US automaker Ford increased its planned electric vehicle (EV) spending by $8bn to increase production as well as its own range of lithium-ion batteries.
Ford's EV investment increased to $30bn by 2025 from the $22bn it had previously planned by that year. By 2030, Ford expects that 40pc of its global vehicle sales volume will be all-electric models.
Projects based off this investment are already in the works with multiple EV plants underway in North America. Ford is converting its Oakville, Ontario, plant to EV production by 2026 at a cost of $1.34bn. The automaker also invested $700mn to upgrade its Rouge plant in Dearborn, Michigan, so that it could make the electric F-150 Lightning. Ford said reservations for the F-150 Lightning had reached 70,000 since it was unveiled last week.
Likewise, Ford spent $100mn to allow its Kansas City, Missouri, plant to produce the E-Transit electric van.
Part of Ford's new spending is earmarked for the development of the IonBoost family of batteries, which will use a lithium-iron-phosphate cathode, for its commercial vehicles.
Ford, alongside BMW, invested in SolidPower so that the battery developer could scale build a pilot production line of its lithium based solid-state technology at EV scale by 2022.
Ford expects its battery demand to reach 240 GWh/yr globally by 2025 with the US contributing 140 GWh/yr. One way Ford expects to meet this demand is through its joint venture with South Korean battery maker SK Innovation that will produce 60 GWh/yr by 2025 and will make the IonBoost batteries.
Other automakers are also committed to expanding their US EV infrastructure in the next few years to try and capture growing demand. General Motors is investing $27bn by 2025, while Hyundai will spend $7.4bn in the US on its EV infrastructure by that same year.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) expects that US EV stock will more than double from the 1.8mn vehicles in 2020 to 5.5mn units in 2025, eventually climbing to 15.3mn vehicles by 2030.
