After losing roughly $12 billion across a 10 year period, Ford decided to end its manufacturing operations in Brazil, marking the true end of an era in the South American country, though that move did prove costly at first. FoMoCo has since reinvented its business in Brazil, making it a regional engineering hub with a totally revamped vehicle lineup, and has been working to sell its manufacturing plants there. Now, one such Ford plant – located in Bahia – could be sold to Chinese EV automaker BYD, according to Reuters.
BYD has also been in negotiations with Ford to purchase the the Saarlouis Assembly plant in Germany when it ends production in 2025 – a move that won’t be blocked by the German government, yet may or may not actually happen, based on multiple recent reports. The Brazilian Ford plant remains in The Blue Oval’s possession for now, but President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is reportedly headed to China next week to promote the idea of BYD purchasing it and building vehicles in the South American country.
Last October, BYD signed a letter of intent with the Bahia government starting that it intends to invest 3 billion reais ($570 million USD) to produce electric vehicles at the Camaçari industrial park outside of the state capital, Salvador. BYD had hoped to reach an agreement to purchase the Ford plant by the end of 2022, but a final deal hasn’t yet been hammered out between the two parties.
Sources told Reuters that BYD is eager to make a deal for the Ford plant – a process that’s reportedly in the final stages – and that Brazilian officials are equally ready to welcome the company into its country, where it would reportedly retool the facility with a total capacity of around 300,000 vehicles per year.
We’ll have more on this potential deal soon, so be sure and subscribe to Ford Authority for 24/7 Ford news coverage.
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This is just another example of “corporate greed” over this countries security. Even a blind person can see how the Chinese are buying up everything they can get their hands on. If anyone, and the countries they exploit for resources, understood how their “belt road initiative” works then they would be more wary of transactions with a communist regime.
Anyone calling me out may just want to move to China.
I’ve owned Fords for over 50 years. I’m not an advocate of this “EV evolution” and will never be. If all this research and development putting in the infrastructure was put into a renewable resource like Hydrogen, and converted ICE technology this country would be better for it.
“ICE, ICE, Baby! Yea I said it!
It must get a little crowded for you living under your rock?
Mike believes a personal attack is better than debating issues or ideas. Why? Perhaps he is ignorant of facts regarding the EV pre-pollution. Here is one for you Mike….. A 300 mile range EV has between 21 and 22 tons of CO2 as delivered to the showroom floor compared to 6 tons of CO2 for a V6 ICE SUV.
The miles driven for CO2 breakeven is between 200,000 miles and 180,000 miles for an E10 fueled vehicle and over 300,000 miles when E85 is used.
Less than 5% of all vehicles manufactured have been driven more than 180,000 miles before being retired. The CO2 myth-Math is nonsense.