Ford teaming with Chinese company on battery plant
$3.5B Michigan facility will produce enough to power 400,000 electric vehicles annually
Ford Motor Co. is investing $3.5 billion in an electric-vehicle battery plant in southwestern Michigan that it will operate with technology and support from a Chinese battery maker that has stirred political controversy.
The factory near Marshall, Michigan, will employ 2,500 workers, Ford said Monday, confirming a Bloomberg report Friday. The facility is set to open in 2026 and will produce enough batteries to power 400,000 vehicles a year.
The U.S. automaker will be contracting the battery know-how from China's Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd., which will help set up the plant and have staff there. Ford said it will own and operate the factory and set up a wholly owned subsidiary to run it.
“Ford has control — control over the manufacturing, control over the production, control over the workforce,” Lisa Drake, Ford's vice president of EV industrialization, said in a briefing with reporters. “We're licensing that technology from CATL.”
The arrangement, aimed at securing tax benefits for the plant, has drawn criticism at a time of heightened geopolitical tension between the U.S. and China. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin pulled his state from consideration as a location for the factory, calling it a “Trojan horse” for the Chinese Communist Party.
Contemporary Amperex staff will help with the installation of factory equipment to build the batteries, some of which will come from China, Drake said. And some of that personnel from Contemporary Amperex will remain at the Michigan factory permanently because “we need their help,” Drake said.
The United Auto Workers said in a statement that it expects the plant to create “good-paying union jobs.”
Contemporary Amperex, the world's largest battery maker, is providing the technology for lithium iron phosphate batteries, which are less expensive and will make Ford's EV lineup more affordable, Drake said. The plant will be the first in the U.S. to produce so-called LFP batteries.
Ford will begin offering LFP batteries in its Mustang MachE model later this year and in its F-150 Lightning plug-in pickup truck next year. Initially, those batteries will be imported from China.
Ford believes the batteries produced at the factory will quality for full production tax credits under the Inflation Reduction Act passed by Congress last year, which seeks to encourage domestic production of EVs and batteries.
However, consumers purchasing Ford EVs with the batteries produced at the Michigan plant will not be eligible for the full $7,500 tax credit, according to Marin Gjaja, head of sales and marketing for Ford's EV business.