"We don't have to scale today to justify our own dedicated battery plant," Hau Thai-Tang, Ford's chief product platform and operations officer, said in an interview Monday morning. "But by 2025, as we bring on the F-150, the E-Transit and another battery electric vehicle that we've announced, we'll have enough volume in North America to justify our own plant."
The exact timing of production hinges on the EV market, consumer demand as well as R&D progress, according to Ford spokeswoman Jennifer Flake. The company, she said, "could be in a position" to be producing its own EV cells by 2025.
Ford's been cautiously adding EVs to its lineup, launching its first new all-electric car — the Mustang Mach-E — in the U.S. at the end of last year. The company expects to follow it with an all-electric Ford Transit van later this year and an EV version of the Ford F-150 pickup by mid-2022. The company has not disclosed details of another new EV mentioned by Thai-Tang.