Amid Ford’s shift away from making large electric vehicles, the automaker is adding a new product line to find a home for its batteries.
Ford said Monday that instead of scuttling plansto buildthebatteriesfor those vehicles, it will pivot thatcapacity intoa new battery storage business. Those storage systems, which will use cheaper lithium iron phosphate batteries, will be used to power data centers and help buffer demand on the electric grid.
Ford says the battery storage systems will start shipping in 2027 and that the company plans to build 20GWh of annual capacity.
Ford will invest about $2 billion into the new business over the next two years. Under the plan, Ford will repurpose the existing manufacturing capacity at its Kentucky factory. Ford plans to produce LFP batteriesusing technology licensed from China’s CATL, as well as battery energy storage system modules and 20-foot DC container systems at this facility.
Fordwill join anumber ofautomakers that are operatingin or planning to enter the battery storage space.Teslahas spent the last decade selling battery storage productsand deploys around 10GWh every quarter.General Motors also has a set ofhomeand commercialbattery storage products.
Lisa Drake, vice president of technology platform programs and EV systems at Ford, said the“predominant” opportunity for the new business will be commercial grid customers. But data centerswill be secondary, and thenFord expects to offer some home storage products, Drake said.
“It was clear when we went out to the market that the technology of choice for most of these customers was an LFP prismatic type of container system,” Drake said during a call with reporters. “And given the fact that we already had a license to build that technology in the U.S., you couple that with our manufacturing experience over a century of high-scale manufacturing, it just made a lot of sense as a natural adjacency for us.”
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Ford’s BlueOval Battery Park Michigan in Marshall, which is slated to begin production of LFP batteries in 2026, is still on track, the company said. Those LFP batteries, which also use CATL tech, will be used in Ford’s upcoming mid-sized electric truck. There will be one adjustment at the Michigan factory, however. Ford said it will also be used to make smaller Amp-hour cells for use in “residential energy storage solutions,” suggesting that Ford’s plan will go beyond commercial customers.
The BlueOval Battery Park Michigan has gone through several iterations in its abbreviated life. In February 2023, Ford said it would invest $3.5 billion to build the factory to make LFP batteries for its growing portfolio of electric vehicles. Ford abruptly halted construction on the factory in September 2023. Two months later, it announced a dialed-back plan with a production capacity of 20 gigawatt-hours, about 43% smaller than planned.
Sean O’Kane is a reporter who has spent a decade covering the rapidly-evolving business and technology of the transportation industry, including Tesla and the many startups chasing Elon Musk. Most recently, he was a reporter at Bloomberg News where he helped break stories about some of the most notorious EV SPAC flops. He previously worked at The Verge, where he also covered consumer technology, hosted many short- and long-form videos, performed product and editorial photography, and once nearly passed out in a Red Bull Air Race plane.
You can contact or verify outreach from Sean by emailing [email protected] or via encrypted message at okane.01 on Signal.
Kirsten Korosec is a reporter and editor who has covered the future of transportation from EVs and autonomous vehicles to urban air mobility and in-car tech for more than a decade. She is currently the transportation editor at TechCrunch and co-host of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast. She is also co-founder and co-host of the podcast, “The Autonocast.” She previously wrote for Fortune, The Verge, Bloomberg, MIT Technology Review and CBS Interactive.
You can contact or verify outreach from Kirsten by emailing [email protected] or via encrypted message at kkorosec.07 on Signal.