Take a walk through Ford’s factory in Dearborn, Michigan
We’re getting a rare glimpse of the Ford F-150 Lightning production and assembly line, complete with autonomous robots, thanks to a YouTuber who visited the factory. It gives us an in-depth look behind the scenes at Ford’s large factory in Dearborn, Michigan.
Manufacturing vehicles is a process Ford has down to a T (pun intended), but building electric vehicles is a whole new ballgame. Luckily, popular YouTuber Zack from JerryRigEverything, known for durability testing gadgets and building his own electric military Humvee, was lucky enough to walk around the facility and record the process.
Interestingly enough, Ford’s Dearborn, Michigan manufacturing plant (the Rouge factory) is located in the same place where Henry Ford and co made its first vehicles. It’s a neat tidbit before Zack shows how each truck gets made.
The video above gives us a fascinating inside look at the entire process. A look behind the curtains, if you will. And hey, maybe one of those trucks is someone’s preorder.
Everything begins on the factory’s top floor. All the F-150 Lightning frames and truck beds arrive pre-painted and are lowered down onto the ground level one at a time to pair up with electric parts. On the manufacturing floor, I quickly noticed far fewer humans than expected. Instead, there are autonomous robots all over the place.
Ford even has self-driving robots, known as AGVs (automated guided vehicles), that follow magnets on the road and move each truck chassis from location to location. You’ll notice robots handling all the intensive labor at each production phase.
However, factory workers are stationed all over the place to integrate the wiring harness, mount the pre-built dashboard into each truck, spin and mount the windshield, and more. It’s pretty wild. Whether you bought a base model F-150 Lightning or went with a Platinium, the process is relatively similar.
While we don’t necessarily learn anything amazing here, it’s neat to see how everything comes together at the Blue Oval’s factory and how much of the process is automated. The YouTuber ends the clip by stating what we’ve already heard from Ford regarding production numbers. Ford believes it’ll be able to build 150,000 electric trucks a year by the end of 2023.
Source: YouTube
