Ford’s president and CEO offered an inside look at the auto company’s biggest manufacturing change since the Model T, while spotlighting a multi-billion-dollar bet on America’s supply chain.
“We’re announcing… $5 billion of new investments here in Kentucky and Michigan, to build a radically new vehicle,” Jim Farley said on FOX Business “Varney & Co.” Monday.
“And we’re going to build it completely different than Henry Ford’s moving assembly line.”
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On Monday, the Michigan-based motor company announced it would be pouring the money into 4,000 jobs at its Battery Park and Louisville, Kentucky, plants to deliver a new electric pickup truck and LFP prismatic batteries.
The “breakthrough” product, according to a press release, is the midsize four-door truck with a starting price of about $30,000.
“It’d be a lot more affordable and a lot lesser cost than an old Tesla, even, or a RAV4 hybrid imported. So we’re excited about this affordable vehicle,” Ford’s CEO said.
“Ford is the No. 1 truck hybrid maker in the U.S., best-selling vehicle in the U.S. for 47 years. The F-150 comes in a hybrid. It’s almost 30% of our customers,” Farley noted. “But for people that just commute, and they could charge at home, they don’t have to depend on chargers on the road, they only go 100 miles, 200 miles a day, an EV is actually really cheap… an EV can be a really good solution.”
The new electric truck will also be built on a newer, “better” assembly line that Ford now calls as assembly “tree.” In place of one long conveyor belt, three sub-assemblies will run down their own simultaneous productions before joining together.
“After 120 years, we’re gonna change the assembly line,” Farley said. “We’re gonna build it in three pieces, three separate parts, not one vehicle along one line. And that allows us to build it 40% faster with a lot less people and a lot less cost.”
“We didn’t want to build this in South Korea or Japan. We had to take a completely radical approach to redesign the vehicle to make it affordable and profitable here in Kentucky,” he added.
The “electric, fun-to-drive and digitally advanced” truck is set to reach consumers in 2027.
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