Ford SUV Factory Will Now Produce Smaller, Electric Vehicles

The Ford Motor Company is converting a factory that manufactured some of the company’s largest sport utility vehicles into a plant that will produce the automakers’ all-electric Focus and a new generation of smaller, alternatively powered cars. The Michigan Assembly Plant was one of the world’s most profitable plants during the SUV boom of the 1990s, producing such popular, gas-guzzling SUVs as the Expedition and Lincoln Navigator. Company executives say the $550 million plant conversion represents a major transformation for the automaker. “This is about investing in modern, efficient and flexible American manufacturing,” Alan Mulally, Ford’s president and chief executive, said in a statement. “It is about fuel economy and the electrification of vehicles.” Ford says it will introduce the all-electric Focus in 2011, and deliver four new electric vehicle models to the U.S. market by 2012.