Ford is big on a small electric pickup.
CEO Jim Farley offered some new insight into the midsize truck that’s being developed by a secretive “skunkworks” team for launch in 2027 during the automaker’s Q3 earnings call on Monday.
“Boy, are we excited about these coming out in the next few years. In 40 years in the industry, I’ve seen a lot of game-changer products, but the midsized electric pickup designed by our California team has got to be one of the most exciting,” he said.
Farley said Ford had already brought the cost to manufacture the vehicle in line with what the Chinese automakers, including BYD, are doing today, which is the top target in the EV space. Quotes for more 60% of the materials needed for the vehicle are already in place, which is much earlier than normal for a new product.
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Farley said BYD and the other Chinese brands still have an advantage on battery costs, but that Ford and its suppliers were able to close the gap through other parts like “inverters, gearboxes, motors, etc.”
“I would say the skunkworks team has over-delivered, at least in the design of the platform. Now, we have to make it to high-scale production,” he added.
Farley said one of the key factors in making the vehicle affordable is a “unit casting strategy that massively simplifies the stamping of the vehicle” that sounds similar to Tesla’s “gigacasting,” which replaces several parts with one large component.
“We radically simplified the vehicle. Like if you look at the number of parts in the vehicle, it is just a completely order-of-magnitude change,” Farley said.
Farley had previously said that the price target is below $40,000 and that other models would be built at the platform that could go as low as $30,000 someday. Ford hasn’t said where it will be built, but it will have to be manufactured in North America to qualify for federal electric vehicle tax credits and avoid the 25% “chicken tax” on pickups imported from other parts of the world.
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