Production Pulse: Ford Electrical Systems Engineer Discusses EV Battery Investments (Video)

Charles Poon sat down with IndustryWeek's Robert Schoenberger to discuss the automaker's plans to build a $3.5 billion plant in Michigan for lithium iron phosphate (LFP) electric vehicle batteries.

Robert Schoenberger

March 16, 2023

Charles Poon, Ford's director of Electrified Systems Engineering, holds a lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery, while Anand Sankaran, director of Ford Ion Park holds a nickel cobalt manganese (NCM) battery. Ford currently uses NCM in its electric vehicles, and will add LFP to its lineup beginning later this year to help it produce more EVs and make them more accessible and affordable for customers.

At noon (eastern) on March 16 we held live conversation between Charle Poon, Ford Motor Co.'s director of electrified systems engineering, and IndustryWeek Editor-in-Chief Robert Schoenberger. They discussed Ford's recent $3.5 billion plant announcement to make lithium iron phosphate batteries in Michigan.

Ford (and the entire auto industry) has set aggressive goals to electrify the global automotive fleet throughout the next few decades. Critical to those efforts will be lowering the cost of batteries and removing hard-to-source metals that often come from conflict zones or require mining operations that create their own environmental challenges. LFP technology could address some of those issues, but there are tradeoffs.

You can watch the live video here or on our Facebook, YouTube or LinkedIn sites.

About the Author

Robert Schoenberger

Editor-in-Chief

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/robert-schoenberger-4326b810

Bio: Robert Schoenberger has been writing about manufacturing technology in one form or another since the late 1990s. He began his career in newspapers in South Texas and has worked for The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Mississippi; The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Kentucky; and The Plain Dealer in Cleveland where he spent more than six years as the automotive reporter. In 2014, he launched Today's Motor Vehicles (now EV Manufacturing & Design), a magazine focusing on design and manufacturing topics within the automotive and commercial truck worlds. He joined IndustryWeek in late 2021.