Dive Brief:

• Ford plans to produce 500,000 EV pickup trucks a year at its upcoming manufacturing facility in Stanton, Tennessee, the automaker announced last week.
• The planned plant, which the company is calling BlueOval City, will include up to 6,000 jobs on the 3,600-acre site and is on track to open in 2025.
• The "mega campus" also includes a battery manufacturing plant, which Ford says can deliver battery cells and assembly packs to the production facility in less than 30 minutes.

Dive Insight:

Ford has been hard at work this year scaling its EV production plans, beginning with plans announced in February to build a $3.5 billion EV plant in Marshall, Michigan.

And earlier this month, the company began increasing production of popular electric and hybrid models across its North American plants. This included $2 billion to increase production of its F-150 Lightning EV truck across three Michigan plants.

Now, it's gearing up to use its Tennessee plant to produce the company's second-generation electric truck, "Project T3," which President and CEO Jim Farley called a "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to revolutionize America’s truck," in a statement.

The company's publicized production plans comes only weeks after it made headlines for a sudden production halt to its first-generation electric trucks. In February, Ford paused production of its F-150 Lightning EV truck for five weeks due to a potential battery issue.

Manufacturing plans in both Tennessee and Michigan are part of Ford's goal to produce 2 million EVs a year by late 2026.

"BlueOval City is the blueprint for Ford’s electric future around the world,” said Ford executive chair Bill Ford. “We will build revolutionary electric vehicles at an advanced manufacturing site that works in harmony with the planet, aligning business growth and innovation with environmental progress.”