CASE STUDIES
Providing Insight to Inform Ford Global Battery Factories
Supporting Ford Motor Company to make important decisions about their future battery cell manufacturing facilities that will feed the 2 million EVs expected to be produced from Ford by 2026, leading to all Ford passenger vehicles to be electric by 2030.
WHO WAS THE CUSTOMER?
Ford Motor Company is an American multinational automobile manufacturer headquartered in Michigan, United States.
They have multiple global manufacturing and engineering facilities across the world, including in the UK through their Dunton, Dagenham and Halewood facilities. In 2021, Ford announced investment of at least $22bn globally in electrification through 2025, with the ambition to electrify all passenger cars by 2030, and all commercial vehicles by 2035. HSSMI has a long- standing relationship with Ford and worked closely with the team leading up to various announcements into the establishment of battery cell factories (aka gigafactories), including a site in Kentucky, a facility in Tennessee in collaboration with SK On, and another in Turkey, expected to be completed with LGES and Koç Holdings.
WHAT WAS THE BRIEF?
In order to deliver their ambitious targets for EV production, it is imperative that Ford establishes significant production capacity to manufacture battery cells for all their future electric vehicles.
At the point of the HSSMI support (2022 – 2023), Ford does not operate any of their own battery cell manufacturing facilities. For their current electric vehicles, cells are sourced from other suppliers. As Ford scale up EV production, they will bring cell production in house in partnership with world leading cell manufacturers to establish multiple global gigafactories. This being new territory for Ford, they sought support from a partner with knowledge of cell production to work alongside them in planning key elements around the planned gigafactories, including processes, equipment, labour, costs, size, utilities, etc.
WHY WERE HSSMI BROUGHT IN?
HSSMI have been working on ‘Gigafactory’ projects since 2017 when we completed the UKs first Faraday funded study into the definition of a manufacturing blueprint for a Gigafactory. Since then, we have developed specialist knowledge
of cell manufacturing processes and strategies based on a range of production volumes and with some of the world’s top cell manufacturing businesses across strategic, tactical and operational activities to support the set up and operation of Gigafactories. As such, we have developed a range of in house tools and models to help calculate site spatial requirements, costs, production throughput, waste, etc. It is for this reason, along with the fact that we have been working together since 2013, that Ford reached out to the team to garner support.
WHAT DID HSSMI DO TO DELIVER THE RESULTS?
The delivery of a high level report which articulates the approximate size and cost for the set up and operation of a potential high volume battery cell manufacturing facility. The study covered the following areas:
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- Identification of site and facility footprint requirements.
- Identification of labour and skills requirements.
- Quantification of raw materials requirements.
- Calculation of utility requirements (power, water, etc.) and Impact on location selection.
- Identification of climatic factors that Impact location assessment.
- Identification of cell manufacturing process steps and potential machine providers.
- Identification of Inbound and outbound logistics requirements and review of advantages and disadvantages.
- Review of high level timing plan to build and launch the facility from the point of site acquisition.
- Overall calculation of approximate costs and breakdown of how this compares to other Gigafactories globally.
WHAT IMPACT DID THIS MAKE?
HSSMI went on to deliver a series of studies that ultimately helped Ford to make some important decisions about the positioning of their future global battery cell manufacturing facilities. This includes 2 plants in Kentucky and 1 in Tennessee, with a combined production output of 129GWh/ year. It has also helped influence the planning around their plans to create one of Europe’s largest commercial vehicle battery production sites in Turkey in collaboration with other key partners.
FORD IN EUROPE
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- Ford to introduce three new electric passenger vehicles and four new electric commercial vehicles in Europe by 2024; plans to sell more than 600,000 electric vehicles in the region by 2026.
- EV push in Europe supports the acceleration of the Ford+ plan, and global goal of 2 million+ annual production of EVs by 2026 and 10% company adjusted EBIT margin by 2026.
- Planned production of electric vehicles in Cologne, Germany, now expected to be 1.2 million vehicles over six years, with a total product investment of $2 billion.
- Together, these initiatives will help Ford achieve zero emissions for all vehicle sales and carbon neutrality across its European footprint of facilities, logistics and suppliers by 2035.
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