President Biden has backed substantial subsidies for electric vehicles, including those made by union workers, but those measures have languished in the Senate and their prospects are uncertain.
In the meantime, much of the job growth associated with electric vehicles has taken place at non-union facilities owned by newer automakers such as Tesla, Rivian and Lucid, or US-based battery facilities wholly or partially owned by foreign companies. companies such as South Korean manufacturers SK Innovation and LG Chem.
In Thursday’s announcement, Ford noted that its new battery and vehicle manufacturing facilities in the South would create about 11,000 jobs. But those workers don’t automatically join a union, and workers in those states tend to have an uphill battle when unionizing.
For investors, however, Ford’s additional investment in electric vehicles seems welcome news as the company looks to reinvent itself amid competition from the likes of Tesla and Rivian. Ford’s stock price, which had fallen significantly this year, rose more than 2 percent on Thursday.
Ford also said Thursday it sold 6,254 electric vehicles in May, a jump of more than 200 percent from a year earlier. That number included 201 F-150 Lightnings, which the company began producing in April.
The company has about 200,000 reservations for the Lightning, which is central to its efforts to catch up with Tesla, and has stopped accepting new ones because production will take months to meet demand.
Ford indicated that truck sales would be much higher in the coming months as production increased and trucks in transit reached dealers. Ford aims to produce 150,000 Lightning trucks per year by the end of 2023.
Sales of electric vehicles – and conventional cars – have been limited by a shortage of computer chips. Ford’s total new vehicle sales in May fell 4.5 percent from a year earlier. Automotive executives are also increasingly concerned that the supply of lithium, nickel and other raw materials needed to make the batteries that power electric cars will not keep up with the growing demand for those vehicles.
Vikas Bajaj reporting contributed.
