Ford is expanding its research and development complex in China by doubling the number of employees there by over 50% by the end of 2018, adding a new building and test track and broadening activities, the automaker has said.
Ford’s Chinese CEO, John Lawler, told the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) the expansion of the research and engineering centre, or REC, in the eastern Chinese city of Nanjing was “one of our top global-product-development priorities”.
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“Growing REC – one of eight such centres in Ford’s global system allows our global team to better integrate local customer insight from China and from [our] other Asia Pacific markets into global product development programmes,” Lawler added.
The WSJ said Ford plans to increase the number of employees to around 2,000 people by 2018 by adding around 200 each year.
To date, the company has spent more than US$200m at the facility. The expansion plan involves an additional $100m.
When Ford moved into the current facility in 2007, the center had around 300 employees, the WSJ noted, it now has about 1,300.
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By GlobalDataFord said it was adding a third building in Nanjing but provided no additional details on timing.
The current facilities can accommodate 1,600 workers.
The automaker is also adding a test track at a location 100km (60 miles) from the Nanjing facility. Ford didn’t give a timeline, saying only in a statement seen by the WSJ it was working to make the track “operational as early as possible”.
A spokesman told the paper the test track would help researchers based in the Nanjing area to expand their vehicle development capabilities and allow them to play a bigger role in Ford’s new global vehicle design programmes.
Ford and joint ventures sold 935,813 vehicles in China last year, up 49% year on year. In February, Lawler said he expected Ford’s sales growth in China would outpace growth in the broader Chinese auto industry this year – between 7.5% and 8%. In the same interview, Lawler forecast Ford would sell more than 1mvehicles in China in 2014.
Under a 2011 plan, Ford committed to spend $5bn in China to expand the number of its manufacturing facilities to nine from four. A new $760m plant in the eastern city of Hangzhou with planned annual capacity of 250,000 will open in 2015, the WSJ noted.
By around then, Ford expects its Chinese production capacity will reach 1.2m passenger cars, double the 2012 level.
