For a couple of years now, Ford has employed a skunkworks team tasked with developing a new low-cost all-electric vehicle platform for the automaker, which will underpin a variety of future models. However, in that timespan, a lot has changed in the automotive industry, as EV adoption has slowed greatly compared to its earlier, rapid pace, prompting many companies – including Ford – to scale back their planned investments in that particular area, as well as plans to expand EV lineups in many ways. Regardless, it sees as if Ford’s EV team isn’t going anywhere.
“And so that strategy all remains the same. We’re going to stay in EVs. We’re going to continue to invest in our advanced electrical development team out in California,” Ford Vice Chair John Lawler stated at the 2025 AllianceBernstein Strategic Decisions Conference. “There’s a lot of benefits that are coming from that. That’s not changing, but we’ve adjusted, based on the customer feedback we had being in the marketplace early, to what types of vehicles are actually going to resonate with customers and how do we make them more affordable so that we can attract a larger cohort of customers because large vehicles are not the right form factor for EVs.”
Indeed, Ford has pivoted away from focusing on developing larger, more expensive EVs in favor of smaller, more affordable ones, and that’s precisely what its skunkworks team has been tasked with creating for years now. Ford CEO Jim Farley recently revealed that this new, future platform is officially called CE1 Skunk Works, which is the first time we’ve heard that piece of information.
Ford has been in the midst of developing platforms for future EVs for some time now, but last month, we learned that the company’s low-cost EVs will have their own unique setup – officially known as CE1. Ford’s skunkworks EV team is using a streamlined process to develop that particular platform, which is set to underpin a handful of future models, potentially starting with a mid-size pickup. Those models will be a bit more simplistic in nature, with Farley recently confirming that they won’t be sold with things like Level 3 autonomous driving technology, however.
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Ford’s skunkworks are taking their own sweet time… How long have they been at this, without any vehicle being released ? But this lazy board management still sending lies to the press to keep their Jobs …
I agree John. They had this skunkworks team working for a couple of years before Farley even mentioned anything about them. And it’s been a couple of years since he mentioned them and still nothing has been produced.
Ford and this skunkworks team are losing ground on the EV segment. They keep saying their first vehicle with their new platform will be a mid-size truck and they want to keep it low cost and not have a lot of features. But while they still continue to develop and do whatever they are doing, other brands are introducing more EVs and continue to expand their EV portfolio, while Ford has TWO EVs (3, if you want to count e-transit, but that’s more for fleet).