Ford increases investment at its UK Halewood plant to expand its electric vehicle portfolio
Ford makes a further push towards electrification and announces increased investment at its Halewood (UK) plant by £125 million (almost 145 million euros at current exchange rates) and £24 million (27.8 million euros) at the E:PRiME (Electrified Powertrain in Manufacturing Engineering) product development centre in Dunton (Essex, UK), bringing the total investment to £380 million (around 440.7 million euros). Ford UK president Tim Slatter said:
“This is a very important step for Ford towards commercialising nine electric vehicles in two years. Our UK workforce is playing a pivotal role in Ford’s all-electric future, demonstrated by Halewood’s shift to a new zero-emission powertrain, and E:PRiME’s innovation at Dunton to finalise production processes.”
The Halewood plant is part of Ford’s European electrification plan, which envisages selling only zero-emission cars by 2030, including other vehicles such as vans by 2035, and its goal of carbon neutrality. With this new push, Ford expects Halewood’s electric drive units to comprise 70% of Ford’s electric vehicles sold in Europe by 2026, supporting the company’s global plan for annual production of 2 million electric vehicles by 2026.
The investment, included in the government’s UK Export Finance support, also increases annual production to 420,000 units, used in the Ford E-Transit Custom, E-Tourneo Custom, Transit Courier, Tourneo Courier, Puma and other future products. Ford initially invested £230m, with support from the BEIS Automotive Transformation Fund, to deliver 250,000 units a year from 2024, the target year for meeting its pledge to launch seven new electric cars.
The Halewood plant will deliver the vehicles to assembly lines at Ford’s Otosan plants in Romania and Turkey, which make up a significant part of the annual value of Ford UK exports from the Merseyside plant, as well as from Dagenham.
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