Ford has decided to convert its electric vehicle battery manufacturing capacity into a large-scale energy storage business. The move has its own name: Ford Energy, a new division with $2 billion in investment planned for the next two years and the stated objective of supplying batteries to data centers, electricity companies and large industrial consumers.
Because now. The starting point is not exactly ideal for the company. Ford’s electric division accumulated net losses of 11.1 billion dollars only in the fourth quarter of 2025, according to Reuters. For this year, the company expects to continue losing between 4,000 and 4,500 million additional dollars in its electrical and software division. “I think the customer has already spoken,” Ford CEO Jim Farley told investors.
With battery factories operating at low capacity and the electric vehicle market in the United States in free fall, especially after the elimination of the $7,500 aid last September, Ford has chosen not to dismantle that infrastructure, but to redirect it.
What is Ford Energy and how it will work. The bet is articulated around the Glendale, Kentucky, plant, which will be converted to manufacture energy storage systems at network scale. According to counted Ford late last year, the facility will produce LFP (lithium ferrophosphate) cells and storage modules. The cell technology used is licensed by the Chinese firm CATL, with whom Ford already had agreements on its line of electric vehicles.
The plan, according to the company itself, is to have initial operational capacity within 18 months and reach at least 20 GWh of annual production by the end of 2027. In parallel, the BlueOval Battery Park Michigan plant, in Marshall, will continue with its production of LFP cells for Ford’s upcoming midsize electric truck, but will also make lower amperage cells aimed at residential storage.
Lisa Drake, the board of directors who heads Ford Energy, explained that the “predominant” business opportunity will be in commercial electric grid customers, with data centers as the second priority and the residential segment as the third leg. Drake also noted that when going out to market to explore demand, it became clear that the technology preferred by customers was precisely the containerized prismatic LFP system, something that Ford could easily manufacture thanks to its licenses.
For his part, John Lawler, vice president of Ford, counted In the statement, Ford Energy’s core purpose is to “capture the growing demand for reliable energy storage that reinforces the stability and resilience of the electric grid for utilities and large consumers.”
The market you want to conquer. The explosion of artificial intelligence electricity consumption in data centers is skyrocketing on a global scale. The International Energy Agency places the demand for these centers around 945 TWh by 2030approximately 3% of global electricity consumption, with a projected growth of 15% annually. In the United States alone, according to the Battery Council International, this consumption could double to between 400 and 600 TWh on the same date.
In that scenario, large-scale energy storage becomes critical infrastructure and Ford, like many other converted manufacturersthey see a great business opportunity.
Ford is late, but he is not alone. The problem is that Tesla has a decade of advantage. Its energy storage business deployed 46.7 GWh in 2025 alone, 48% more than the previous year according to TechCrunchand was also more profitable than its own electric car division, with gross margins close to 30% compared to 15% for the automobile. General Motors has also made a move: its joint venture with LG Energy Solution has just invested $70 million to convert its Tennessee plant, south of Nashville, into the production of batteries for storage.
The transition, however, is neither easy nor cheap. Switching a factory from nickel chemistry, common in electric car batteries, to LFP can take up to 18 months and cost several hundred million dollars, according to share from Reuters. Added to this is technological dependence on China, which dominates the LFP supply chain, and 35% US tariffs on cathode and anode materials of Chinese origin.
What this means in the long term. Just like they count From the middle, although the demand for energy storage in North America is expected to almost double in five years, going from 76 to 125 GWh, that is not enough to absorb the more than 275 GWh of productive capacity that the automobile industry has installed with electric in mind. Storage alleviates the problem, but does not completely solve it.
Even so, this same reorientation is what many other car manufacturers have opted for in order to take advantage of their infrastructure and contain losses due to their electric cars, especially in the United States, which is where things are much weaker.
Cover image | Hans and ford
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