Ford announces new energy plan or adopts LFP battery

Ford Motor is increasing its investment in electrification transformation. On May 27th, Ford officially announced its new energy plan, which includes an exclusive pure electric platform, a new IonBoost battery, and product plans for future Ford electric vehicles. According to the plan, Ford Motor plans to invest more than US$3 billion (equivalent to RMB 19.2 billion) in new energy vehicles by 2025; and by 2030, about 40% of its sales will come from electric vehicles. In order to achieve this goal, Ford will build 5 global new energy vehicle platforms, so that new cars in the future will share batteries, battery management systems, electric motors and gearboxes, with an expected sharing rate of up to 80%. The new new energy platform can manufacture a variety of models from trucks, pickup trucks, SUVs and MPVs, including Ford Explorer pure electric, Mustang pure electric, Ranger pure electric, Bronco pure electric and Lincoln's many pure electric models. At the same time, Ford also announced a rear-wheel drive/four-wheel drive pure electric prototype (BEVFlexibleArchitecture), and will provide support for the new generation of new energy vehicles that will arrive between now and 2030. In addition, some of Ford's pure electric vehicle models will also use the Volkswagen MEB platform. Ford plans to achieve full electric products in Europe by 2030. The first batch of models may be launched in 2023 for the European market. In terms of batteries, Ford announced the establishment of a joint venture with SKI to build a factory in the United States to produce cells and battery packs. SKI is currently the battery supplier for Ford's new electric vehicle F-150 Lightning pickup truck. In addition, Samsung SDI is also Ford's power lithium battery supplier, and it is not ruled out that Ford will deepen its cooperation in battery supply in the future. It is worth noting that Ford also disclosed relevant information about the IonBoost lithium-ion battery. It is reported that the IonBoostPro lithium iron phosphate battery (mainly used in commercial vehicles) is related to its low-cost solid-state battery plan, which means that Ford may introduce LFP batteries in the later period. Recently, Ford announced that it has participated in a new round of investment in SolidPower, a US solid-state battery start-up company, which will accelerate SolidPower's expansion of internal manufacturing capabilities and promote the mass production of its solid-state battery products. Prior to this, Ford had participated in the Series A financing of SolidPower in 2018. In October 2020, SolidPower announced the production and delivery of the first generation of 2Ah all-solid-state batteries (ASSB) with an energy density of 320Wh/kg. Under this circumstance, SolidPower's solid-state batteries will accelerate to the ground, and Ford is also expected to become its first customers. Ford CEO Jim Farley said that solid-state batteries are expected to be commercialized by 2030, and battery costs are expected to drop by 40% in the middle of the next decade.