Ford Reveals $5 Billion Bet For New $30,000 Electric Cars

The company is preparing to launch a family of affordable electric vehicles based on a new Ford Universal EV Platform.

Credit: Ford

For quite some time, Ford has been trying to figure out how to compete with American upstart Tesla and get in on its EV (and stock price) action.

Electrification has been a tough road for the Blue Oval, so to shift gears, Ford set up a "skunkworks" team to design a low-cost EV that would be profitable within 12 months of launch. Ford CEO Jim Farley revealed it's long-awaited cheap EV platform on Monday, saying that "This is a Model T moment for us at Ford."

The first vehicle based on the platform will be a midsize four-door electric pickup - it will start at around $30,000 and will be assembled at its Louisville Assembly Plant. Ford claims its new midsize EV pickup will have a lower cost of ownership than a Tesla Model Y and more space than a Toyota RAV4. It will also cost about the same as the RAV4.

Based on the new Ford Universal EV Platform, it will also have more passenger space than the latest Toyota RAV4.

“We took a radical approach to a very hard challenge: Create affordable electric vehicles that delight customers in every way that matters - design, innovation, flexibility, space, driving pleasure, and cost of ownership,” Ford’s CEO Jim Farley said during the event in Kentucky. Key to the hoped for success is optimising efficiency in order to lower costs. For example, Farley explained that the new platform reduces parts by 20% compared to the average vehicle. It also has 25% fewer fasteners, 40% fewer worstations dock-to-dock in the plant, and 15% faster assembly time.

Customer deliveries are expected to begin in 2027.

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