Within 12 months of revealing to the world that Ford Motor Co. would build its biggest and most high-tech plant in 119 years, the automaker has laid almost 370,000 tons of stone, the weight of not just one Statue of Liberty — the iconic New York harbor sculpture gifted to the U.S. by France — but rather 1,600 of them, the company announced Friday.
The site, which is nearly 6 square miles, is no longer just a big vacant plot in Tennessee.
Now home to BlueOval City, so named for the Ford logo, both Ford of Dearborn and SK Innovation of South Korea are moving forward with their joint $5.6 billion investment in an assembly plant that will build the next "all-electric revolutionary" truck and batteries. It will be Ford's first major presence in the deep South, a region that is home to factories owned by Honda, Toyota, Lexus, Volkswagen, Kia, Hyundai and Tesla.
Ford CEO Jim Farley is planning to begin production at the new factory in 2025 with a goal of building 2 million electric Ford and Lincoln vehicles a year globally by the end of 2026, the company said again Friday. A year ago, the partnership revealed plans that estimated 5,800 new jobs in Kentucky.
“We are building the future right here in West Tennessee,” Eric Grubb, Ford’s director of new footprint construction, said in a statement. “This facility is the blueprint for Ford’s future manufacturing facilities and will enable Ford to help lead America’s shift to electric vehicles.”
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican, said in a statement released by Ford that BlueOval City "will have a transformational impact on Tennesseans" and the economy, far beyond the Hayward County town of Stanton.
Over the past year, Ford has talked with Tennesseans who will be affected by the project, both in person and through livestreamed discussions, Ford said.
The construction team began preparing the land in March.
So far, Ford said, crews have:
Protecting water quality in the area is a major issue for Tennesseans.
The Memphis Sands aquifer sits beneath the project site.
"In the aquifer, sheets of clay and water-saturated sands go down 3,500 vertical feet, stacked like a layered cake. But in a thin area stretched between the Mississippi and Kentucky borderlines is an absence of clay near the surface, where rainwater can infiltrate into the ground quickly and directly replenish a water source that more than a million people rely on for drinking water," said the Tennessee Lookout on Jan. 3, 2021.
"Part of this recharge zone is underneath Ford’s megasite that spans nearly 6 square miles — almost the same size as downtown Memphis," the article said.
Ford is working with the University of Tennessee to restore the stream waters flowing through the University’s Lone Oaks Farm, the company said in its news release. Ford is also investing to expand STEM education for Tennessee students in kindergarten through 12th grade so that they'll be better prepared for careers in science and technology.
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Contact Phoebe Wall Howard: 313-618-1034 or phoward@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @phoebesaid