Ford's $30,000 EV Truck Reveals The Shocking Relationship Between Design And Battery Costs

• Ford's upcoming electric platform will debut on a truck that's said to start around $30,000.
• It'll be compact in size, with a frunk and bed, and more interior space than a Toyota RAV4.
• But Ford had to rethink truck design a bit—and for good reason.

Ford was one of the first traditional automakers to take electric vehicles seriously, especially after it looked with envy at Tesla's success. The Mustang Mach-E and F-150 Lightning both enjoyed critical acclaim and strong sales in their segments, especially at first.

There were only two problems: one, the sales of both were far below Ford's own projections (and what the auto industry as a whole predicted for EVs.) And two, the way they're made—like conventional cars and trucks, but with expensive battery packs added in—means that Ford lost money on each one sold. And you don't need an MBA to understand the problem with that situation. 

Meanwhile, Ford is spooked about the rise of China's advanced EV manufacturers around the world, and especially their advantage with costs and manufacturing. If Ford can't learn to make EVs the way China's automakers do, CEO Jim Farley has said, it does not have a future.

The solution, then, is the Ford Universal EV Production System: a rethinking of the assembly line for a new electric platform, built from the ground up in America for EV duty. The first product on that platform will be a $30,000 battery-powered pickup due in 2027.

We don't know what that truck will look like. But we know it won't have a traditional truck-like silhouette. And in a story for Wired, veteran journalist and InsideEVs contributor John Voelcker gets the scoop on why that is:

In interviews with Farley and Ford’s chief EV, digital, and design officer Doug Field, they told WIRED the company’s “skunk works” in Southern California rethought every aspect of designing and manufacturing an EV to lower costs, streamline development, and simplify assembly.
 
Field’s team also focused on cutting aerodynamic drag to the absolute minimum, to use battery energy most efficiently. A reduction of “one count [0.01] of Cd [drag coefficient] is worth $25 of battery,” he said. “I’m obsessed by this,” Field told WIRED. Farley added that in the future, Ford's “battery could be so small, so much smaller” than a battery in a comparable BYD model that the lower cost would potentially offset BYD’s advantage from vertical integration. 

Field certainly knows his stuff. He joined Ford from Apple, and before that, he was senior vice president of engineering at Tesla, where he led the development of the Model 3. That sedan also had to be designed in a radically different way than conventional cars in order to offset the high costs of batteries—the primary reason EVs are still more expensive than gas-powered cars.

Since the Model 3's launch nearly a decade ago, a lot has changed in the EV sector. Chinese firms have taken Tesla's manufacturing playbook and run with it, mixing new techniques like gigacasting with their own low labor cost advantage to crank out tons of first-rate EVs that are well below $20,000. Ford, with an American workforce and a comparably outdated way of making EVs, can't compete the traditional way.

Ford Universal EV Production System

Photo by: Ford

Its new assembly line process—an "assembly tree" where three different lines feed into a relatively short end line, with fewer parts and labor involved—is part of that process. But so is the design of the truck itself. This does feel like the Tesla-esque approach to things: figure out the end goal, then design things around achieving that.

It also speaks volumes about the importance of aerodynamics when it comes to EV design. While Americans love their big, rugged, boxy trucks and SUVs, that shape is terrible when you're trying to maximize range. By making the car more aerodynamic, it gets more range on its own and thus won't necessarily need a larger battery. Specifcially, $25 for every .01 Cd that designers and engineers can achieve.  

For context, the Tesla Cybertruck's drag coefficient is 0.34, which is actually great for a truck of this size. The lower the number, the more slippery it is. It's unclear what the Ford truck's number will be, but it should be quite slippery. 

Whether buyers will warm up to the final design remains to be seen. But clearly, Ford is pulling out all the stops to run with the BYDs of the world. 

Contact the author: patrick.george@insideevs.com