Ford CEO Jim Farley Says EV Battery Plants Won’t Be Mothballed: Video

Just a few years ago, many expected consumers to gravitate toward electric vehicles en masse, embracing the idea that EVs would, in fact, completely replace ICE-powered vehicles in short order. However, demand for EVs hasn’t quite grown at the rapid pace most expected – even though they are gaining market share over time. Thus, Ford has a big problem on its hands, as The Blue Oval has invested a lot of money in several new EV and EV battery plants – which it apparently won’t be giving up on.

“We have three battery plants in Kentucky and Tennessee, another one here in Michigan, and Marshall. So four plus two assembly plants dedicated to electrics,” Ford CEO Jim Farley said during a recent appearance on Bloomberg Television.

“You know, what do we do with those assets? I’m not going to go into the details, but all I’ll say is they’re some of the best factories we’ve ever built, we’ve designed them flexibly, and we’ll make the right decision for the company. We’re not going to allow these to be mothballed. And we have more decisions to make on those battery plants and assembly plants in the coming months and years with this change.”

Back in August, Farley said that Ford’s new EV plants would be repurposed, though he didn’t go into specifics at that time, either. However, there are several possibilities for that unused space – including letting other automakers utilize it, as has been rumored with Nissan and Ford’s BlueOval SK Battery Park plant, where that company may build some of its own batteries.

Additionally, Farley has mentioned the possibility of Ford building EV batteries for energy storage purposes, which seems quite feasible. Those units can be used as backups for times when the power grid is down, or even to support the large amount of power required to run artificial intelligence-related applications.