Ford EV Battery Production In Kentucky Will Begin In Q1 2025

The Ford EV battery plant and EV production site known as BlueOval City in Tennessee is one of two that are under-construction in that general area, with the other being BlueOval Battery Park in Kentucky. BlueOval City will house not only an electric vehicle manufacturing plant, but also, a battery plant operated by the joint-venture BlueOval SK, which is a collaborative effort between Ford and South Korean battery maker SK On. Trial operations at BlueOval City began this summer, but now, it seems as if BlueOval SK Battery Park will begin production a bit sooner than previously expected.

As Ford Authority reported back in August, BlueOval SK Battery Park was previously expected to come online in mid-2025, but according to the Courier Journal, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear recently announced that production is now slated to begin in Q1 of next year. Though the joint-venture is building two battery plants at the site, only one will be used for now – employing 2,500 people when it opens – while the other will remain idle amid slow demand for Ford EVs.

Many of those workers began preparing for this production start months ago after the brand new, on-site, 42,000-square-foot ECTC BlueOval SK Training Center started onboarding classes in June. Back in August, Beshear also revealed that the BlueOval SK Battery Park site won’t be unionized, despite efforts by the United Auto Workers (UAW) to organize EV battery plants operated by Ford and other automakers in the U.S.

“It is incredible to have been involved in these negotiations, to make the pitch, to have competed with other states and won,” Beshear said. “And now to see these two enormous facilities the construction almost complete on one and just spitting out the final parts of it, this game changer is here, and it’s now impacting people’s lives directly, who are able to get meaningful employment, provide more opportunities for their kids and work in an industry and in an area we know is going to be here for decades to come. We know that EVs are the future. We don’t know how quickly they’ll get here, but the future has been built in Kentucky, and we are going to be a really big part of it.”