Hangzhou is one of the assembly plants run by Changan Ford, the joint venture between Ford Motor Company and Changan Automobile. Construction started in August 2012 and the plant was completed in March 2015, a $760 million investment that added 250,000 vehicles a year to the venture’s capacity and took it to roughly 1.4 million. The line was built to be flexible enough to run up to six different models, and the first car off it was the Ford Edge.
The site now builds four vehicles: the China-market Ford Explorer, a gasoline SUV unrelated to the American or European cars of the same name, the long-wheelbase Ford Edge L, and the two Lincolns made in China, the Nautilus and the Aviator. Three of those four are sold only in China.
The exception is what makes the plant unusual. The second-generation Lincoln Nautilus is built here and nowhere else, and it has been shipped to the United States since 2024, when Ford moved the model off its previous line in Oakville, Ontario to free that factory for electric vehicles. That arrangement now runs against a 52.5% US import duty, and on 12 August 2026 Ford said it would end China-built Lincoln imports and expand Lincoln production at US plants starting in 2030.
