Ford announced its “Model T moment” in Louisville Monday — previewing its new electric vehicle strategy.
In the short term, automakers may be pivoting hard toward hybrids over fully electric vehicles, but Ford Motor Company is still investing significant time, money and marketing strategy into its next-generation EVs. In fact, the company just announced its new Universal EV Platform and accompanying production system, meant to create a “new family of affordable, electric, software-defined vehicles.”
The first of these vehicles, says Ford President and CEO Jim Farley, will be a midsize, four-door electric pickup. The company did not actually show any product Monday, but that gives us a small taster of what to expect. Supposedly, the Blue Oval will revive its long-defunct “Ranchero” name for this project, though Farley nor any of the other executives on stage confirmed that part of the plan at this point. Typically, neither Ford nor any other major automaker will comment on product beyond what they actually share in their release, and they did not share an actual name for this truck yet.
What Ford did share, in addition to the body type, is that this new truck will be assembled at Ford’s Louisville plant, and will launch around 2027. As part of the speculation surrounding the company’s application for a new Ranchero trademark last week, this date is more or less what we expected. A new revelation emerged, though: Ford is targeting a starting price of about $30,000. In other words, thousands of dollars lower than even the gas-powered Ranger. (I think I know what your reaction is there, and we’ll get to that in a moment.)
A more significant portion of today’s news, however, is that the Universal EV Platform will underpin a variety of vehicles, from trucks to small crossovers and most things in-between.
Strangely, and particularly in the interest of Ford touting “affordable” vehicles from this platform, its morphing graphic (shown below) does not seem to show a sedan of any sort. That’s in keeping with its decision to can your typical four-door passenger car from the lineup years ago, as Ford appears committed to sticking with crossovers/SUVs, vans and trucks. Again, we don’t have any confirmed product beyond the truck just yet, so we’ll have to see what else the company has up its sleeve in due time.
Ford says it’s investing $5 billion and creating nearly 4,000 jobs between expanding the Louisville Assembly Plant’s status quo of building internal combustion vehicles — and physically enlarging the plant by 52,000 square feet — as well as the BlueOval Battery Park Michigan plant that will supply lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries to support the electric side of the operation.
Farley did speak a little bit to the midsize truck we’re expecting and the platform its built on in some technical terms. For example, the new Universal EV Platform will reduce overall parts content by 20% versus a typical vehicle, use 25% fewer fasteners, have 40% fewer dock-to-dock workstations within the plant (to help scale production), and take 15% less assembly time per vehicle. Read: Vehicles will be less complex and be faster and cheaper to build. This vehicle will also supposedly have more interior space than a Toyota RAV4 and get from 0-60 as quickly as a Ford Mustang EcoBoost.
The company even plans to use single-piece aluminum “unicastings” in place of dozens of smaller parts. Ford says that enables the front and rear of the vehicle to be assembled separately, and that also offers up flexibility to build different kinds of EVs, all on the same platform, in the same facility. Other claims for this truck include 4,000 feet in wiring reduction and 10 kilograms in weight savings over its first-generation electric SUV.
An absolute winner, or too good to be true?
Instead of your traditional assembly line — which Ford pioneered with the Model T 122 years ago, hence the reference — the automaker plans to create an “assembly tree”. This process breaks out one long conveyor into three sub-assemblies that can run their own lines simultaneously, then join back together later on in the manufacturing process. Parts will travel down the assembly tree to operators as a full kit, with the fasteners, scanners and power tools needed for the job included, in the proper orientation for their specific task. Ford also touts ergonomic improvements as part of this process, reducing strain on workers and “allowing them to focus on the job at hand.”
Throughout the company’s announcement, reducing complexity through elimination of parts, connectors and wiring were a strong theme. By doing all that and breaking out the assembly process, the automaker contends they can boost quality and reduce costs at the same time, while delivering the most affordable vehicles that bring all the features its customers demand.
And if you were keeping score, those are all big and bold promises. In Louisville alone, Ford plans to invest nearly $2 billion (on top of the $3 billion for the Michigan battery plant) to bring the midsize electric truck and a future range of electric vehicles to life. In doing so, it will also secure 2,200 hourly jobs for Kentuckians working at the plant. To actually see it through and provide that shot in the arm for the local economy, Ford says the project is being supported by an incentive offer from the Kentucky Economic Development Finance Authority, though no further specifics were given with today’s announcement.
While one of Farley’s primary goals has been to improve Ford’s build quality over his nearly half-decade tenure, the company still has an uphill battle. So far this year, the automaker has grappled with 94 recalls of varying size and severity — more than the subsequent five manufacturers combined.
Its premise to offer a $30,000-ish vehicle with a lower five-year cost-of-ownership than a used Tesla Model Y that is practical, tech-forward, quick and easier to scale on a different process than what they’ve done for more than a century is certainly a bold move. The onus is on Ford to actually deliver, though, and we will keep a close eye on these developments to see when — and if — it can hit all those targets with its upcoming midsize truck by the targeted 2027 on-sale date.
