In just over a year, only one model, the Kuga, will come off the Valencian assembly lines, and as the electric vehicle requires less labor than the thermal vehicle, the workforce at the Levantine plant is expected to be reduced.
Despite the Spanish auto industry celebrating the award of the new GE-2 electric platform, which will form the basis for Ford’s electric models in Europe, the CEO,
Stuart Rowley was adamant in the video statement confirming the news: “This decision does not mean that any specific new product will be built in Europe.”
“A lot of work still needs to be done to get approval for the construction of an electric car in Valencia,” he stated, stressing that the urgent need in the short term was to “focus on production in the short term and meet the 2022 targets, which will finance the industrial transition of Almussafes ».
In just over a year, only one model, the Kuga, will come off the Valencian assembly lines, and as the electric vehicle requires less labor than the thermal vehicle, the workforce at the Levantine plant is expected to be reduced.
They are aware of UGT, the largest union center, and in their own statement point out that “it will be necessary to negotiate how and when the transformation will be carried out and how much employment will be needed in the future and how the workforce will be adjusted”.
Ford Spain Director of Manufacturing, Dionisio Campos, echoed this view: “There is still a lot of work to be done to ensure the financial viability that will allow us to produce electric vehicles based on the new GE-2 architecture. We need to define the necessary steps for an effective transition to the industrial model of the electric car.”
That Almussafes will prove to be more viable than the German factory in Saarlouis brings the latter into uncertainty. Rowley himself stressed that there are still three years of production left and that a working group has already been formed to coordinate the plant with the Saarland government and the unions to “develop future opportunities in the locality”.
For now, the immediate reaction of the labor representatives in Germany was to demonstrate outside the factory. “We will never accept this result,” said the chairman of the Saarlouis works council, Markus Thal. The process is described by parliamentarian Anke Rehlinger as “indecent and sloppy”.
Van Avia, the Valencian car cluster, Ford’s decision has been described, in the words of its president, Mónica Alegre, as “an oxygen balloon for the regional industry, which has become a reference area in the field of electric mobility, as well as a technological investment pool.
Union sources indicate that the proximity of the Volkswagen Group’s battery-gig factory in Sagunto, 62 km from Almussafes, was an element that came up repeatedly in the negotiations – a factor underlining the cluster as a differential factor. However, the first generation of batteries to come out of Sagunto in 2025 will not a priori be compatible with Ford’s GE-2 platform technology.
Source: La Verdad
I am Ida Scott, a journalist and content author with a passion for uncovering the truth. I have been writing professionally for Today Times Live since 2020 and specialize in political news. My career began when I was just 17; I had already developed a knack for research and an eye for detail which made me stand out from my peers.
