2023-06-12 07:00:00
Bill Ford, Executive Chairman of Ford Motor Company and great-grandson of company founder Henry Ford, today opened the new Electric Vehicle Center in the presence of Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Minister President of North Rhine-Westphalia Hendrik Wüst and Cologne Mayoress Henriette Reker. In the plant in Cologne-Niehl, where Ford has been building vehicles since 1930, the new generation of electric vehicles for the European market is to be produced in the future. The manufacturer has invested two billion US dollars (1.86 billion euros) in the conversion.
“This plant will be one of the most efficient and environmentally friendly in the entire automotive industry,” said Bill Ford at the opening in Cologne. For Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz, it is “the largest investment in the history of the Cologne Ford plant. This is good news for the Cologne location, for car production in Germany and for e-mobility”.
State-of-the-art tools and a high degree of automation characterize the completely newly built production line and battery assembly at the 125-hectare site. The plant should enable the production of more than 250,000 electric vehicles per year. The first model to be built here is the battery-electric Ford Explorer, which Ford recently presented as the world’s fourth electric vehicle after the Mustang Mach-E, E-Transit and F-150 Lightning models. The upcoming electric sports crossover is also scheduled to roll off the assembly line in Cologne.
This continues the site’s success story. The plant has been at the heart of the European automotive industry since 1930, where vehicle icons such as the Ford Model A, Taunus, Capri, Granada and Fiesta were created. More than 18 million cars have been built here. The location is also considered to be one of the manufacturer’s most efficient production facilities in the world.
The linchpin of the new center for electromobility are digital technologies that connect machines, vehicles and employees. Self-learning machines, autonomous transport systems and big data management in real time should ensure the efficiency of the production processes and consistently high quality. It is also Ford’s first CO2-neutral vehicle production in the world, as 100 percent certified renewable electricity or biomethane is used. As soon as the new Cologne plant is fully operational, it will be certified as CO2-neutral by an independent party and checked regularly. The plant thus forms an important building block in the plan to make all plants, logistics and direct suppliers carbon-neutral by 2035. (awm)
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