Ford broke ground on BlueOval City, a new electric vehicle and battery manufacturing facility, on Friday, less than a year after the company announced the project.
Less than a year after @Ford and SK On announced a $5.6B investment in W. Tennessee, construction is underway at @blueovalcity, the future home of a revolutionary all-new electric truck and advanced batteries for Ford and Lincoln vehicles. #BuiltForAmerica #BlueOvalCity pic.twitter.com/gQSvM60qgE
— Ford Motor Company (@Ford) September 23, 2022
The Tennessee Star reported that BlueOval City was chosen to be built at the Memphis Regional Megasite in West Tennessee. The 6-square-mile manufacturing campus is expected to create approximately 6,000 new jobs when production begins in 2025, according to a press release by Ford Motor Company.
Additionally, according to a press release by the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development (TNECD), the project is anticipated to generate more than 27,000 new jobs, both directly and indirectly, to support the site’s operations which are expected to result in more than $1.02 billion in annual earnings. Ford’s project is also anticipated to contribute $3.5 billion yearly to Tennessee’s gross state product, TNECD notes.
Ford calls the project its “most advanced auto production complex in the company’s 119-year history.”
Once operational, the facility will manufacture an “all-new, revolutionary electric truck and advanced batteries to power future Ford and Lincoln electric vehicles (EVs).”
“We are building the future right here in West Tennessee,” Eric Grubb, Ford’s director of new footprint construction said in a statement. “This facility is the blueprint for Ford’s future manufacturing facilities and will enable Ford to help lead America’s shift to electric vehicles.”
Mark Truby, vice president of communications for Ford, tweeted that BlueOval city is a “big step forward for a green industrial revolution in the USA and Ford’s goal to produce 2 million EVs a year by late 2026.”
Work is humming at BlueOval City in Tennessee. A big step forward for a green industrial revolution in the USA and @Ford’s goal to produce 2 million EVs a year by late 2026. pic.twitter.com/oF9hwGYWt8
— Mark Truby (@mtruby) September 23, 2022
Tennessee Governor Bill Lee also released a statement on the company’s $5.6 billion investment, saying, “Ford’s historic investment in West Tennessee is a testament to our state’s strong business climate and unmatched workforce. BlueOval City will have a transformational impact on Tennesseans and our economy, and we’re proud this global company will call Haywood County home.”
– – –
Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network.
Photo “Construction” by Ford Motor Company.
It is time for some real conspiracy theory. Ford Motor Company cannot be this stupid. There will not be sufficient electricity, electric power plants, batteries, or charging stations to make this work on a successful scale.
What return on investment does Ford Motor Company really expect from this?
What it will produce is a society where only John Kerry, AOC, Taylor Swift, politically correct celebrity influencers, and the director of cultural studies at state U travel private jet while the rest of us go without due to a supply chain that cannot deliver our wants and necessities, due to the lack of approved “clean” energy.
If liberals want us to believe in “the existential threat of climate change” they should first act like they really do.
What’s really at stake is the potential for a government that greatly controls your movement. If you want to save American freedom, save the combustion engine.
This industry is quickly learning that the only way to succeed is to become like Apple. Create something new that requires the public to upgrade annually and make perfectly good older models obsolete. Offer no reasonable explanation why and bake the failure of the new models into its design. I’ll keep the Chevy’s I have and only replace them if they fail not when.
Provided they can get the materials and if customers buy them, the grid will not handle the demand.
Ford Motor Company has demonstrated that it is a successful company—few companies, of any kind, have ever shown themselves to be as successful.
But, what if electric vehicles and electric batteries prove to be a marketing ‘bust’—then what?
Will the new FMC production plant be engineered and structured in such a way so that it can be converted back to the production of ordinary internal combustion engine vehicles if free market forces so ‘decree’?
What I fear is that FMC (which indisputably has a ‘left-of-center’ leadership team) has over-estimated the popularity and demand for electric vehicles and electric batteries, and that in time it will come to realize this—at that point, then what? Will the situation of FMC ever become so bad that FMC will just ‘walk off’ and leave its BlueOval City? Worse, what if FMC does just exactly this, but when it leaves will it leave an unimaginable environmental ‘mess’ and a wasteland for the citizens of the State of Tennessee to ‘clean up.’ Such a ‘clean up’ could cost tens, even hundreds’ of billions of dollars. What if such a ‘clean up’ cannot realistically be done? You know, some environmental wastelands, realistically, cannot be ‘cleaned up.’ Such environmental wastelands will remain wastelands forever. That is exactly what has happened at many industrial sites in the Northern ‘rust belt’ States.
What contractual agreements have been reached between FMC and the State of Tennessee concerning the financial responsibilities of FMC to the State of Tennessee in the event of such a possible environmental catastrophe? What legislation has the Tennessee General Assembly enacted, or does it have in the planning stages pre-enactment, to deal with this dreaded possible eventuality? Just asking.
So 2025 is the target date. Figure nobody will recall the rosy job forecasts by then. Is there a clawback provision to cause Ford to repay the taxpayers when (not if) they fail to fulfill their promises? Of course not. Sounds a lot like a Solendra deal.
Sorry Ford, sorry Memphis, sorry Tennessee Star, sorry Bill Lee but electric vehicles are going to be the next Ford Edsel. The mining of rare minerals like lithium for the batteries is a pollution nightmare and done by quasi-slave labor controlled by our enemies; the batteries are prone to catch on fire, the fires are polluting and hard to put out; the batteries don’t have a long life and are expensive; the batteries have to be charged by ELECTRICITY; the worn out batteries are toxic and must be disposed of (where?); the vehicles are expensive and who can afford them in this economic climate,, and so the list goes on. A green industrial revolution with EV’s is a joke.
100%, not to mention the environmental damage done in the production of said plants. Battery production leaches toxins into the atmosphere. But hey our elected “leaders” have been desperate to put something at that site for years.
Not to mention it’s SK Innovations, South Korean, calling the shots, not Ford