It wasn’t quite one year ago when Changan Ford – a 50:50 joint venture between FoMoCo and Changan Automobile in China – celebrated a big milestone when the Hangzhou plant built vehicle number 800,000 at that facility. Now, not quite a year later, the Changan Ford Hangzhou Assembly plant has reached yet another notable mark – building 900,000 vehicles. Since 2015, the plant has focused on building six mid-to-high-end models that include the Ford Edge, Ford Taurus, Ford Explorer, and Ford Edge L, to great success, as one can derive from this milestone.
Changan Ford Hangzhou has been laser-focused on improving efficiencies over the years, even completing every step of the automaking process in one facility – from stamping and welding to painting and final assembly – which isn’t incredibly common in the automotive world, where multiple plants are usually employed to complete those tasks. These efforts resulted in a 58 percent increase in output between January and August 2024, with production averaging around 10,000 units each month thus far.
Though Ford has largely given up on being a major player in the Chinese automotive market – one ripe with competition and known to be a tough nut for foreign automakers to crack – it continues to focus on using its joint ventures there to build and sell vehicles both domestically and for export. Meanwhile, Changan Ford continues to work to set up additional joint ventures in an effort to be more competitive
The Blue Oval’s recent struggles in China have been well documented, with its highly-anticipated Ford Mustang Mach-E launch there getting off to a disastrous start, prompting FoMoCo to hand off that model to Changan Ford. Ford has also pared down its Chinese lineup in recent years, though this wasn’t the only change that stemmed from CEO Jim Farley’s visit to that country – in fact, it also inspired him to create a skunkworks team tasked with developing a new, low-cost EV platform.
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