacturing in the coming years, in addition to securing thousands of jobs at the plant and at its numerous suppliers.

The new Oakville EV facility will also help Ford in its goal of manufacturing 2 million electric vehicles globally by the end of 2026.