Ford tour shows BlueOval City rising in West Tennessee

At the height of a sunny, wet day, media piled into a small van to tour Ford Motor Co.’s $5.6 billion BlueOval City in Stanton, Tennessee, for the first time since March 2023. 

The 3,600-acre, six-square-mile campus, where farmland was before May 2022, houses several buildings that will manufacture Ford’s next-generation electric pickup trucks and batteries.

“It’s pretty overwhelming to see its scale and size,” said Dan Brady, Ford Motor Co. electric vehicles sales and retail marketing director. “This was the first new U.S. plant that Ford had built in over three decades. It means a lot because we spent a lot of time here.” 

BlueOval City, Ford’s largest single-scale investment, has five constructed buildings for the Tennessee Electric Vehicle Center and an additional three for future suppliers. 

The last is a battery plant from BlueOval SK, a joint venture between Ford Motor Co. and SK On that manufactures electric vehicle batteries, which is about four million square feet. 

The total square footage of all the buildings equals 10.8 million square feet, or 188 football fields. 

Sam Kandah, a Ford Motor Co. construction manager, guided the tour and detailed the progress and updates of the site’s infrastructure. 

The five buildings associated with Ford’s Tennessee Electric Vehicle Center include a sheet metal stamping plant, a 1.2 million-square-foot body shop to build the vehicles, a paint shop, a 1.7 million-square-foot final assembly and the battery pack assembly. 

He said fewer than 100 salaried employees moved into their offices in the Tennessee Electric Vehicle Center in April. 

About 2,000 construction workers work at the megasite every weekday. In August 2023, the site had a peak of 7,000 workers each weekday.

“A lot of people on this site are going to have to redefine their definition of large,” Kandah said. “Being a construction guy, this is once in a lifetime. You’re never going to see this magnitude of construction again.”

Kandah said the site's core shell is almost done, and site work, such as landscaping and site lighting, has commenced. It is expected to be completed by the end of this year’s third quarter.

They are installing undisclosed equipment in two plants and are expected to be done by mid-2026. 

Ford’s production of its electric pickup vehicles was initially supposed to start in 2025. However, the motor company announced in August that production was pushed back to the second quarter of 2027.

Kandah said the tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump have not affected the construction of BlueOval City. 

“Most of the stuff that would impact (construction) has come and gone for us,” he said. 

Ford focuses on sustainability and recycling, which led the company to build the Whip Center recycling building for leftover scrap material and a wastewater treatment plant on site. 

Kandah, whose wife and son also work at Ford, said the motor company wants to minimize the campus's footprint as much as possible. He said that out of six square miles, the campus from assembly to battery plant is one mile long. 

“Even though these are big buildings, we tried to reduce the amount of areas that the production was actually taking on the megasite,” Kandah said. “When we drive around here, these buildings look like they’re connected, and one of the main reasons was just to minimize our footprint on the site.” 

Kandah said Ford’s goal is to minimize tree removal, which includes planting 3,400 trees, and to keep as much of the wetlands as possible, eventually restoring the land's natural topography as much as possible. 

“(The topography) will go back to its origins in West Tennessee,” Kandah said. 

The site has asphalt and concrete batching plants that store raw materials for reuse, reducing costs and minimizing truck traffic.

When the vehicles are complete and pass quality checks, they will be sent out on a rail track system that Ford will build. This rail system will connect to the CXS railway two miles west of the final assembly building. 

Kandah said the partnerships it has formed with the Tennessee Valley Authority, local utilities, the State of Tennessee and the West Tennessee community have made this project unique from others in the country. 

Kandah said one of Ford’s priorities is the employee experience. He said they want the employees to take pride in their work and want to come to work. 

After the tour ended, an event unveiled a new structure meant to signify Ford’s commitment to the community, growth and integration. 

The 18-ton structure, made with the same material as Ford’s vehicles, has “six leaf-like canopies” engraved with symbols reflecting BlueOval City and the surrounding areas. 

Six University of Memphis students, in a spring 2023 course in the Department of Art and Design, designed the 28-foot-tall structure alongside local artists' input. Youngblood Studio and Frank Balton Sign Co. produced the structure. 

“We’re not just coming here to build trucks,” Brady said. “We’re coming here to be part of a community, to provide opportunities for individuals and families to live a long, healthy, prosperous life.” 

Brady said the structure marks this developing city in an artistic and meaningful way, from the hands and minds of the community.