Amid Ford’s shift away from making massive electrical autos, the automaker is including a brand new product line to discover a residence for its batteries.
Ford stated Monday that as a substitute of scuttling plans to construct the batteries for these autos, it should pivot that capability into a brand new battery storage enterprise. These storage techniques, which can use cheaper lithium iron phosphate batteries, will likely be used to energy information facilities and assist buffer demand on the electrical grid.
Ford says the battery storage techniques will begin delivery in 2027 and that the corporate plans to construct 20GWh of annual capability.
Ford will make investments about $2 billion into the brand new enterprise over the following two years. Beneath the plan, Ford will repurpose the present manufacturing capability at its Kentucky manufacturing facility. Ford plans to supply LFP batteries utilizing know-how licensed from China’s CATL, in addition to battery power storage system modules and 20-foot DC container techniques at this facility.
Ford will be part of a variety of automakers which can be working in or planning to enter the battery cupboard space. Tesla has spent the final decade promoting battery storage merchandise and deploys round 10GWh each quarter. Basic Motors additionally has a set of residence and business battery storage merchandise.
Lisa Drake, vp of know-how platform packages and EV techniques at Ford, stated the “predominant” alternative for the brand new enterprise will likely be business grid clients. However information facilities will likely be secondary, after which Ford expects to supply some residence storage merchandise, Drake stated.
“It was clear once we went out to the market that the know-how of alternative for many of those clients was an LFP prismatic kind of container system,” Drake stated throughout a name with reporters. “And given the truth that we already had a license to construct that know-how within the U.S., you couple that with our manufacturing expertise over a century of high-scale manufacturing, it simply made numerous sense as a pure adjacency for us.”
Ford’s BlueOval Battery Park Michigan in Marshall, which is slated to start manufacturing of LFP batteries in 2026, remains to be on monitor, the corporate stated. These LFP batteries, which additionally use CATL tech, will likely be utilized in Ford’s upcoming mid-sized electrical truck. There will likely be one adjustment on the Michigan manufacturing facility, nevertheless. Ford stated it should even be used to make smaller Amp-hour cells to be used in “residential power storage options,” suggesting that Ford’s plan will transcend business clients.
The BlueOval Battery Park Michigan has gone by a number of iterations in its abbreviated life. In February 2023, Ford stated it could make investments $3.5 billion to construct the manufacturing facility to make LFP batteries for its rising portfolio of electrical autos. Ford abruptly halted development on the manufacturing facility in September 2023. Two months later, it introduced a dialed-back plan with a manufacturing capability of 20 gigawatt-hours, about 43% smaller than deliberate.
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