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Ford’s Ion Park to Be Built in Romulus, Grand Opening in 2022

It’s been a while since Ford announced it too would follow the pack and go down the electrification path, but we’re yet to see anything notable happening on this front. We’ve had promises and pledges, but to date, aside from the Mach-E and (marginally) the F-150 Lightning, Ford has little to show for.
Ford Ion Park to be built in Romulus, Michigan 8 photos
Photo: Ford
Ford Ion Park to be built in Romulus, MichiganFord Ion Park to be built in Romulus, MichiganFord Ion Park to be built in Romulus, MichiganFord Ion Park to be built in Romulus, MichiganFord Ion Park to be built in Romulus, MichiganFord Ion Park to be built in Romulus, MichiganFord Ion Park to be built in Romulus, Michigan
We’ve also had promises from Ford that it will create all sorts of facilities dedicated to EVs. The last such announcement involved the so-called Ion Park, a place where the carmaker will develop and manufacture lithium-ion and solid-state battery cells.

For now, we only knew the Ion Park would be located in southeast Michigan, but this week the Blue Oval spilled the beans on the exact location. That would be Romulus, where an existing 270,000 sq.-ft. (25,000 square meters) facility will be refurbished and turned into the heart of the carmaker’s electrification efforts.

Ford set aside $100 million for the creation of the Ion Park, which should be ready sometime next year. The place will be home to up to 200 engineers, researchers, purchasing and finance experts, and it will “include world-class pilot-scale equipment for electrode, cell and array design and manufacturing engineering and innovation.”

The opening of the Ion Park and the investment made by Ford to support it are part of a larger plan it has to accelerate electrification by the middle of the decade - $30 billion have been pledged for this, and taking into account the flood of EVs coming our way, Ford estimates its electric vehicles will need 140 GWh worth of batteries in North America by 2030.

To handle the mammoth task of making them, the carmaker teamed up with SK innovation to create the U.S.-based joint-venture called BlueOvalSK. This new company should cover 60 GWh of the carmaker’s needs each year starting mid-decade.
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About the author: Daniel Patrascu
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Daniel loves writing (or so he claims), and he uses this skill to offer readers a "behind the scenes" look at the automotive industry. He also enjoys talking about space exploration and robots, because in his view the only way forward for humanity is away from this planet, in metal bodies.
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