Ford Motor said on Tuesday that starting from the next year it will retool its sport utility vehicle assembly plant in Oakville, Ontario to produce electric vehicles, with total investment of $1.3 billion.
This marks the first time a full-line automaker has announced plans to produce passenger EVs in Canada for the North American market, fulfilling a promise made to Canada’s Unifor union during contract bargaining in 2020.
Ford is taking a diverse strategic approach to transforming its industrial system to expand EV production: building new greenfield sites and also transforming existing manufacturing sites such as Oakville and Cologne, Germany.
The evolved campus will feature a new 407,000 square-foot on-site battery plant that will utilise cells and arrays from BlueOval SK Battery Park in Kentucky.
“We’re reusing all of its infrastructure, from the land itself to the buildings and even its roads to quickly prepare for a new generation of manufacturing,” said Dave Nowicki, director of EV manufacturing at the automaker.
