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 scrapping plans to build batteries for those vehicles, it will shift that capacity to a new battery storage business. These storage systems, which will use cheaper LFP batteries, will be used to power data centers and help reduce demand on the power grid.
Ford says battery storage systems will begin shipping in 2027 and that the company plans to build 20 GWh of annual capacity.
Ford will invest about $2 billion in the new business over the next two years. Under the plan, Ford will reuse existing production capacity at its Kentucky plant. Ford plans to produce lithium iron phosphate batteries using technology licensed from China’s CATL, as well as battery energy storage system units and 20-foot DC container systems at this facility.
Ford will join a number of automakers active or planning to enter the battery storage space. Tesla has spent the last decade selling battery storage products and is deploying about 10 GWh every quarter. General Motors also has a set of home and commercial battery storage products.
Lisa Drake, Ford’s vice president of technology platforms and EV systems programs, said the “dominant” opportunity for the new business will be the network’s commercial customers. But data centers will be secondary, and then Ford expects to offer some home storage products, Drake said.
“It was clear when we went to market that the technology of choice for most of these customers was a prismatic LSP container system,” Drake said during a call with reporters. “And given the fact that we already had a license to manufacture this technology in the US, you combine that with our manufacturing experience of over a century of high-scale production, it made a lot of sense as a natural neighborhood 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, remains on track, the company said. These LFP batteries, which also use CATL technology, will be used in Ford’s upcoming mid-size electric truck. However, there will be one adjustment at the Michigan plant. Ford said it will also be used to make smaller Amp-hour cells for use in home energy storage solutions.
The BlueOval Battery Park Michigan went through many iterations in its shortened lifespan. In February 2023, Ford said it would invest $3.5 billion to build the plant to make LFP batteries for its growing portfolio of electric vehicles. Ford abruptly halted construction of the plant in September 2023. Two months later, it announced a callback plan with a production capacity of 20 gigawatt hours, about 43% less than planned.
