Ford will continue its ramp-up to electrification with a huge £150 million investment to dramatically increase electric vehicle component production at its Halewood Plant near Liverpool.
The future of the long-established internal combustion engine plant was secured last year when Ford confirmed a £230 million investment to convert it to produce power units for future Ford electric vehicles.
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That initial investment would give the plant an annual capacity of 230,000 units. But Ford has now scaled up its commitment, investing a further £125 million in the plant and £25 million in an E:Prime product development centre at Ford’s Dunton plant.
The extra investment will give Halewood the capacity to produce a whopping capacity of 420,000 units a year – enough to power more than 70 per cent of the 600,000 EVs the brand is aiming to sell in Europe by 2026.
Electric motors from Halewood will feature in the forthcoming EV version of the Ford Puma, the E-Transit Custom, Transit Courier and Tourneo Courier vans and future product lines that will be manufactured at Ford’s plants in Romania and Turkey.
The investment includes government support from the Department for International Trade’s UK Export Finance facility, and Ford says it will safeguard the 500 jobs at Halewood.
Ford UK chairman Tim Slatter said: “This is an all-important next step for Ford towards having nine EVs on sale within two years. Our UK workforce is playing a major role in Ford’s all-electric future, demonstrated by Halewood’s pivot to a new zero-emission powertrain, and E:PriME’s innovation at Dunton in finalising the production processes.”
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