Ford is promising to deliver an EV truck next year that starts at $30,000 and can compete with Chinese automakers without undermining profit margins. A combination of 3D-printed Lego-like parts, Formula 1 thinking, and a bounty program will help the company hit that target, Ford said Tuesday.
It will have to. Ford took a $19.5 billion hit in December and ended production of its battery-electric F-150 Lightning. It can’t afford for this new EV business strategy to fall flat.
Ford’s bet on a line of affordable EVs began several years ago with a skunkworks team led by Alan Clarke, a 12-year Tesla veteran. Pieces of its plan were revealed last August, when Ford said it would ditch its traditional moving assembly line and invest $2 billion in its Louisville factory to adopt a new production system that promises to speed up manufacturing by 15%.
The company said at the time that its line of EVs would be built on a universal platform with single-piece aluminum unicastings — large components cast as one piece to eliminate parts and allow for faster assembly — and lithium iron phosphate batteries with tech licensed from China’s CATL.
Now Ford is sharing more specifics in a flurry of blog and social media posts on how it will fulfill its promise of a desirable EV truck that will be $20,000 cheaper than the average new vehicle while still generating profits. Ford didn’t share specs like the range, features, or charging times of this future EV. But it did reveal how it plans to build lighter, cheaper, more efficient EVs made with fewer parts.
It all starts with the universal EV platform, or UEV. The platform will underpin a midsized truck first, then could support a sedan, crossover, three-row SUV, and even small commercial vans, according to Clarke. The UEV is Ford’s first “clean sheet” EV built from the ground up — a strategic shift for the company, which built its Mustang Mach-E and the Lightning EVs using existing infrastructure and manufacturing practices.
“It’s a platform that is built around efficiency,” Clarke said in a briefing with the media. “It’s built around affordability to be able to make long-range e …