Ford is pressing ahead with a roughly $30,000 electric midsize pickup as it tries to reset its EV business amid slower demand and heavy losses.
Ford is moving its once-secretive electric-vehicle team in Long Beach, California, into public view as the automaker presses ahead with a lower-cost EV strategy built around a planned roughly $30,000 midsize pickup.
The effort centers on Ford’s Universal Electric Vehicle platform, or UEV, which the company expects to underpin its next generation of electric models. Ford is counting on the platform to help turn its Model e EV unit from billions of dollars in annual losses to breakeven by 2029, even as the broader EV market slows and automakers pull back spending.
The first planned vehicle on the platform is a midsize electric pickup for the U.S. market next year, followed by a broader family of vehicles. Alan Clarke, Ford’s EV product leader and the first employee of the skunk works team that developed the platform, told CNBC the company has had to adapt to a tougher market.
“Agility is key,” Clarke said in an interview at Ford’s new Electric Vehicle Development Center. “We’ve been able to pivot around all the different market conditions.”
Ford’s bet comes during a difficult stretch for electric vehicles. The company has faced a sharp slowdown in EV adoption, $19.5 billion in EV restructuring charges, the end of U.S. consumer incentives for EV purchases and the abrupt departure of Doug Field, its highly touted EV and technology chief. Ford expects its Model e unit to lose $4 billion to $4.5 billion this year, after a $4.8 billion loss last year.
The UEV platform is Ford’s answer to both cost pressure and fast-moving global competition. The company says the new EVs are designed to be closer in cost to gas-powered vehicles through a smaller battery using U.S.-produced lithium iron phosphate cells, a 48-volt electrical architecture and simpler manufacturing.
Ford has said vehicles based on the platform will use 20% fewer parts than a Mustang Mach-E, 25% fewer fasteners, 40% fewer workstations from dock to dock in the plant and 15% faster assembly time. The coming pickup will rely on large castings, with Ford saying it will use two structural front and rear parts, compared with 146 such components on the current gas-powered Maverick small pickup.
CEO Jim Farley has described the U.S.-produced project as a $5 billion bet and has compared its potential importance to Ford’s Model T era. But Ford has made ambitious EV claims before. Its F-150 Lightning failed to meet expectations and is being redesigned as a hybrid, while a planned three-row electric SUV was canceled in 2024 after the company concluded it would not be profitable for the foreseeable future.
Competition from Chinese automakers remains a major concern. Global market share for Chinese brands has risen nearly 70% in five years, according to GlobalData, and consulting firm AlixPartners says Chinese startups are developing vehicles in about 20 months, roughly half the time of traditional global automakers.
Clarke said Ford is focused first on North America but wants the UEV vehicle architecture to be capable of supporting vehicles sold more broadly. For now, the test is whether the Long Beach team can deliver the pickup on schedule and at a price that makes Ford’s EV business more competitive.
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