Ford Motor Co. will invest nearly $2 billion retooling a Kentucky factory to produce electric vehicles that it says will be more affordable, more profitable to build and will outcompete rival models.
The automaker’s top executive unveiled the new EV strategy at Ford’s Louisville Assembly Plant which, after producing gas-powered vehicles for 70 years, will be converted to manufacture electric vehicles.
“In our careers, as automobile people we’re lucky if we get to work on one, maybe two, projects that really change the face of our industry,” CEO Jim Farley told plant workers in Kentucky on Monday. “And I believe today is going to light the match as one of those projects for all of us here.”
The Big Detroit automakers have continued to transition from internal combustion engines to EV technology even as President Donald Trump’s administration unwinds incentives for automakers to go electric. Trump’s massive tax and spending law targets EV incentives, including the imminent removal of a credit that saves buyers up to $7,500 on a new electric car.
Yet Farley and other top executives in the auto industry say that electric vehicles are the future and there is no going back.
The first EV to be produced by the revamped Louisville production process will be a midsize, four-door electric pickup truck in 2027 for domestic and international markets, the company said Monday.
The new electric trucks will feature plenty of interior space to fit five adults and pack enough power to have a targeted 0-60 time as fast as a Mustang EcoBoost but with more downforce, Ford said
The electric trucks will be powered by lower-cost batteries made at a Ford factory in Michigan. The Detroit automaker previously announced a $3 billion investment to build the battery factory.
The automaker sees this as a “Model T moment” for its EV business — a reference to revolutionary changes on the production line led by the company’s founder, Henry Ford, when it began churning out vehicles from a factory more than a century ago. Farley said the changes will upend how electric vehicles are made in the U.S.
“It represents the most radical change on how we design and how we build vehicles at Ford since the Model T,” Farley said.
The company said it will use a universal platform and production system for its EVs, essentially the underpinning of a vehicle that can be applied across a wide range of models.
The Louisville factory — one of two Ford assembly plants in Kentucky’s largest city — will be revamped to cut production costs and make assembly time faster as it’s prepared to churn out electric vehicles.