Ford Motor Company announced that it will invest 1.8 billion Canadian dollars (approximately $1.3 billion) in its Oakville Assembly Plant in Ontario, Canada, to transform it into a new electric vehicle centre.
The plant, renamed the Oakville Electric Vehicle Complex, will produce the company’s next-generation EVs, which are slated to hit the market around the middle of the decade. According to Ford, the retooling will take six months and will begin in the second quarter of next year.
“We’re reusing all of its infrastructure, from the land itself to the buildings and even the roads, to quickly prepare for a new generation of manufacturing,” said Dave Nowicki, the automaker’s director of EV manufacturing, during a media call.
According to Ford, the Oakville facility would undergo improvements such as the consolidation of three body shops into one and the addition of battery pack assembly. Cells from a battery plant now under development in Kentucky will be used at the site.
The Oakville complex will be the company’s first attempt to entirely retool a North American operation that previously produced gas-powered vehicles into one that produces EVs. It has already retooled parts of plants, expanded existing operations, and announced new EV production sites.
The Oakville plant will continue to produce the gas-powered Ford Edge and Lincoln Nautilus crossovers until next year’s shutdown. A corporate spokeswoman declined to comment on the company’s plans for those vehicles after the investment is complete.
The investment is part of Ford’s aim to have 2 million EV production capacity globally by the end of 2026.
