Ford’s Blue Oval Projects In Tennessee, Kentucky Move Forward Despite Michigan Stoppage
Image Credit: Ford Corporate
The Center Square [By Jon Styf] –
Ford has halted construction on an electric vehicle battery plant in Michigan but construction is ongoing and not interrupted on large-scale projects in Tennessee and Kentucky.
BlueOval SK said it couldn’t comment on the Michigan plant.
“We can tell you BlueOval SK is hiring,” a company spokesperson told The Center Square. “Construction at BlueOval SK in Tennessee and Kentucky is on schedule with battery production slated to begin in 2025.”
Work on the $3.5 billion electric battery plant in Marshall, Michigan, was halted as Ford said it wasn’t confident it could “competitively operate” the plant, set to receive $1.7 billion in public subsidies.
The $5.6 billion Tennessee project where Ford will build its e-lightning electric trucks received an $884 billion incentive from the Tennessee Legislature. Several suppliers, including Magna Seating and Cosma International, are receiving $13 million in incentives from the state to build three battery component facilities in Tennessee.
Clay Bright, CEO of the Megasite Authority of Tennessee, confirmed Wednesday to The Center Square he had not heard of any shutdowns at the Tennessee site.
Ford did not respond to a request for comment on the Kentucky and Tennessee facility’s progress from The Center Square.
BlueOval SK, the joint venture between Ford Motor Co. and SK On to produce electric vehicle batteries, has also continued to make progress on its $5.8 billion electric battery plant in Glendale, Kentucky.
BlueOval SK plans to build a 2.3-square-mile campus employing 5,000 workers at two plants in Glendale.
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear visited the site in early August and saw how the company had put up 44,000 tons of steel, equal to the weight of nearly 200 Statues of Liberty.
“We are thankful to everyone at BlueOval SK and the nearly 2,600 construction workers onsite who have made significant construction progress, bringing Ford closer to its target of producing an annual run rate of 2 million electric vehicles globally by the end of 2026,” Beshear said in a statement after the visit.
The Michigan shutdown comes as the United Auto Workers strike at manufacturing facilities for the Big Three automakers. UAW leaders said Friday that progress has been made with Ford despite heightened efforts against General Motors and Stellantis.
Note: The Center Square reporter Scott McClallen and contributor Steve Bittenbender contributed to this report.
About the Author: Jon Styf, The Center Square Staff Reporter – Jon Styf is an award-winning editor and reporter who has worked in Illinois, Texas, Wisconsin, Florida and Michigan in local newsrooms over the past 20 years, working for Shaw Media, Hearst and several other companies. Follow Jon on Twitter @JonStyf.
There’s gonna be egg on somebody’s face soon. EVs arnt selling and can’t touch a gas power car. It is a government sponsored {Obiden} scam.
Exactly my first thought. EVs are an impractical, glitterattii fad.
The batteries they actually require don’t exist and neither does the electricity and all the charging stations required even if a safe, economical and sufficiently high capacity battery could be recharged fast enough, never mind the current brown outs and power grid failures.
How much electricity would it take to replace the 369 million gallons of gasoilne consumed in America per day?
What kind of battery could possibly separate that amount of potnetial energy between two poles vs all those little carbon-carbon-hydrogen bonds in gasoline that won’t do a thing without oxygen?
The EV mentality is the same as those who think we don’t need farmers because we buy food in a grocery store : that the electric outlet has no emissions.
Somebody might convince EV crowd that the elctric companies are behind all this in order to ban abortion or protect gun rights, butreasonable arguments have proven useless.
Tennessee is going to wind up with a major, abandoned Ford production facility and a gutted out community of unemployed workers all at state expense : another Detroit or Chicago and guaranteed EO hires.
Well said Sakovkt.
Time to advance this story…
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/01/ford-slashes-production-electric-f-150s-focuses-resources/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=ford-slashes-production-electric-f-150s-focuses-resources