Ford to invest £230 million to build electric car parts in the UK

Production of power units in Halewood is expected to begin in mid-2024. The production capacity is planned to be around 250,000 units a year. The company says that the investment – which is subject to and includes U.K Government support through its Automotive Transformation Fund – will help safeguard the Ford jobs at Halewood. “This is an important step, marking Ford’s first in-house investment in all-electric vehicle component manufacturing in Europe. It strengthens further our ability to deliver 100 percent of Ford passenger vehicles in Europe being all-electric and two-thirds of our commercial vehicle sales being all-electric or plug-in hybrid by 2030,” says Stuart Rowley, president, Ford of Europe in a press release. The power unit is the complete all-electric assembly that replaces the engine and transmission in a conventional petrol or diesel engine vehicle. The Ford Halewood transmission facility was chosen to supply the power units given its record on quality, competitiveness and the strong skills base. Halewood currently builds transmissions for a number of Ford passenger and commercial vehicles and exports 100 percent of its production. Before being taken back completely into Ford ownership earlier this year, Halewood had been part of Getrag Ford Transmissions, the transmission manufacturing joint venture co-owned by Ford and Magna. Ford goes all-in on electrification in Europe Spearheading Ford’s advance into an all-electric future is a new USD 1 billion investment to modernise its vehicle assembly facility in Cologne, Germany, as previously reported by Evertiq. That investment will transform the existing vehicle assembly operations into the Ford Cologne Electrification Center for the manufacture of electric vehicles, Ford’s first such facility in Europe. The first European-built, volume all-electric Ford passenger vehicle will roll off Cologne’s production line in 2023.