American carmaker Ford plans to set up its $185mn Ford Ion Park research center in Southeast Michigan, USA, in a bid to kickstart its plans to produce Li-On and solid slate batteries for its electric vehicle (EV) line up.
The facility will employ 150 people in a space of 200,000sq ft, the company noted in a media statement on Wednesday.
Ford will continue to work with its external battery suppliers in the interim. However, the company needs to have more control in the supply chain as the global short supply of semiconductor chips continues, noted Hau Thai-Tang, product development chief.
The research center is part of a larger $22bn plan to ramp up Ford’s EV models’ lineup by 2025 and go completely electric by 2035. In late February, Ford Europe had hinted at investing $1bn in its Craiova, Romania unit to manufacture electric cars. The Romania factory’s production capacity is 300,000 cars per year.