Ford promises 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, a Formula 1 mindset and a rewards program will help the company achieve that goal, Ford said Tuesday.
It will have to. Ford took a $19.5 billion bankruptcy in December and ended production of its battery-powered F-150 Lightning. It cannot afford to let this new business strategy for electric cars go to waste.
Ford’s bet on a range of affordable EVs began a few years ago with a skunkworks team led by Alan Clark, a 12-year Tesla veteran. Parts of his plan were revealed last August, when Ford said it would ditch its traditional moving assembly line and invest $2 billion in its Louisville plant to adopt a new manufacturing system that promises to speed up production by 15%.
The company said at the time that its EV lineup would be built on a universal platform with aluminum die-casts — large components cast as one piece to eliminate parts and allow for faster assembly — and lithium iron phosphate batteries with technology licensed from China’s CATL.
Now, Ford is sharing more details in a flurry of blog and social media posts about how it will deliver on its promise of a desirable EV truck that will be $20,000 cheaper than the average new vehicle while still generating profits. Ford did not share specifications such as range, features or charging time of this future EV. But it has revealed how it plans to make lighter, cheaper and more efficient electric cars built with fewer parts.
It all starts with the universal EV platform, or UEV. The platform will first support a mid-size truck, then could support a sedan, crossover, three-row SUV and even small commercial vans, according to Clark. The UEV is Ford’s first “pure” EV built from the ground up — a strategic move for the company, which built its Mustang Mach-E and Lightning EV using existing infrastructure and manufacturing processes.
“It’s a platform that’s built on efficiency,” Clarke said at a media briefing. “It’s built on affordability to make long-distance electric vehicle travel accessible to more people.”
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To achieve this, Clarke set out to create a new culture staffed by talent from Formula 1 and companies like Apple, Lucid Motors, Rivian and Tesla, as well as Auto Motive Power, a startup acquired by Ford in 2023. The team, which includes about 450 people at its base in Long Beach, California, and 200 people in an office in Palo-Altoday, made decisions about how to influence their decisions as an everyday engineer. the customer and the final product, Clarke said in an interview with reporters.
The focus of the bounty program was efficiency. Numerical metrics have been assigned to every aspect of the UEV including vehicle weight, aerodynamic drag and even specific vehicle parts. In practice, this meant that Ford could choose to use a more expensive part if it helped reduce the weight of the EV, making it more efficient and cost-effective.
“We’ve been very focused on making sure the costs we’re moving out of the product don’t reduce the value,” Clarke said. One example is that even a basic EV truck will have a power-folding mirror, which is a premium feature on most vehicles because it reduces drag, according to Clark. The company saved money by using two motors instead to adjust and fold the mirrors.
This obsession with efficiency involved a team of ex-Formula 1 engineers who worked closely with Ford’s design team. The result is a mid-size EV truck that is 15% more aerodynamically efficient than any other pickup on the market today, according to Ford.
This team of former F1 engineers used 3D printed and machined parts to create a Lego-like structure for their test vehicle. Thousands of 3D-printed components were used to measure aerodynamics, which are accurate to within fractions of a millimeter of Ford’s simulations and can be replaced in minutes. These Lego-like prototypes were used in wind tunnel testing early on—and often—to measure aerodynamics, a process Ford traditionally used only when the vehicle’s design was nearly complete.
A natural place to focus was the battery, which can account for about 40% of a vehicle’s total cost. A lighter, more efficient vehicle allows Ford to use a smaller battery, reducing costs. The end result, according to Clark, will be an EV truck with about 15% more range, or 50 miles, than an equivalent gas-powered pickup truck.
The push for efficiency also led the team to adopt manufacturing tactics adopted and popularized by Tesla, including the use of aluminum unicastings and switching from a 12-volt system to a 48-volt power system to be used for some of the vehicle’s functions.
Ford has also modernized the UEV electric vehicle architecture, taking a zoning approach similar to Tesla and Rivian. Instead of placing dozens of electronic control units (ECUs) or computers throughout the vehicle, Ford integrated multiple vehicle functions into five main modules. According to Luccas De Tullio, a software engineer at Ford who previously worked at Auto Motive Power, this reduces complexity, cost and copper consumption and has helped make the truck’s EV wiring harness 4,000 feet shorter and 22 pounds lighter than one of its first-generation electric vehicles.
De Tullio said the company takes the same philosophy with power electronic components, looking for ways to share components and reduce components with a single module that controls power distribution, battery management and provides AC power back to the customer’s home during an outage.
Ford also developed its own software for these five major ECUs, down to the application layer, according to Clark. Because Ford owns the software — down to the lowest level — it becomes very portable, Clarke said.
“In addition to being able to control the infotainment, what’s shown on the screens and (and) how you interact with the vehicle, all the body controls are directly connected,” he said. “So you can imagine that many of the experiences that can only be created by connecting all the different sensors around the vehicle are now at our fingertips and under our own control.”