MARSHALL, MI (WKZO AM/FM) – Officials with Ford Motor Company say their BlueOval Battery Park Michigan remains on track to begin production of lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries in 2026 for Ford’s future electric vehicles.
Ford today received a revised incentive offer from the Michigan Economic Development Corporation’s Michigan Strategic Fund for the project in Marshall to match the reduced scope of the project announced last November, reducing the value of that package from roughly $1.035 billion to somewhere between $384 million and $409 million.
The MEDC also revised its incentive offer for another job-creation and investment initiative spanning several Ford facilities in Michigan. The company announced the project in June 2022 and later revised its plans with a new third crew at Michigan Assembly Plant, including some employees from the Rouge Electric Vehicle Center.
When complete, Ford says the two projects will have created or retained upwards of 5,000 jobs in Michigan, with 1,700 jobs created at the Marshall facility. The original plan called for 2,500 jobs in Marshall.
BlueOval Battery Park Michigan plans an annual LFP battery production capacity of approximately 20 gigawatt hours, with production starting in 2026. The batteries built at the facility will power Ford’s future electric vehicles.
In a news release Tuesday, Ford says construction of BlueOval Battery Park Michigan is approximately 20% complete. The main facility will be nearly 1.8 million square feet, comprising a cell plant and a pack plant. Additional support buildings will take the total operation to approximately two million square feet.
BlueOval Battery Park Michigan will span 500 acres, with another 230 acres originally set aside for Ford now available to the Marshall Area Economic Development Authority for future commercial activity.
Ford ensured that another 245 acres of the site along the Kalamazoo River would be placed in a conservation easement to be protected against industrial development and preserved for generations. Ford Philanthropy donated $100,000 to Calhoun County to develop a plan for the community to best utilize that land along the river.
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