The EV course correction continues at Ford (F) as the automaker expands production of its Super Duty pickups at a plant originally earmarked for large EV production.
Ford said it will be adding a third assembly plant for its F-Series Super Duty trucks, retooling its Oakville Assembly Complex in Ontario, Canada. Ford will spend $2.3 billion retrofitting the Oakville plant and approximately $700 million elsewhere to boost engine assembly and components for those trucks. Ford currently builds Super Duty trucks at its plants in Ohio and Kentucky.
Ford projects Oakville Assembly will come online in 2026 with the initial capacity to produce 100,000 trucks a year. Ford will hire 1,800 workers at Oakville to produce the trucks.
“Super Duty is a vital tool for businesses and people around the world and, even with our Kentucky Truck Plant and Ohio Assembly Plant running flat out, we can’t meet the demand. This move benefits our customers and supercharges our Ford Pro commercial business,” said Jim Farley, Ford CEO and president, in a statement.
Prior to Thursday’s announcement, Ford had planned to build its next-generation three-row EV SUV at Oakville, with an initial rollout for 2025, which was pushed back to 2027 in April of this year.
The EV pushback at Oakville came as Ford delayed EV production at its massive BlueOval City EV campus in Tennessee to 2026 from its initial 2025 start date.
At the time, Farley said Ford was committed to “scaling a profitable EV business, using capital wisely” to bring the market gas, hybrid, and EVs “at the right time.”
It seems Farley, who bet heavily on EVs with the automaker’s Ford+ plan revealed in early 2023, is continuing to adjust the rollout of the company’s future EVs as demand has weakened in the US.
Ford is still the No. 2 EV maker in the US and reported strong EV sales in Q2. The big question remains if Ford can make its current EVs profitable in the near term. Ford CFO John Lawler did not indicate when the company expects current-generation EVs to hit profitability metrics like variable profit or EBIT (earnings before interest and taxes) profitability, or if they were expected to hit them at all, in an interview with Yahoo Finance in June.
One important stakeholder that cheered today’s news was Unifor, the union that represents Canadian auto workers and other private-sector workers. The union was concerned over the delay at Oakville for 2027 EV production and EV production in general due to fewer workers needed for production. Unifor welcomed today’s news of the plant’s conversion to in-demand Super Duty production with a 2026 start date.
“This new retooling plan for the Oakville plant addresses our union’s concerns with Ford Motor Company’s decision to delay new vehicle production for a period that was too long, too disruptive, and too harmful to accept,” said Unifor national president Lana Payne in a statement. “Working with our local unions and company executives, we came to an agreement that will not only see our members back to work sooner, it protects our members’ jobs well into the future.”
Pras Subramanian is a reporter for Yahoo Finance covering the auto industry. You can follow him on X and on Instagram.
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