Back in early February, The Blue Oval revealed that former Tesla engineering director Alan Clarke was spearheading its new low-cost Ford EV platform skunkworks project, which has been underway for around two years already – largely in secret. Clarke is leading this project via the company’s Advanced EV development team, which has been operating more like a startup based in Irvine, California. However, In addition to Clarke, this skunkworks team also includes engineers from Auto Motive Power (AMP), an EV energy management startup that FoMoCo acquired back in November 2023, too.
The low-cost Ford EV platform skunkworks team does indeed count members of AMP among its staff, and that group even includes company founder Anil Paryani, who worked with Clarke for roughly five years at Tesla. The goal of this project is to develop a low-cost EV platform that will underpin a variety of future models built at high volumes, albeit, while also generating a profit for the automaker at the same time.
This project stems from Ford’s decision to focus on smaller, cheaper EVs rather than larger, more expensive ones, a pivot that came about following declining demand in all-electric vehicles in general – not to mention pricing disparity between EVs and ICE models. As such, the automaker recently announced that it was delaying the production start of what are expected to be the three-row Ford Explorer EV for North American and the next-generation Ford F-150 EV – as well as adding a hybrid powertrain option to its entire Ford Blue lineup by 2030.
Meanwhile, this new low-cost Ford EV platform is slated to underpin a crossover with a $25k price tag that’s currently scheduled to launch in 2026. It is expected to be followed by a small pickup and a dedicated ride-share model at some point after that, too.
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Comments
This low cost model may be the best decision Faley’s made in the push to EV Ford.
They’ll be out of work soon as the boycott of EVs in America continues. NY Times had a recent article about very poor EV sales.
What was not stated in the article was the on again off again potential government mandates. Lower cost EV, more minimum specification allows Ford to straddle the fence in offerring but EV and hybrid ICE.
I watched the June 28 NBC interview with Jim Farley. I’d say that there’s more to Personal Mobility than selling cars as we know them today. New design directions can help implement what automakers and many consumers are looking for: affordable electric drive, Fahrvergnügen, even more advanced levels of driver assist.
Btw, could someone tell me how to contact Ford Skunkworks?