By Steph Willems on April 13, 2020

It’s a temporary foray in a wholly new direction, but Ford’s new line of products is picking up steam — with one new item ready to enter production on Tuesday.

Place the cynical, always suspicious side of your brain on pause for a moment and see what the Blue Oval is doing for your health. 

Like those of most other auto manufacturers, Ford’s idled workers and facilities are being put to use cranking out much-needed personal protective equipment (PPE) for health workers on the front lines of the coronavirus battle. The automakers went into the effort voluntarily, though you read last week how rival General Motors was ordered to produce ventilators via a massive federal contract and a piece of legislation (GM’s initiative was already underway at the time).

On Monday, Ford issued an update on how things are going. Most notably, Ford announced it has crafted, with the help of partner 3M, a new powered air-purifying respirator (PAPR) that’s ready to enter production April 14th. Designed and readied for production in four weeks, the unit will be built by 90 UAW workers at Ford’s Vreeland facility near Flat Rock, Michigan.

The PAPR (seen above, disassembled and not) “includes a hood and face shield to cover health care professionals’ heads and shoulders, while a high-efficiency (HEPA) filter system provides a supply of filtered air for up to 8 hours,” the automaker said in a statement. “The air blower system – similar to the fan found in F-150’s ventilated seats – is powered by a rechargeable, portable battery, helping keep the respirator in constant use by first-line defenders.”

While Ford says it has the capacity to build 100,000 of these, the unit first needs National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health approval, which it says it expects before the end of the month.

Ford’s Van Dyke Transmission Plant in Michigan is tasked with building 3 million face masks. Some 30 UAW workers are on that job, with their numbers expected to grow to 80. The automaker also teamed with supplier Joyson Safety Systems to construct hospital gowns out of airbag material; Ford says output should reach 75,000 per week by this coming weekend, and 100,000 thereafter. The supplier aims to supply 1.3 million gowns by the beginning of July.

Elsewhere, engineers from Ford’s Kansas City Assembly Plant are working with Thermo Fisher Scientific to boost output of COVID-19 collection kits. As well, some 3 million plastic face shields have already rolled out of Ford factories in the U.S., Canada, Thailand, and India, and a GE Healthcare ventilator — a piece of hardware that’s key to keeping critical patients alive — will enter production at Ford’s Rawsonville Components Plant in Michigan next week. Production should reach 50,000 by Independence Day. A similar effort, though with a different partner, is underway in hard-hit UK.

Hopefully things will have diminished to something approaching normalcy by the time people start speaking of July the 4th.

[Images: Ford]