US automotive giant Ford Motor Company has unveiled its anticipated push into grid scale energy storage, revealing a new subsidiary, Ford Energy, which will make lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries.
The promise of a standalone storage business stems in part from Ford’s dramatic and painful retreat from electric vehicles (EVs) as it faced lower-than-expected sales in the United States, exacerbated by the schizophrenic nature of American policy under the second Trump administration.
Ford announced in December that it would take a massive $US19.5 billion ($A29.3 billion) hit to its profits in a pivot away from EVs that saw the company redirect its focus back to internal combustion engine (ICE) and hybrid models.
But buried deep in Ford’s surrender – in which it claimed it was only following customer demand to better drive financial growth – Ford promised it would repurpose its existing US battery manufacturing capacity to launch a new business focused on capturing the large demand for battery energy storage from data centres.
Ford also promised to invest approximately $US2 billion over the next two years to scale up the business which would manufacture 5 megawatt-hour-plus (MWh+) storage systems.
That plan has finally come to fruition this week with the launch of Ford Energy, which will build battery energy storage systems (BESS) at its battery manufacturing site in Glendale, Kentucky.
Ford Energy is targeting utilities, data centres, and large industrial and commercial customers in the United States. B
y repurposing its EV battery manufacturing capacity as production capacity for its new energy storage products, Ford expects to deploy at least 20 gigawatt-hours (GWh) annually, with first customer deliveries currently planned for late 2027.
The company’s flagship product will be the Ford Energy DC block, a standardised 20-foot containerised battery energy storage system designed around 512 Ah LFP prismatic cells.
The product will be available in two configurations – the FE-250 (two-hour system) and the FE-450 (a four-hour system), both of which will integrate the company’s advanced LFP prismatic battery technology along with liquid-cooled thermal management and battery management systems.
Ford claims that it has been working “for the better part of a year” on the foundations of Ford Energy, “securing supply chains, readying our manufacturing sites, and aligning our technology with the massive demand for domestic energy storage.”
Its batteries will be assembled in the US so as to ensure they are eligible for tax credit requirements – as well as to stave off any tantrums from the Oval Office – and are expected to fill “a gap in the market” created by “the convergence of data center growth, renewable energy integration, and grid resilience requirements”.
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