Since the project was originally announced a couple of years ago, the under-construction Ford EV battery plant known as BlueOval Battery Park Michigan as faced its fair share of controversy, both from local residents concerned about the plant’s impact on the community and environment, as well as certain lawmakers. The latter are concerned about Ford’s decision to license technology from China-based CATL to build lithium-iron phosphate (LFP) batteries in Michigan, though it seems as if those same units won’t contain any Chinese-sourced raw materials.
“You’ll often hear people say, ‘Well, China holds 90 percent of the raw materials, or you can’t build LFP without Chinese materials,'” Lisa Drake, Vice President, Technology Platform Programs and EV Systems at Ford, told InsideEVs in a recent inverview. “I’m here to tell you that that’s not true, that you can build LFP without Chinese critical minerals. It’s very, very difficult to do, but our supply chain team at Ford went and did it.”
Those LFP batteries use a Ford-specific design, but the automaker is licensing a few things from CATL – including the manufacturing process, battery chemistry, and product design. Some employees from CATL will also travel to the BlueOval Battery Park Michigan site to train American workers on how to use the equipment at the plant and assemble the battery packs, which will be used in a variety of future low-cost electric vehicles.
Thus far, Ford has invested $3 billion into BlueOval Battery Park Michigan, which will employ 1,700 people and is slated to feature an annual output of 20 gigawatt hours when it begins production in 2026 – a bit scaled back compared to its original plan, a decision that was made amid softer demand for EVs. As for what vehicles will utilize the LFP batteries set to be built at the future site, one of them is expected to be the first model riding on Ford’s new low-cost EV platform, a mid-size pickup.
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