The announcement, made Tuesday, came as Ford outlined $1.2 billion in upcoming investment across southeast Michigan.
The biggest chunk of that is $850 million for upgrades at the Michigan Assembly Plant in Wayne where Ford will build the new Ranger pickup and Bronco sport utility vehicle. The Ranger is due in 2019; the Bronco in 2020. The plant has about 3,600 employees, but this work won’t add to that total.
Ford also said it will invest $150 million in its Romeo Engine Plant to expand production capacity. Officials said the expansion is needed in part to support the Ranger and Bronco projects. It has 500 workers there.
President Trump tweeted about Tuesday’s investment news before Ford made its official announcement.
“Big announcement by Ford today,” the President wrote. “Major investment to be made in three Michigan plants. Car companies coming back to U.S. JOBS! JOBS! JOBS!”
However, only the Romeo project came with any mention of new jobs, with Ford saying 130 jobs would be “created or retained.” A company spokesman told The Blade no new jobs would be created at Flat Rock, which is about 45 miles north of Toledo and draws workers from the Toledo area.
Tuesday’s announcement was largely confirmation of promises the company made to the United Auto Workers in 2015 contract negotiations. The contract called for $700 million to be invested at Michigan Assembly and $150 million at Romeo. The data center project in Flat Rock was not included in the contract.
For Flat Rock, the data center is Ford’s second major investment to be announced this year. In early January, Ford said it would invest $700 million to expand the Flat Rock Assembly Plant. At that time, company officials said the plant would launch three new vehicles, including a fully autonomous hybrid for ride-sharing fleets and an all-electric sport utility vehicle.
That announcement promised new jobs — 700 of them, with hiring starting in 2018. The plant has about 3,300 employees.
While Tuesday’s announcement is separate from those plans, Ford spokesman Kelli Felker said part of the reason the company decided to locate the data center at Flat Rock was to have it in close proximity to one of the factories that is going to be key in Ford’s push toward autonomous and connected vehicles. Connected vehicles are those whose computers can communicate with other vehicles, with road infrastructure, and possibly with manufacturers.
Egil Juliussen, director of research at ?IHS Automotive, said automakers have long had computer centers where they manage production and accounting and store other important data. But the complexities of autonomous and connected cars are pushing those boundaries.
“The data needs of the connected cars are basically why they need additional data centers,” Mr. Juliussen said.
“You’re going to need much more computing power. The data centers are very similar to what Amazon, Google, and those companies are doing. You’re going to transmit data to and from the car.”
That might include things related to cyber security, software updates sent over the area, and remote diagnostics that can share issues in real time, potentially alerting automakers to problems sooner.
Ford said Tuesday that it expects its future data usage to increase by 1,000 percent, driven not only by connected, autonomous, and electrified vehicles, but also from manufacturing needs. Ford also has a data center under construction near the company’s Dearborn, Mich., headquarters.
The United Auto Workers reacted to Tuesday’s news by saying the investments across Michigan will bring stronger job security and more support for the communities in which the plants are located.
“Thanks to collective bargaining, the hard-working men and women at each of these locations will now reap the full fruits of their labor,” UAW’s Ford Vice President Jimmy Settles said in a statement.
©2017 The Blade (Toledo, Ohio) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
