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F-150 Lightning, Ford's first all-electric pickup truck model SK On Co., South Korea’s leading electric vehicle battery manufacturer, is expected to improve production capacity as its client Ford Motor Co. has started customer deliveries of the F-150 Lightning. F-150 Lightning is the US automaker giant’s first all-electric pickup truck model, with 200,000 units on the reservation. Ford started production of the EV pickup trucks last month and has recently begun providing the cars to retail customers in the US, auto industry sources said on May 29. The US automaker’s stock price depends on the EV pickup truck’s monthly sales for a while, the sources added.SK On’s business in the US is expected to boost once the EV pickup truck model’s production hits its stride. The Korean firm, wholly owned by Korea's major energy company SK Innovation Co., is providing its EV battery NCM9 to the F-150 Lightning manufactured from its first plant in Georgia State.NCM9 is a high-nickel battery with 90% of its proportion as nickel, and the remaining 10% with manganese and cobalt. The higher the nickel, the higher energy and better battery output, SK On said. The company is set to offer batteries with a capacity of 19.6 to 26.2 gigawatt-hour (GWh) once Ford completes producing all the 200,000 units upon the reservation by the next year.Ford is planning to provide 40,000 units of F-150 Lightning this year and manufacture 150,000 units next year. This indicates half of the annual capacity of SK On’s first plant in Georgia, which produce up to 9.8 GWh of batteries yearly, will be used for the EV pickup truck unit. SK On is set to bulk up the battery production by commencing operation of its second Georgia-based plant next year. In addition, it will construct a third plant in Georgia with an annual capacity of 40 GWh, aimed to operate in 2025. 40 GWh is enough for 500,000 EVs that can drive more than 500 kilometers with a single charge.SK On’s battery capacity sold to the global EV market rose to 6.3 GWh in the first quarter of 2022 from 2.6 GWh in the same period of the previous year, according to Korea’s energy market research firm SNE Research. SK On’s global EV market share rose to 6.6% in the first quarter from 5.3% on-year, thanks to sales expansion of Hyundai Motor’s IONIQ 5 and Kia’s EV6, EV models that install SK On’s batteries.Ford is expected to focus on the F-150 Lightning production this year, boosting SK On’s hopes for generating operation gain. The Korean company was in the red during the first quarter of this year, posting 1.26 trillion won ($1.03 billion) in sales and 273.4 billion won in operating loss. By Hyung-Kyu Kim and Han-Shin Parkkhk@hankyung.comJihyun Kim edited this article.
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