Ford Has an Electric-Vehicles Update. The Odds Are on a Battery Plant.

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Ford Motor

is making an electric-vehicle announcement on Monday. It’s probably a battery plant.

Sunday, before the Super Bowl,

Ford

(ticker: F) announced it had something to say about “its plan to rapidly scale EVs and make them more accessible to customers.” The company will stream an event starting at 1:45 p.m. eastern time.

The betting odds are on a new battery plant with battery leader

Contemporary Amperex Technology Co.

(300750.China), which is better known as CATL. Multiple media reports over the past few days have the pair announcing a plant to be built in Michigan.

Ford didn’t comment directly on the reports, but the company did say in July of 2022 that it was exploring batteries based on CATL’s technology and that Ford plans to localize lithium iron phosphate, or LFP, battery production in North America. 

LFP batteries are cheaper than many other EV battery because their chemistry doesn’t use elements such as cobalt or nickel. The trade-off is energy density. LFP batteries don’t go quite as far as other batteries of the same size.

A battery plant built with CATL would represent an expansion of Ford’s EV ambitions. Ford is building other battery plants with South Korean partner

SK Innovation

(096770.Korea). For CATL, it would represent expansion into North America. Most of CATL’s battery capacity is in China.

CATL is the world’s largest battery maker, with almost 40% market share, according to research firm SNE.

SK Innovation

is the fifth largest, with about 5% market share, trailing CATL,

LG Energy Solution

(373220.Korea),

BYD

(1211.Hong Kong), and

Panasonic

(6752.Japan).

Ford shares were flat in premarket trading Monday.

S&P 500
futures are up 0.1%.

Dow Jones Industrial Average
futures are down about 0.1%. So far this year, Ford stock is up about 9%. The S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average are up about 7% and 2%, respectively.

Write to Al Root at [email protected]