Ford plans factory for self-driving cars

Ford Motor Co. said Wednesday it would build its first autonomous vehicles at a $50 million production center in Michigan as part of an earlier pledge to invest $900 million in manufacturing operations in the state.

Production of the self-driving vehicles is expected to start in 2021, with hybrid vehicles being shipped in to be fitted with driverless technology, the carmaker said. Ford said the work would be done in the Detroit area. Kelli Felker, a company spokeswoman, would not say whether the hybrids would be an existing model.

In addition to the autonomous vehicle production center, Ford said it planned to expand its production capacity at an existing plant in Flat Rock, Mich. The company said it intended to invest more than $850 million in the Flat Rock factory and start production on new electric vehicle models there by 2023.

The effort will create 900 new jobs in the next few years, the majority of them at the Flat Rock plant, the company said.

Ford has said it plans to invest $11.1 billion overall in electrification, with 16 battery electric vehicle models by 2022 and 24 hybrid options by 2022. Earlier this year, Ford and Volkswagen laid out an agreement under which they said they would cut costs by cooperating on the development of electric and autonomous cars.