Ford Motor said Monday it will team up with SK Innovation in an $11.4 billion investment to build two mega-facilities for the manufacture of electric trucks and batteries.
The Detroit-headquartered auto company's slice of the investment is worth $7 billion, part of its previously announced plan to allot $30 billion for electric vehicles by 2025.
Ford's latest investment is the biggest manufacturing allocation in the car maker's 118-year-old history. One assembly plant will rise in Kentucky and the other in Tennessee.
Dubbed "The Blue Oval City," the facility will be constructed on an almost 6-square-mile site in west Tennessee and churn out next-generation battery-powered F-Series trucks and advanced batteries.
For its Korean battery partner, a "Blue Oval SK Battery Park" will also be constructed in central Kentucky that will have two battery factories to power a new breed of Ford and Lincoln electric vehicles.
Some 11,000 workers will be hired for the new projects.
Ford said Monday it now expects to have around half of its global vehicle production to be fully-electric by 2030, up from its previous estimate of 40%.
The Tennessee complex will be roughly three times the size of Ford's sprawling, century-old Rouge production facility Michigan, Lisa Drake, Ford North American Chief Operating Officer, told Reuters. Drake said there'll be more space to expand in Tennessee.
The Tennessee facility is expected to create 6,000 jobs, while the Kentucky complex is seen to produce 5,000. Ford did not disclose an opening date for the two locations.
"This is our moment - our biggest investment ever - to help build a better future for America," Ford Chief Executive Officer Jim Farley said. "We're moving to deliver breakthrough electric vehicles for the many rather than the few."
Ford also said it will allocate $525 million over the next five years on advanced job training across the U.S., starting in Texas. The money will be used to train auto technicians to support the company's coming mass production of electric vehicles.
"For us, this is a very transformative point where we will put our capital in place now in a very big way to spearhead the transition to electric vehicles," Drake said.
