Ford limits battery production as EV growth stalls

Ford announced a change in plans for its electric vehicle battery production. At the release of its third-quarter earnings, the company announced a delay in battery production for one of its new plants in Hardin County, Kentucky.

Initially, Ford intended to commence production at both the Kentucky 1 and Kentucky 2 plants. However, as demand fell short of Ford's predictions, production at the Kentucky 1 facility will proceed as planned in 2025, while Kentucky 2 will sit idling for a while after it's constructed.

The two Kentucky factories are the result of Ford's collaboration with the Korean battery manufacturer, SK On. Each facility boasts an impressive projected output of 43 gigawatt-hours, equivalent to about 430,000 battery packs with a 100 kilowatt-hour capacity. Ford is also hard at work constructing the Blue Oval City complex in Tennessee, which should kick off battery production in 2025.

Ford spokesperson T.R. Reid clarified, “EV sales are growing everywhere, including ours. But the pace of adoption is slower than what folks in the industry, including Ford, originally expected." It seems the grand electric dream might be taking a little longer to charge up than some had hoped.

Ford's Model e business has reported a rather staggering operating loss of $1.3 billion in the third quarter, down from the already grim $1.1 billion loss in the preceding quarter. Break it down, and that's approximately $36,000 lost on every single one of the 20,962 EVs Ford sold in Q3.

Ford isn't alone in this electric slowdown. General Motors, another titan of the automotive world, recently revised its aim to manufacture 400,000 EVs in North America by mid-2024 and postponed the debut of several electric models, including the Chevrolet Silverado EV RST, and the GMC Sierra EV.

Via