Proactive Investors - Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F) said it is investing C$1.8 billion (US$1.3 billion) to transform its Oakville Assembly Complex, located in Ontario, Canada, into a high-volume electric vehicle (EV) manufacturing hub.
The campus, which will be renamed the Oakville Electric Vehicle Complex, will begin to retool and modernize in the second quarter of 2024 to prepare for EV production beginning in 2025, Ford said in a statement.
The carmaker said the site transformation is key to its plan to reach a global production run rate of 2 million EVs annually by the end of 2026.
“Canada and the Oakville complex will play a vital role in our Ford+ transformation,” said Ford CEO Jim Farley. “It will be a modern, super-efficient, vertically integrated site for battery and vehicle assembly.”
The auto manufacturer plans to repurpose and transform existing buildings at the Oakville site into a state-of-the-art facility that leverages Ford of Canada’s workforce.
The current 487-acre site includes three body shops, a paint building, and an assembly building. The transformed campus will feature a new 407,000-square-foot on-site battery plant that will utilize cells and arrays from BlueOval SK Battery Park in Kentucky, Ford said.
“Once complete, the Oakville Electric Vehicle Complex will secure thousands of well-paying jobs for our hard-working Canadian autoworkers and boost the competitiveness of Canada's auto sector,” said François-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development of Canada.
“The partnership between Ford and Canada helps to position us as a global leader in the EV supply chain for decades to come.”
Ford is the first full-line automaker to announce plans to produce passenger EVs in Canada for the North American market, the company noted.