Ford Edge Now Has an Expiration Date, and It’s Soon
The 2024 model year is indeed going to be the last for the Ford Edge, at least the two-row midsize SUV as we know it. The company has informed unionized workers in Oakville, Ontario that production is slated to end on April 26, nearly 18 years after it initially began.
Automotive News first reported the news on Monday, citing a timeline update made by Unifor plant chair Marc Brennan earlier this month.
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On idle for the first two weeks of January, the Oakville factory will see “consistent work” until the final Edge rolls off the line, after which it will be significantly retooled in order to build next-generation electric vehicles starting early in 2025.
This transformation represents an investment of $1.8 billion by Ford, as announced in April 2023. The federal and provincial governments are pledging $590 million. When up and running, the so-called Oakville Electric Vehicle Complex will feature a new 407,000 square-foot battery plant that will utilize cells and arrays from BlueOval SK Battery Park in Kentucky. Oakville workers will take these components and assemble battery packs that will then be installed in vehicles built on-site.
Future EVs manufactured in Oakville are planned for the North American market, obviously. Their identities remain unknown, but two of them are likely to be three-row midsize SUVs similar to the Ford Explorer and Lincoln Aviator.
Oakville stopped manufacturing the Lincoln Nautilus last December, but a new generation is being imported from China. Over there, Ford will sell a redesigned Edge, but that model is not going to come to our shores, apparently.
Ford managed to sell just over 14,000 units of the Edge in Canada last year, up 6 percent from 2022. Meanwhile, the Explorer fell 32 percent to under 11,000 units. The latter continues to be much more popular in the U.S., though.
