Ford Motor said on Monday that it was committed to completing and opening a battery plant in Michigan, even if Congress and President Trump make the project ineligible for tax incentives.
The $3 billion plant, in Marshall, Mich., 100 miles west of Detroit, uses battery and manufacturing technology that Ford licensed from a Chinese company, Contemporary Amperex Technology Ltd., known as CATL.
Ford decided to build the factory two years ago under the expectation that a portion of the cost would be offset by federal tax credits provided by the Inflation Reduction Act, former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s signature energy and climate change legislation.
But Republicans in Congress are working on a policy bill that could bar federal support for battery plants that use Chinese technology or materials. Mr. Trump has supported that effort and sharply criticized Democratic efforts to encourage the use and production of electric vehicles.
At a tour of the factory on Monday, Lisa Drake, Ford’s vice president for technology platform programs and E.V. systems, said the company would move ahead even if such restrictions were signed into law.
“We don’t want to back off on this facility,” Ms. Drake told reporters. “When we invest, we stick behind our investments. Ford is a company that will weather the storm until we get there.”
Separately on Monday, a senior official of the United Automobile Workers union said eliminating the tax credits related to electric vehicles would hurt manufacturing workers.
“Analysis suggests that repealing clean vehicle tax credits alone could reduce electric vehicle (E.V.) sales as much as 40 percent by 2030, and could result in the idling of existing assembly plants and the cancellation of many planned E.V. battery manufacturing facilities,” Dave Green, the director of the U.A.W. region covering Ohio and Indiana, said in an essay published in the Ohio Capital Journal.
“The irony is stark and painful: thousands of battery workers have just voted to unionize, ensuring their jobs are high-quality and family supporting,” Mr. Green wrote. “Now congressional Republicans are voting to kill those very same jobs.”
In addition to giving tax breaks to consumers who buy or lease electric cars and trucks, the Inflation Reduction Act provides tax credits for automakers and suppliers who build battery plants in the United States. If the credits survive, they could offset about a quarter of the cost of the plant in Marshall, Ford executives said.
The House version of the Republican bill would eliminate credits for plants that are built with materials or technology from China and other countries including Iran, North Korea and Russia. The restriction would be particularly damaging to Ford’s Marshall plant. Several other U.S. battery plants use technology from suppliers based in South Korea or Japan, which are not targeted by the bill.
Ford’s plant is scheduled to start production next year and is supposed to create 1,700 jobs. It will churn out a type of battery that uses lithium, iron and phosphate. The technology underlying the batteries was originally developed in the United States, but was commercialized and is now largely dominated by Chinese companies like CATL, the world’s largest battery maker.
LFP batteries costs less than the batteries most commonly found in U.S. electric vehicles because they do not use two relatively expensive materials: nickel and cobalt. Nickel and cobalt batteries can store more energy and, thus, travel longer distances on a full charge. But some automakers like Ford believe that iron-based batteries can provide sufficient driving range at a much lower cost.
Ms. Drake said the loss of the tax credits would have a “very material” effect on the economics of the Marshall plant. She added that Ford probably would have built the plant outside of the United States if it had not been promised the credits by the Biden-era law.
“It would really be a shame to build these facilities and then all of a sudden have to scale back on the most important part, which is people,” she said. “It’s 1,700 jobs. They don’t come around all that often.”
The plant has already been affected by the tariffs that Mr. Trump has imposed. The manufacturing machinery for the plant is currently in transit from China and will be subject to higher tariffs, Ms. Drake said.
Neal E. Boudette is based in Michigan and has been covering the auto industry for two decades. He joined The New York Times in 2016 after more than 15 years at The Wall Street Journal.
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