Ford is starting a battery storage business to power data centers and the grid
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Amid Ford’s shift away from making large electric vehicles, the automaker is adding a new product line to find a home for its batteries. Ford said Monday that instead of scuttling plans to build the batteries for those vehicles, it will pivot that capacity into a new battery storage business. Those storage systems, which will use cheaper LFP batteries, will be used to power data centers and help buffer demand on the electric grid. Ford says the battery storage systems will start shipping in 2027 and that the company plans to build 20GWh of annual capacity. Ford will invest about $2 billion into the new business over the next two years. Under the plan, Ford will repurpose the existing manufacturing capacity at its Kentucky factory. Ford plans to produce LFP prismatic cells using technology licensed from China’s CATL as well as battery energy storage system modules and 20-foot DC container systems at this facility. Lisa Drake, vice president of technology platform programs and EV systems at Ford, said the “predominant” opportunity for the new business will be commercial grid customers. But data centers will be secondary, and then Ford expects to offer some home storage products, Drake said. “It was clear when we went out to the market that the technology of choice for most of these customers was an LSP prismatic type of container system,” Drake said during a call with reporters. “And given the fact that we already had a license to build that technology in the U.S., you couple that with our manufacturing experience over a century of high scale manufacturing, it just made a lot of sense as a natural adjacency for us.” Ford will join a number of automakers who are operating in or planning to enter the battery storage space. Tesla has spent the last decade selling battery storage products and deploys around 10GWh every quarter. General Motors also has a set of home and commercial battery storage products. Techcrunch event Join the Disrupt 2026 Waitlist Add yourself to the Disrupt 2026 waitlist to be first in line when Early Bird tickets drop. Past Disrupts have brought Google Cloud, Netflix, Microsoft, Box, Phia, a16z, ElevenLabs, Wayve, Hugging Face, Elad Gil, and Vinod Khosla to the stages — part of 250+ industry leaders driving 200+ sessions built to fuel your growth and sharpen your edge. Plus, meet the hundreds of startups innovating across every sector. Join the Disrupt 2026 Waitlist Add yourself to the Disrupt 2026 waitlist to be first in line when Early Bird tickets drop. Past Disrupts have brought Google Cloud, Netflix, Microsoft, Box, Phia, a16z, ElevenLabs, Wayve, Hugging Face, Elad Gil, and Vinod Khosla to the stages — part of 250+ industry leaders driving 200+ sessions built to fuel your growth and sharpen your edge. Plus, meet the hundreds of startups innovating across every sector. San Francisco | October 13-15, 2026 WAITLIST NOW This story is developing … Topics TC, Transportation Sean O'Kane Sr. Reporter, Transportation Sean O’Kane is a reporter who has spent a decade covering the rapidly-evolving business and technology of the transportation industry, including Tesla and the many startups chasing Elon Musk. Most recently, he was a reporter at Bloomberg News where he helped break stories about some of the most notorious EV SPAC flops. He previously worked at The Verge, where he also covered consumer technology, hosted many short- and long-form videos, performed product and editorial photography, and once nearly passed out in a Red Bull Air Race plane. You can contact or verify outreach from Sean by emailing sean.okane@techcrunch.com or via encrypted message at okane.01 on Signal.
View Bio Kirsten Korosec Transportation Editor Kirsten Korosec is a reporter and editor who has covered the future of transportation from EVs and autonomous vehicles to urban air mobility and in-car tech for more than a decade. She is currently the transportation editor at TechCrunch and co-host of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast. She is also co-founder and co-host of the podcast, “The Autonocast.” She previously wrote for Fortune, The Verge, Bloomberg, MIT Technology Review and CBS Interactive. You can contact or verify outreach from Kirsten by emailing kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com or via encrypted message at kkorosec.07 on Signal.
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