Ford cuts EV battery plant plans

Ford has cut back on the size of an EV battery plant it plans to build in Marshall, Michigan because of weaker demand for EVs than expected.

A Ford spokesman stated that EV sales are “not growing at the pace that I think ourselves or the industry had expected.”

The original plan had been to build a plant capable of producing 400,000 EVs a year. Now it will build a plant capable of 230,000 EVs a year. Employment was to have totalled 2,500 people, now it will be 1,700. The plant is due to open in 2026.

Last month Ford said it was postponing $12 billion of EV investments. In September, the company said it would postpone the building of a second battery plant in Kentucky which it was to build with SK of Korea.

The company lost $3.1 billion on its EV business in the first three quarters of this year and expects to lose $4.5 billion in the full year,

873,000 EVs were sold in the US this year until the end of September representing 8% of the total US vehicle market.