The US Department of Energy plans to lend the US$9.2 billion to a joint venture between Ford Motor and South Korea’s SK to support the building of three battery plants in Kentucky and Tennessee.
Ford plans to make as many as 2 million electric vehicles by 2026, up from 132,000 it produced in 2022.
Jigar Shah, head of the Energy Department’s Loan Programs Office, said in an interview with Reuters, that its goal “is to have people choose to put these supply chains here in the United States, not in other countries, and to do them faster and more confidently here.”

Government support for the project includes:
- the loan comes from the government’s Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing (ATVM) loan program
- Ford’s cars and SUVs made with domestic batteries will also be eligible for billions of dollars in incentives embedded in the Inflation Reduction Act
- the US government will also subsidize manufacturing of batteries, and buyers could qualify for additional tax rebates of up to $7,500 per vehicle
Read more details on America’s big legislative bet on a clean economy: