By Keith Naughton, Gabrielle Coppola and Ed Ludlow | Bloomberg
Ford Motor Co. is investing $3.5 billion in an electric-vehicle battery plant in southwest Michigan that it will operate with technology and support from a Chinese battery maker that has stirred political controversy.
The factory near Marshall, Michigan, will employ 2,500 workers, Ford said Monday, confirming a Feb. 10 Bloomberg report. The facility is set to open in 2026 and will produce enough batteries to power 400,000 EVs a year.
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The US automaker will be contracting the battery know-how from China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd, which will help set up the plant and have staff there. Ford said it will own and operate the factory and set up a wholly-owned subsidiary to run it.
“Ford has control — control over the manufacturing, control over the production, control over the workforce,” Lisa Drake, Ford’s vice president of EV industrialization, said in a briefing with reporters. “We’re licensing that technology from CATL.”
The arrangement, aimed at securing tax benefits for the plant, has drawn criticism at a time of heightened geopolitical tension between the US and China. Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin pulled his state from consideration as a location for the factory, calling it a “Trojan horse” for the Chinese Communist Party.
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CATL staff will help with the installation of factory equipment to build the batteries, some of which will come from China, Drake said. And some of that personnel from CATL will remain at the Michigan factory permanently because “we need their help,” Drake said.
The United Auto Workers said in a statement that it expects the plant to create “good-paying union jobs.”
At a ceremony Monday in Michigan to announce the factory, Executive Chairman Bill Ford, great-grandson of founder Henry…
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