Ford plans 4 factories for electric vehicles

Ford Motor Co. significantly increased its commitment to electric cars and trucks on Monday by announcing that it would spend billions of dollars to build three battery factories and an electric truck plant in the United States, creating 11,000 jobs over the next four years.

The company described the investment, which it said would enable it to produce more than 1 million electric vehicles a year in the second half of this decade, as the single largest in its 118-year history. All told, Ford and a South Korean supplier will spend $11.4 billion on the project.

The announcement is the latest multibillion-dollar move by an automaker to quickly move to electric vehicles and phase out gasoline-powered cars and trucks as part of the global effort to combat climate change. Transportation, chiefly cars and trucks, is responsible for about 30 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, more than the power sector.

President Joe Biden is pressing Congress and other countries to enact policies that would quickly move the world away from fossil fuels, and Ford’s announcement could influence negotiations in Washington over Biden’s climate and energy agenda. It could also become a talking point at a United Nations climate change conference that Biden and other world leaders will attend in Glasgow, Scotland, in November.

“I think the industry is on a fast road to electrification,” Ford’s executive chairman, William C. Ford Jr., said in an interview. “And those who aren’t are going to be left behind.”

Environmentalists have long criticized automakers for not responding forcefully enough to climate change and for selling large, gasoline-guzzling trucks and sport utility vehicles. But the industry has made a hard pivot to electric vehicles in recent months because of growing environmental concern — and because of the competitive threat posed by Tesla, the dominant maker of electric cars.

Ford said it would build two battery plants in Kentucky and one in Tennessee, all in a joint venture with its main battery cell supplier, SK Innovation of South Korea. In addition, the company will build an assembly plant at the Tennessee location to churn out electric pickup trucks. Ford will invest $7 billion and SK Innovation $4.4 billion, the companies said.