Ford to build next-gen EV truck at $5.6B factory in 2025

Ford said Friday that its $5.6 billion BlueOval City complex outside of Memphis, Tennessee will include a truck plant capable of producing 500,000 electric vehicles a year.

The first vehicle to come off the line will be a next-gen electric truck, code named Project T3, in 2025.

Construction at BlueOval City, the epicenter for its future EV and battery cell manufacturing and a key component toward its goal to sell 2 million EVs annually by late 2026, began last fall.

“BlueOval City is the blueprint for Ford’s electric future around the world,” Bill Ford, Ford’s executive chair, said in a statement. “We will build revolutionary electric vehicles at an advanced manufacturing site that works in harmony with the planet, aligning business growth and innovation with environmental progress.”

The T3, which Ford says stands for Trust the Truck, will be a clean sheet design, unlike its current EV truck, the F-150 Lightning. The T3 will be a “software-defined” vehicle capable of over-the-air updates, the company said.

The automaker is developing its second-generation EV truck alongside the all-new assembly plant in an effort to increase operating efficiencies, an area where Ford has struggled.

The general assembly footprint will be 30% smaller than traditional plants while delivering higher production capacity, the company said. The plant will also use carbon-free electricity from the day it opens. Ford will use recovered energy from the site’s utility infrastructure and geothermal system to provide carbon-free heat for the assembly plant, a decision that the company said will save about 300 million cubic feet of natural gas typically needed each year to heat similarly sized vehicle assembly plants.

Other energy and water saving technologies will be used on the 3,600-acre campus, such as a zero-waste-to-landfill site designed to use no fresh water for its assembly processes.