US car giant Ford has unveiled a new electric vehicle (EV) platform that it says will enable a range of affordable vehicles to be produced at scale, starting with a midsize electric pickup truck (ute) with a targeted price of around $US30,000.
Ford announced this week that it was investing around $US5 billion in “a revolutionary leap forward in engineering and manufacturing” that the company likely hopes will help it meet the challenges coming from China’s electric carmakers.
It consists of the new Ford Universal EV Platform and Ford Universal EV Production System, as well as plans to become the first automaker to make prismatic lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries in the US.
“We took a radical approach to a very hard challenge: Create affordable vehicles that delight customers in every way that matters – design, innovation, flexibility, space, driving pleasure, and cost of ownership – and do it with American workers,” said Jim Farley, Ford president and CEO.
“We have all lived through far too many ‘good college tries’ by Detroit automakers to make affordable vehicles that ends up with idled plants, layoffs and uncertainty. So, this had to be a strong, sustainable and profitable business.
From Day 1, we knew there was no incremental path to success. We empowered a tiny skunkworks team three time zones away from Detroit. We tore up the moving assembly line concept and designed a better one. And we found a path to be the first automaker to make prismatic LFP batteries in the U.S.”
Ford says the new EV Platform reduces parts by 20 per cent, uses 25 per cent fewer fasteners and 40 per cent fewer workstations dock-to-dock in the plant, resulting in a 15 per cent faster assembly time.
Ford promises that all this will result in a lower cost of ownership over five years than a three-year-old used Tesla Model Y.
Prismatic LFP batteries will also enable further space and weight savings while also delivering further cost reduction and durability for customers.
This cobalt- and nickel-free LFP battery pack is billed as a structural sub-assembly that Ford says will serve as the vehicle’s floor, creating a low centre of gravity to improve handling, a quiet cabin, and provide large amounts of interior space.
The first car to be built on this new platform will be a midsize, four-door electric pickup truck, better known as a ute in Australia, that will be assembled at Ford’s Louisville Assembly Plant for U.S. and export markets.
It is expected to be launched for 2027. Ford promises that this new midsize truck will have more passenger room than the latest Toyota Rav4 even before including the ‘frunk’ and truck bed.
“We took inspiration from the Model T – the universal car that changed the world,” said Doug Field, Ford chief EV, digital and design officer.
“We assembled a really brilliant collection of minds across Ford and unleashed them to find new solutions to old problems. We applied first‑principles engineering, pushing to the limits of physics to make it fun to drive and compete on affordability.
“Our new zonal electric architecture unlocks capabilities the industry has never seen. This isn’t a stripped‑down, old‑school vehicle.”
This new platform will be built on the new Ford Universal EV Production System which supposedly transforms the assembly ‘line’ into an assembly ‘tree’: Instead of one long conveyor line, three sub-assemblies run down their own lines simultaneously and are then joined together at the end.
Large, single-piece aluminium unicastings will replace dozens of smaller parts, enabling the front and rear of the vehicle to be assembled separately, while these are then combined with the third sub-assembly, the structural battery which is assembled independently with seats, consoles, and carpeting.
Ford believes that the integration between its new Ford Universal EV Production System and Platform could mean that assembly of the midsize electric truck could be up to 40 per cent faster than Louisville Assembly Plant’s current vehicles.
Ford has committed to investing nearly $US2 billion into its Louisville Assembly Plant to assemble the midsize electric truck, with an expansion of 52,000-square-feet on the cards.
Joshua S. Hill is a Melbourne-based journalist who has been writing about climate change, clean technology, and electric vehicles for over 15 years. He has been reporting on electric vehicles and clean technologies for Renew Economy and The Driven since 2012. His preferred mode of transport is his feet.