Farley Says Skunkworks Team Created Low-Cost EV Platform

Nearly three years ago, Ford announced that it was developing a trio of new, dedicated EV platforms set to underpin a wide variety of future all-electric models, which is a key component of the automaker’s plan to make those types of vehicles more affordable. Since then, the topic of affordability has become even more critical to the success of EVs in general, with a number of surveys showing that pricing remains a high barrier standing in the way of mass EV adoption. Ford CEO Jim Farley is well aware of this fact, and during the automaker’s Q4 earnings call with investors, revealed that the automaker has been working on a low-cost EV platform for some time.

“Now this is important because we made a bet in silence two years ago,” Farley said. “We developed a super-talented skunkworks team to create a low-cost EV platform. It was a small group, small team, some of the best EV engineers in the world, and it was separate from the Ford mothership. It was a start-up. And they’ve developed a flexible platform that will not only deploy to several types of vehicles but will be a large installed base for software and services that we’re now seeing at Pro.”

This new EV platform sounds like it’s different from the three that FoMoCo announced years ago, and is also seemingly unrelated to the company’s second-generation EV platform as well. As Ford Authority previously reported, those next-gen models will ride on dedicated platforms and be both fully updatable and simplified compared to the existing EVs currently in the automaker’s lineup. FoMoCo also previously hinted that it’s working on a platform specifically designed to underpin its future EVs in Europe as well.

Regardless, aside from public sentiment regarding the high cost barriers presented by the current crop of EVs, automakers like Ford are also well aware of the threat posed by affordable Chinese all-electric vehicles, too. Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently stated that Chinese EV automakers will “demolish” their American counterparts when they wind up being sold in the U.S., and Farley also noted that he believes those same companies are Ford’s biggest rivals moving forward, too.

We’ll have more on this new EV platform soon, so be sure and subscribe to Ford Authority for continuous Ford news coverage.