Ford to Spend $1.8B to Build EVs in Ontario Starting in 2025
About a year from now, in the spring of 2024, Ford will begin to retool and modernize its Oakville Assembly Complex in Ontario, turning it into a high-volume hub of electric vehicle manufacturing in Canada. This will require an investment of $1.8 billion.
The next-generation models that will come out of the future Oakville Electric Vehicle Complex starting in 2025 are all planned for the North American market. Their identities remain unknown, but we know that there will be a mix of Ford and Lincoln vehicles.
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Ford is keeping the promise it made to the Unifor workers as part of the new collective bargaining agreement announced in September 2020. The three-year deal will need to be renewed this fall.
The Car Guide was able to get confirmation from a Ford Canada spokesperson that production of the Ford Edge and Lincoln Nautilus in Oakville will continue until early next year and that both will return for the 2024 model year.
When up and running, the Oakville Electric Vehicle Complex will feature a new 407,000 square-foot battery plant that will utilize cells and arrays from BlueOval SK Battery Park in Kentucky. Oakville workers will take these components and assemble battery packs that will then be installed in vehicles built on-site.
Ford, which is working to significantly ramp up EV production in 2023, aims to reach a global production run rate of 2 million EVs annually by the end of 2026.