Story of U-turns: After re-considering India exit, Ford once more decides to close factories

NEW DELHI: After exhibiting a shocking willingness to re-think its India exit plan, American auto main Ford did a swift U-turn in solely three months, saying that it’s giving up on the venture to make electrics within the nation (for exports) regardless of making the reduce for advantages beneath the federal government’s prestigious production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme.
It’s believed that the corporate is near securing offers to promote its India factories – the primary one at Chennai in Tamil Nadu and the second at Sanand in Gujarat. Tata Motors, which has seen a powerful resurgence in its India passenger automobiles enterprise, is believed to be near buying the Gujarat plant, whereas talks are on with a clutch of corporations for Chennai, together with with Ola, sources mentioned.
The corporate, which in February this 12 months had held out a hope to re-enter India after initially pulling out across the center of 2021 (when it didn’t safe a three way partnership with native Mahindra & Mahindra), is known to have knowledgeable its employees concerning the newest resolution.

When contacted, a spokesperson for Ford in India mentioned, “After cautious evaluate, we have now determined to now not pursue EV manufacturing for exports from any of the Indian vegetation. We stay grateful to the (Indian) authorities for approving our proposal beneath the Manufacturing-Linked Incentives and for being supportive whereas we continued our exploration.”
The spokesperson mentioned that as a part of the “ongoing enterprise restructuring” in India, Ford had continued to “discover potential alternate options” for its manufacturing amenities, considered one of which had included making use of for the PLI scheme that might have enabled it to make the most of its vegetation as a possible EV manufacturing base.
The corporate mentioned that as of now, its previously-announced “enterprise restructuring continues as deliberate, together with exploring different alternate options for our manufacturing amenities.”
“We proceed to work intently with unions and different stakeholders to ship an equitable and balanced plan to mitigate the impacts of restructuring,” the spokesperson mentioned.
Sources mentioned that the corporate discovered it formidable to have an export-oriented EV manufacturing set-up in India whereas being absent from the native market.
“Ford has had an disagreeable expertise about India even beforehand, they usually thought it could be wiser to not go for native manufacturing out there once more. Promoting the factories to these appeared to be a greater choice, particularly because the vegetation are nonetheless in good situation when in comparison with the manufacturing facility of Common Motors in Maharashtra whose sale to China’s Nice Wall Motors has been caught attributable to diplomatic and border tensions between India and China,” one of many sources mentioned.
Firm officers mentioned that whereas it’s exiting native manufacturing plans, the purchasers of Ford will proceed to get service and spares help out there.