Ford Announces $30,000 Electric Pickup Truck Built in America
With drastic changes to its development, manufacturing, design, and electrical elements, Ford pulls a rabbit out of a hat.
Ford CEO Jim Farley recently teased a "Model T moment" coming soon, and he announced today at an event at the automaker's Louisville, Kentucky, assembly plant that it will manifest as a super affordable, all-electric, hyper-versatile small truck. It will be built in Kentucky, where Ford also assembles internal-combustion pickup trucks (F-Series Super Duty), and push the boundaries of affordability in the EV space while, apparently, taking the form factor of America's favorite vehicle: A pickup truck.
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Well, the new vehicle will be a truck at first. According to Jim Farley, it will later adopt various other body styles, including multiple SUVs and maybe even a sedan (seemingly previewed by animations on large monitors behind the stage from which he delivered this news). Farley went on to lay out several other superlatives about the new vehicle, including that it will have impressive range; be capable of powering one's home in the event of a power outage for up to six days; and be "[Toyota] RAV4-sized," at least in terms of passenger space.
The truck will have both a useable bed in back and a frunk in its nose, and it will be "faster than the Mustang twin-turbo," a curious claim given there is no factory twin-turbo Mustang on sale today. Perhaps he was referring to the entry-level Ford Mustang EcoBoost, a single-turbo four-cylinder powered coupe or convertible that's quick but hardly Tesla quick. All of this is centered around Ford's Universal EV platform, a new architecture that aims to leverage cost savings, engineering cleverness, and manufacturing changes to streamline development and more to reduce parts count, complexity, and weight. There will be "unicasting," or larger and simpler casting techniques, fewer fasteners, 4,000 fewer feet of wiring, and a battery claimed to deliver equivalent range to today's expectations with a third less size (so, 33 percent less capacity). About that battery: It's definitely a newer, lower-cost LFP-style unit, and apparently will be structural, serving as the floor of the vehicle.
Ford chief EV, digital, and design officer Doug Field even noted that the way the car will be assembled is different, promising that no worker will ever need to contort an entire dashboard or other large interior or powertrain component into a body structure through a door opening again—suggesting that Ford is really looking at changing not only the design, parts sourcing, prototyping, and other elements of the vehicle but also upending the way cars have been built for the better part of the last century. Ford calls it an "assembly tree" as opposed to the traditional assembly line, where multiple sections of the vehicle are assembled in parallel before being joined near the end of the process.
So far, Ford hasn't shown what the new-age Model T will look like beyond some simple line drawings of the truck's profile, as well as profiles of what appear to be a small SUV, large three-row SUV, and a van. Most likely, the first truck won't roll off Louisville's plant floor until 2027 at the earliest, but we'll keep you posted.
A lifelong car enthusiast, I stumbled into this line of work essentially by accident after discovering a job posting for an intern position at Car and Driver while at college. My start may have been a compelling alternative to working in a University of Michigan dining hall, but a decade and a half later, here I am reviewing cars; judging our Car, Truck, and Performance Vehicle of the Year contests; and shaping MotorTrend’s daily coverage of the automotive industry.
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