Ford is currently making a broad pivot away from the EV-intensive push it announced roughly three years toward an approach that incorporates gasoline, hybrid, and fully electric propulsion. That said, the automaker is also investing considerable resources into developing an inexpensive EV platform to better compete against Chinese car companies. This more recent effort involved the creation of a new team that’s so important, Ford CEO Jim Farley said that the company is betting its future on it. And now, the underlying battery chemistry that may debut in the upcoming EV platform has seemingly been revealed.
Charles Poon, director of electrified propulsion engineering at Ford, revealed on Linkedin that the automaker has been working on utilizing Lithium Manganese Rich (LMR) battery chemistry for its upcoming electric vehicles, and that the chemistry will be scaled and integrated into production vehicles before the decade is out. According to Poon, Ford’s LMR battery technology has three main benefits when compared to existing chemistries: safety, energy density, and cost reduction. For the latter, this breakthrough is being labeled as critical to achieving cost parity with gasoline vehicles.
His post repeatedly refers to the goal of delivering affordable electric vehicles with pricing similar to gasoline vehicles, potentially signaling that batteries utilizing LMR chemistry will arrive as soon as 2027. As previously reported by Ford Authority, that’s when the automaker’s first skunkworks-developed model using the low cost EV platform is expected to arrive. Reports suggest a fully electric Ford Ranger pickup is that vehicle, and it will be produced at Louisville Assembly plant, which is currently slated to go offline later this year for a major retooling.
Also notable is Poon’s announcement that the breakthrough came out of Ford Ion Park – the company’s dedicated battery research and development center. It appears this may have been an entirely homegrown effort unaided by any current battery partners. Ford currently utilizes batteries from CATL, LG, and SK On, among others, and has several joint venture plants coming online in 2025 and 2026 devoted to EV battery production.
In any event, this isn’t the first time Ford has announced an EV battery chemistry pivot. Three years ago, the company revealed that the Ford Mustang Mach-E would switch to a lithium iron phosphate chemistry for its standard range models. The first examples arrived at American dealers less than one year later. Those batteries come from CATL, while the nickel cobalt manganese battery for the long range model is supplied by LG.
Ford also has a stake in Solid Power, a company devoted to solid-state battery technology company. Ford expects solid state batteries won’t arrive until next decade.
Comments
Maybe they can figure out a way for EV’s to stop losing 50% of their value when you drive them off the lot and having no trade-in value.
So we are losing the last compact SUVs , Escape and Corsair, and the 150,000 + sales for an electric Ranger that will probably sell 25,000 Units.
Why can’t they build a dedicated EV plant to build multiple EVs on the same architecture and sell 200,000 and maybe make a profit . Selling a few MachEs and a few 150 Lightenings will only lose money and waste production capacity . Bring back a few cars and small SUVs. No more Ford vehicles for me as they don’t offer anything in a compact size with great mpg
They won’t sell 200,000 of them because they will end up being $60k EV Rangers.
Everyone pushing everything upmarket in search of more profit all the time has to eventually come to an end.
Exactamento!