Ford Motor Co. is investing US$3.7 billion in factories across three Midwestern states to pump out more electric vehicles and traditional gasoline-fueled autos in a sweeping expansion that will create 6,200 jobs. 

Five Ford plants will be expanded to produce more hot sellers, such as the electric F-150 Lightning pickup, and roll out new models, including a battery-powered commercial vehicle to be built at the automaker’s factory in Avon Lake, Ohio, the company said Thursday in a statement.

“We’ve embarked on what may be the most radical and exciting transition at Ford,” Kumar Galhotra, president of Ford Blue, the company’s unit producing traditional internal combustion engine vehicles, said in a briefing with reporters. 

The investment is part of Ford Chief Executive Officer Jim Farley’s strategy to produce 2 million EVs by 2026, up from 27,140 last year, and to use Ford’s lucrative gas burners as the “profit and cash engine” that drives its electric ambitions. Ford said plants in Michigan will receive a new Mustang coupe and redesigned Ranger pickup, which pump out profits along with greenhouse gases.

Ford also said Thursday that its EV sales rose 222 per cent in May to 6,254 models, as it delivered its first F-150 Lightnings and the battery powered Mustang Mach-E had its best month yet. Farley on Wednesday said he doesn’t believe Ford’s EVs will require advertising to promote them to consumers.

Ford will also convert 3,000 temporary workers at the Midwestern factories to permanent full-time status, with immediate health-care benefits. The automaker said all 6,200 of the new workers will be represented by the United Auto Workers union, which is due to negotiate a new, four-year contract with Ford next year. Ford employs about 56,000 hourly workers in the US.

More than half of the new investment dollars will go to Ford’s home state of Michigan, where the company expects to create 3,200 jobs. Ohio will get 1,800 new positions through a US$1.5 billion investment, while US$95 million will go toward the Kansas City Assembly Plant in Missouri. Galhotra said Ohio provided US$200 million in incentives and Michigan gave US$150 million to land the new investments.

The company said it will spend about US$1 billion to improve working conditions at its plants, including giving employees access to healthier foods and adding better lighting in parking lots.

Ford’s shares rose 1.9 per cent to US$13.81 at 9:43 a.m. in New York. The stock slumped 35 per cent this year through Wednesday’s close, worse than the 14 per cent slide in the S&P 500.

SOUTHERN EXPANSION

These latest investments come after Ford announced last fall that it would spend US$7 billion to build a vast EV complex in Tennessee, dubbed Blue Oval City, and two battery plants in Kentucky, employing a total of 11,000 workers. Those workers, located in right-to-work states, will only be unionized if they vote to be represented, Farley has said. 

“As far as Kentucky and Tennessee goes, the new employees at the new assembly and battery plants will be able to choose whether they organize and we absolutely respect and support the employees’ right to make that choice,” Galhotra said.

Ford’s southern expansion caused heartburn in Michigan, which has higher utility and labor costs than its neighbors. Fears of the American auto industry’s birthplace being left behind arose again last week when Stellantis NV and South Korean battery maker Samsung SDI Co. announced plans to build a US$2.5 billion battery plant in Kokomo, Indiana.

“The state’s batting average stinks,” business columnist Daniel Howes wrote in the Detroit News on May 30. “The self-proclaimed heart of the North American auto industry is losing far more tied-to-the-future investments than it’s winning.”