Ford Motor Company F announced on Thursday plans to source battery capacity and raw materials en route to its electric vehicle production goal of a 600,000 annual rate by 2023 and 2 million by 2026.
What Happened: As part of the plan, Ford said it will tap heavily into Tesla, Inc. TSLA battery supplier CATL.
Ningde, China-based CATL will provide full lithium-phosphate battery (LFP) packs for Ford’s Mustang Mach-E models meant for North America, starting in 2023, the U.S. automaker said. The world’s largest battery manufacturer will also supply LFP batteries for Ford’s F-150 Lightning EV, beginning in 2024.
“Ford’s EV architecture flexibility allows efficient incorporation of CATL’s prismatic LFP cell-to-pack technology, delivering incremental capacity quickly to scale and meet customer demand,” the company said in a statement.
Why It’s Important: The announcement comes amid reports that CATL is scouting for sites to set up battery manufacturing plants in Mexico at a cost of $5 billion. One of the sites the company was considering is closer to the San Jeronimo-Santa Teresa port of entry into the U.S. state of New Mexico.
Read Benzinga’s Nov. 2021 story on CATL’s rise to prominence as the second most valued company in China.
Ford also noted that its long-time supplier South Korea’s LG Energy Solutions has scaled up and doubled its capacity at its Wroclaw, Poland, facility to supply nickel-cobalt-manganese cell production for its Mustang Mach-E and E-Transit models. Another of Ford’s existing suppliers, SK, has enough installed capacity to support the scaling of Ford’s F-150 Lightning and E-Transits through late 2023, supplying both from the latter’s Atlanta and Hungary plants.
Both LFP and NCM batteries use graphite as anode, while the former uses the cheaper lithium-iron-phosphate as cathode material compared to the relatively expensive lithium-nickel-manganese-cobalt-oxide used in the latter.
Price Action: Ford closed Thursday’s session marginally lower at nearly $13, according to Benzinga Pro data.
Image and article originally from www.benzinga.com. Read the original article here.