2023-11-27 21:42:59
The delay in the electrification of Ford Almussafes has set off all the alarms in recent days. This investment as a guarantee of a future – despite the fact that the firm continues to defend that this is part of its plans and for this it has requested aid from the second Electric and Connected Vehicle Perte (VEC) – has been blurred in the eyes of many workers at the Valencian plant, whose concern is once again maximum. However, The reality is that this blow to the Valencian industry has not been the first. Rather the latest in a chain of tough decisions by the company around the world taken in recent weeks due to the slow takeoff that the electric car is having.
Without going any further, these setbacks have been occurring, even in the heart of the firm he founded. Henry Ford more than a century ago. Last week, not in vain, the multinational decided to make a drastic cut in the productive capacity of what is going to become its first lithium-ferrophosphate (LFT) battery production factory.in the state of Michigan (USA). Specifically, the brand decided to reduce the investment allocated to this cell production plant from 3.2 billion euros to just over 1.82 billion euros. With this, the 35 gigawatt hours initially planned were reduced to 20 GWh, a third, for example, of the final capacity you have in mind Volkswagen for the gigafactory Sagunto. The explanation behind this, again, is the low penetration of electric cars today.
It has not been, however, a unique decision within the North American country. Because already in October the firm announced that it intended to cut – or, at least, delay – the almost 11,000 million euros that it had budgeted for its electrical division. Along with this message, another blow. A second battery manufacturing plantwhich he intended to install in the State of Kentucky, was also postponed.
But Ford has not only moved its chips in the United States due to the lower sales rate in electric vehicles. As I anticipated Levante-EMV This same Monday, the company has also been left without its own battery gigafactory in Turkey after the construction that the oval brand, the Korean LG and the Turkish Koç had announced in February, an infrastructure which in principle was going to have a production capacity of 25 GWh and then be able to reach 45 GWh.
The cut to the Mustang Mach-e
Although beyond the situation of the multinational’s battery factories both in Europe As in America, other restrictive decisions around electrification have also been seen in recent weeks. One of them has involved the Mustang Mach-e, the company’s first 100% electric sports SUV that is produced in Mexico. This, whose future evolution had been speculated before the delay as one of the main candidates to reach Almussafes with the electrical investment, had experienced a manufacturing boom at the beginning of the year. However, in this difficult sales context, Ford decided to reverse that decision and reduce its manufacturing.
In parallel, in the backbone of the firm’s business in Europe, such as the German plant in Cologne, the long-awaited electric Explorer has not yet seen its launch, which has been delayed a priori until the summer of 2024. The latest sample, after all, an electrification of Ford lately full of bumps and delays.
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