Ford to split battery factory in Kentucky with Nissan

Ford is continuing to scale back its electric car offensive: due to weak demand and high costs, the US car manufacturer is now apparently allowing its Japanese competitor Nissan to use Ford's battery production in Kentucky. The plant is part of a joint venture with the South Korean battery manufacturer SK On.

Ford and SK On founded their joint venture called BlueOval SK in 2022 and began building two battery factories in Glendale, Kentucky. These were to produce batteries for electric cars from Ford and its subsidiary brand Lincoln, each with an annual capacity of 43 GWh. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, both factories are complete, but one of them is currently not being used at all, and only part of the other factory is producing batteries for Ford.

The active factory will now also produce batteries for Nissan, according to the business newspaper’s insider sources. For Nissan, this offers the opportunity to manufacture batteries in the USA, and thus a quick option to reduce the risks of tariffs on imported vehicles and components.

Ford’s goal with the battery factories was actually to massively expand electromobility. The fact that the plant in Kentucky is to produce batteries not only for Ford but also for Nissan in future can be interpreted as a further sign of Ford’s current reluctance when it comes to electromobility. The company had been banking heavily on rising demand, which has so far failed to materialise. In the last quarter alone, Ford’s Model e electric car division made a loss of 850 million dollars, while electric car sales rose from 10,000 to 31,000 units. At the same time, Ford is said to have abandoned the development of a new E/E architecture.

Demand for electric vehicles has recently been declining on the US market. It is likely to come under even greater pressure in the future because the Republican party now wants to abolish the tax credit of 7,500 dollars for the purchase of an electric car, as demanded by U.S. President Donald Trump with a corresponding bill. At the same time, production costs are rising. There is also the threat of billions in losses looming due to new tariffs.

For Nissan, on the other hand, the use of the Ford plant offers a welcome opportunity. The Japanese company recorded a loss of 4.5 billion US dollars in the first quarter of 2025. It announced 20,000 job cuts and halted the construction of its own battery plant in Japan. In future, however, Nissan plans to build electric SUVs in Canton, Mississippi. Nissan had already announced in March that it would purchase batteries from SK On for these models.

Neither Ford nor the BlueOval SK joint venture officially commented on the collaboration with Nissan. SK On also left it open as to where exactly it would be producing for Nissan in future.

Other manufacturers are also drawing conclusions from the sluggish ramp-up of electromobility: General Motors recently parted with a battery plant under construction in Michigan and handed it over to its partner LG Energy Solution. Existing GM plants are operating well below capacity. Honda, on the other hand, announced that it would reduce its planned investments in electric cars and software from 61 to 43 billion euros and put the planned construction of a new plant for e-cars and batteries in Canada on hold for two years.

wsj.com