It wouldn’t have been all that surprising for Ford to stake out a space closer to Silicon Valley to build its upcoming fully autonomous vehicle. But, to follow an old state tagline, the automaker has said yes to Michigan. In addition to an announcement that it’s making hybrid versions of two of its American icons, the Mustang pony car and the F-150 pickup, Ford issued a one-two punch of assembly-plant decisions adding up to a major commitment to its home turf.
The automaker’s first fully autonomous model, slated to arrive in 2021, and a fully electric sport-utility vehicle that will arrive by 2020 will both be built at the automaker’s Flat Rock, Michigan, plant. While that plant will continue to build the Ford Mustang and the Lincoln Continental, a $700 million expansion will accommodate the assembly of high-tech electrified and autonomous vehicles and make way for 700 new jobs.
The assembly investment follows what Ford announced in August: that, by 2021, it intends to make fully autonomous cars—no steering wheel, no pedals—for use in ride-hailing and ride-sharing operations. At the same time, Ford also announced plans to increase its presence in Silicon Valley, with two new buildings and about 130 more scientists, engineers, and researchers.
Although much of the engineering and development might happen in California, Michigan’s permissive policy with respect to autonomous-vehicle testing may have helped nudge the decision toward assembly in the Great Lakes state. Ford CEO Mark Fields described the high-volume autonomous vehicle as “all new and like nothing we have on the road today.”
The money for this investment comes directly from Ford’s decision to nix plans for a new $1.6 billion plant in San Luis Potosí, Mexico, which was expected to be the assembly facility for Focus and C-Max models bound for the U.S., among other markets. Ford confirmed that the next-generation Focus will instead be built in Hermosillo, Mexico.
UAW vice president James Settles, Jr., who likened the Flat Rock investment to an entirely new plant, said that the union knew a long time ago about Ford’s autonomous plans and made a plea to the automaker to make production in the United States. “We were not successful in getting it in writing in 2015, but we continued the negotiations,” he said.
Fields called the decision “a vote of confidence” in president-elect Trump but told Reuters that the automaker would have made the same decision with a different president-elect.
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