Ford CEO Jim Farley teased a second electric pickup truck during the launch event for the F-150 Lightning recently.
“I wish we could bring you all down there, but we’re already pushing dirt down in Blue Oval City in Tennessee for another electric pickup truck that’s different from this one,” Farley teased.
Farley referred to Ford’s $5.6 billion mega campus in Stanton, TN, which sits on a nearly 6-square-mile site. The TN campus, named Blue Oval City, is expected to generate approximately 6,000 new jobs a build electric F-Series pickups. Based on Farely’s speech, Ford is already working on a second electric pickup truck to follow the F-150 Lightning in Tennessee.
Blue Oval city will be instrumental in Ford’s goals. The legacy OEM plans to make Blue Oval City a vertically integrated ecosystem. It will include a Blue Oval battery plant build with Korean supplier SK Innovation. Ford also announced a collaboration with Redwood Materials for a closed-loop domestic battery recycling system.
The Ford CEO proudly told the crowd at the F-150 Lightning launch event that the company expanded the TN plant to produce 150,000 Lightning vehicles a year. Farley highlighted that the factory’s production efforts would also generate many jobs within the United States.
Ford aims to produce up to 600,000 electric vehicles by the end of 2023. Four years from 2022, the legacy automaker believes it will be ready to produce 2 million electric vehicles. The company also announced that it had already produced 2,000 electric F-150 Lightning pickup trucks. It plans to start Lightning deliveries next week.
“We have every intention of being the number one electric pickup maker. And then, with the huge investments — $50 billion — in EVs, battery manufacturing, our expanded lineup, which you have not seen yet, we plan to challenge Tesla and all comers to become the top EV maker in the world,” stated Farley.
Watch the Ford F-150 Lightning launch event below!
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