HALEWOOD, England, Dec 1 (Reuters) – Ford Motor Co (F.N) will make investments an additional 149 million kilos ($180 million) to spice up output of electrical automobile (EV) energy items by 70% at its engine manufacturing facility in northern England because the U.S. carmaker accelerates its push to go electrical.
Electrical drive unit manufacturing capability on the Halewood plant will improve to 420,000 items a yr, from 250,000 items, beginning in 2024, the Detroit-based carmaker mentioned on Thursday.
The transfer will convey Ford’s whole funding within the combustion engine manufacturing facility’s transition to manufacturing of EV elements to 380 million kilos.
“This can be a very important and vital a part of scaling up for our transformation,” mentioned Tim Slatter, head of Ford in Britain. “This can be a actually large deal for Ford’s enterprise in Europe.”
The EV energy unit, which consists of an electrical motor and gearbox, replaces the engine and transmission of a fossil-fuel automobile.
Ford has dedicated to promoting solely totally electrical automobiles in Europe by 2030 and solely electrical industrial vans by 2035. That places it forward of the European Union’s plans to successfully ban the sale of latest fossil-fuel passenger automobiles by 2035.
Slatter mentioned Ford plans to have 9 totally electrical fashions on sale in Europe by 2024, with Halewood supplying energy items to meeting vegetation in Romania and Turkey for 5 high-volume fashions, together with an electrical model of the favored Puma SUV.
Halewood is predicted to produce 70% of the 600,000 EVs the corporate goals to promote in Europe yearly by 2026, Ford mentioned.
The newest Ford funding contains 125 million kilos within the plant itself and 24 million kilos within the improvement and testing of latest EV elements for manufacturing at Halewood.
Ford mentioned the funding will safeguard greater than 500 jobs.
The UK authorities contributed to the preliminary EV energy unit funding at Halewood, which was introduced by Ford final yr.
($1 = 0.8326 kilos)
Reporting by Nick Carey
Modifying by Edward Tobin and David Goodman
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