Ford has announced that its first-ever hybrid pickup truck – the 2021 Ford F-150 Hybrid – will be built at the historic River Rouge Complex in Dearborn, Michigan. This is hardly surprising, given that the current F-150 lineup is already built at the Dearborn Truck Plant within Ford’s sprawling, 600-acre Rouge Complex, but it serves as yet another item to cement the Rouge’s status as one of the most consequential production facilities in automotive history.
Production of the first-ever Ford F-150 Hybrid will start in the calendar year 2020, Ford says. The automaker hasn’t said whether the truck’s introduction will result in an expansion of the facility’s 7,500-strong workforce, which today produces a new F-150 every 53 seconds, nor how much additional investment will be required to enable Ford F-150 Hybrid production.
What is known is that Ford has also announced a coming expansion of its training facility in Allen Park, Michigan, just a few miles from the River Rouge Complex, at a cost of approximately $35 million. The facility’s footprint will grow by about half, to roughly 120k square feet. Additionally, the automaker says it’s opened a new, 135k-square-foot Advanced Manufacturing Center in neighboring Redford, Michigan. Whether that facility will play any part in producing systems or components for the 2021 Ford F-150 Hybrid is unknown.
“New technology and innovation continue to be hallmarks of all Ford plants – inspired by what the Rouge has been known for during the past century,” says Ford President of Global Operations Joe Hinrichs. “We will continue finding new ways to apply new technology and tools to deliver high-quality vehicles for our customers and even more meaningful work for our hourly workers.”
Ford’s Rouge Plant is the oldest continually-operating automobile plant in the United States, celebrating its 100th year of production this week. Despite its age, the facility is modern in every sense of the word, recently achieving zero-waste-to-landfill status, and the Dearborn Truck Plant features a vegetation-covered roof and rainwater-reclamation system. As the F-150 truck line switched from steel to aluminum bodies for the 2015 model year, Ford implemented a new closed-loop aluminum recycling system that helps the automaker recycle 12 to 15 million pounds of aluminum every month.
Comments
Is it know if the next gen F-150 will be a 2020 or 2021?
This was overdue for over a decade after Ford pioneered the first hybrid CUV in 2008 as the 2009 Escape Hybrid. And when will the other hybrids and plug-in CUV and SUV models arrive?
Good article, but judging by the comments once again, some people don’t f***ing pay attention.
Enough of us have pointed out from Dearborn and elsewhere, that the new P702 F-150 is a 2021 model in fall 2020. This Ford Authority article is thankfully one of the few that gets it right.
Other sites have writers who are hardly investigative and have s*** for brains, claiming the hybrid will be a 2020 model.
The only new F-Series this year is the refreshed P558 2020 Super Duty in Dec 19-Jan 2020, ahead of its 2023 redesign. Production starts on November 4.