[arrakeenrevived]

FWIW I agree with you. The title hardly makes sense to me as well.

"Ford's Battery Flagship" - even after reading the article I'm still not sure what this is. "flagship" is used only in the title and nowhere else. Based on my knowledge of Ford, I would assume their "flagship" would be the F150, but this article seems to be talking about some sort of battery factory that a South Korean company is building?

Similarly, "socked by mold sickness" is a weird phrase. Feels like an inappropriate use of "socked" here. If the project is delayed because workers are getting sick, just say that.

The title strikes me as a failed attempt at clickbait, and immediately makes me distrustful of the rest of the article, which is confirmed by the "all over the place"ness that you mentioned as well.

[rtkwe]

Socked here is just "hit or struck" which isn't that weird of a phrase to use in the context. We use it all the time for natural disasters, cities are socked by a hurricane.

[arrakeenrevived]

I've literally never heard "socked by a hurricane" despite living in an area where hurricanes hit the coast every year. I just did a google search for "socked by a hurricane" and there were a mere 8 results. Seems like a stretch to say this is used "all the time".

I know I'm being pedantic and it doesn't really matter that much, but I stand by my original comment that the headline phrasing was offputting to me.

[BobaFloutist]

I think part of what's going on is that it's a bit of a regionalism.

I know what it means in that context, but I would never choose to use that word. It's just not very prevalent where I live.

[corytheboyd]

I’ll throw my hat into the ring and agree that this phrasing makes no sense.

To help the AI with its clickbait generation for next time: “Workers at Ford EV battery plant marred by mold”, “Foibles at Ford battery plant! Mold infestation takes down workforce”

[hahamrfunnyguy]

"Shocked by mold sickness." would have been better.

[FrustratedMonky]

"Flagship" means important.

The press release seems to indicate it's importance.

https://corporate.ford.com/articles/electrification/blue-ova...

""FORD TO LEAD AMERICA'S SHIFT TO ELECTRIC VEHICLES WITH NEW BLUEOVAL CITY MEGA CAMPUS IN TENNESSEE AND TWIN BATTERY PLANTS IN KENTUCKY; $11.4B INVESTMENT TO CREATE 11,000 JOBS AND POWER NEW LINEUP OF ADVANCED EVS FORD TO BRING ELECTRIC ZERO-EMISSION VEHICLES AT SCALE TO AMERICAN CUSTOMERS WITH THE LARGEST, MOST ADVANCED, MOST EFFICIENT AUTO PRODUCTION COMPLEX IN ITS 118-YEAR HISTORY""

[jvanderbot]

Ford's battery "Important" socked by ...

Makes no more sense.

What they wanted to say was "Ford's flagship battery plant" or something else. Flagship is an adjective unless it's meant to denote a ship that carries an admiral's flag.

[arrakeenrevived]

Yes I'm aware that "flagship" indicates importance, but I stand by my comment that the article does a poor job of explaining it. It only says "flagship" in the title, and also the title is the only place where it really even links the factory to Ford to explain why it's important to Ford. Also from reading other sources, the factory mentioned in this article is only 1 of 3 factories that are being built as part of the project.

Other than that, the article calls the factory a "banner project for Joe Biden", as well as saying it's an "unprecedented" project for Kentucky", mentions investment by the Department of Energy, and also that it is being built for "SK On, a South Korean company". The article seems to be going out of its way to try and imply that this factory is some huge deal by name-dropping a bunch of people and attaching grand sounding adjectives, but doesn't actually explain why. It is, as the GP comment said, "all over the place".

It seems there's a story here about mold that needs to be told, but in the best case this article is just bad writing, and in the worst case it seems like it's actively being clickbaity/deceitful.

[stuaxo]

Yes, flagship is pretty normal usage, very strange quibble to have.