Ford invests $3.5 billion in EV battery plant with Chinese firm

Bloomberg

Ford Motor Co is investing $3.5 billion in an electric-vehicle (EV) battery plant in southwest 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, confirming a Bloomberg report. The facility is set to open in 2026 and will produce enough batteries to power 400,000 EVs a year.
The US 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. CATL is the world’s largest EV battery maker.
“Ford has control — control over the manufacturing, control over the production, control over the workforce,” Lisa Drake, Ford’s vice president of EV industrialisation, 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 US and China, notably uproar over a Chinese balloon that flew over America. Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin pulled his state from consideration as a location for the factory, calling it a “Trojan horse” for the Chinese Communist Party.
“It’s very regrettable that Governor Youngkin had some misinformation,” Drake said in an interview on Bloomberg
Television. “We hope through today’s media announcement that it was very clear that Ford has control of the plant.”
It comes as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken may meet with top Chinese diplomat Wang Yi at a security conference, Bloomberg reported, in what would be their first face-to-face talks since the balloon fallout.
CATL 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 CATL 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.”
At a ceremony in Michigan
to announce the factory, Executive Chairman Bill Ford,
great-grandson of founder
Henry Ford, characterised his company’s relationship with the Chinese battery maker as a way to foster American autonomy in building EV batteries, which now come primarily from Asia.
“Manufacturing these batteries in America will bring us closer to battery independence,” Ford said. CATL will “help us get up to speed so we can build these batteries ourselves.”
Drake wouldn’t say if Ford invited President Joe Biden to the ceremony. The Information reported Biden declined an invitation to join Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Bill Ford and Ford CEO Jim Farley at the announcement.
“We’ve certainly appreciated the White House and the administration’s support on the project so far,” Drake said.
CATL 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 US to produce so-called LFP batteries.