Ford is delaying manufacturing at certainly one of two EV battery vegetation situated on a not unusual web page in Kentucky, the Louisville Courier Magazine studies.

Bringing up lower-than-expected call for for EVs, Ford will proceed development of the 2 vegetation comprising the BlueOval SK Battery Park, a three way partnership with battery provider SK On within the state that is being financed with a part of a $9.2 billion govt mortgage. However one plant’s opening has been placed on cling.

The primary plant stays on target to open in 2025. The second one plant used to be at the beginning slated to start manufacturing in 2026, however that date is now unsure.

BlueOvalSK Battery Park – rendering, September 2021

“The primary (plant) is complete velocity forward,” Ford spokesperson T.R. Reid informed the paper. “The transition to EVs is continuous with out interruption, however it is gonna occur a bit of bit extra slowly than we at the beginning expected.”

The affected battery plant is certainly one of two mammoth production complexes introduced in 2021, in Kentucky and Tennessee, a part of an $11.4 billion funding via the automaker. The Tennessee web page, dubbed Blue Oval Town, will come with a automobile meeting plant and provider park along with its personal battery plant. Ford showed to the Courier Magazine that the Tennessee plant stays on time table to start manufacturing in 2025.

Ford in 2021 mentioned that the Blue Oval Town plant and dual Battery Park vegetation will permit a mixed annual capability of 129 gigawatt-hours of battery manufacturing for next-generation EVs. That features a new electrical pickup truck, to be assembled on the Blue Oval Town complicated, that Ford has mentioned objectives “extremely prime quantity.”

BlueOvalSK Battery Park – rendering, September 2021

CEO Jim Farley has teased this next-generation truck, which not like the present F-150 Lightning is anticipated to be constructed on a devoted EV platform, because the “Millennium Falcon of Vehicles.” He is additionally assured it is going to permit Ford to retain present truck shoppers within the face of the Tesla Cybertruck, which Farley in the past mentioned used to be “for Silicon Valley other people.”

The pickup is a part of a technology of EVs being “radically simplified” to use smaller batteries and be extra environment friendly, Ford claims.