Ford, a century after it launched the modern automotive era, has given up on its early ambitions to charge into the electrified future.
The company announced that it will delete nearly $20 billion in book value to extricate itself from its EV investments, an eye-popping loss that amounts to one of the biggest corporate impairments ever.The company, of course, views it differently: The move is a “decisive redeployment of capital,” it said on Monday, as it rolled out a string of related strategic changes alongside the write-down.
The pivot hits particularly hard in the southeastern Battery Belt, where Ford had invested in multibillion-dollar BlueOval SK plants to produce batteries and electric vehicles. The EV battery facility in Glendale, Kentucky, will lay off about 1,600 employees, and the local outlet Memphis Commercial Appeal reported that a Ford factory in Tennessee will hire around 1,000 fewer workers than previously planned, now that it is making gas trucks instead of electric ones.
As Ford retreats from EVs, though, it’s enthusiastically embracing battery-making — announcing plans to repurpose the Kentucky plant to fuel its entrance into the grid storage market. It expects to spend roughly $2 billion over the next two years to launch production of lithium iron phosphate cells and package them into 20-foot containers that hold at least 5 megawatt-hours of storage capacity, equivalent to a Tesla Megapack. The plan is to ship at least 20 gigawatt-hours annually by the end of 2027. More of this article (Grist) - link - more like this (Ford) - link - more like this (EV to grid) - link
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