We’ve known for some time that a Ford skunkworks team is working on developing a new, low-cost EV platform that will underpin more than one future model. The goal of this particular team is to create an architecture that will enable The Blue Oval to better compete with its rapidly expanding Chinese rivals, which is something that CEO Jim Farley recently said is key to the automaker’s very survival. Along the way, we’ve learned a lot about the Ford skunkworks team, including the fact that it’s utilizing a very unique development process.
“And the way they’re developing the vehicle is very different than the traditional way OEMs have developed vehicles in a linear, progressive process, a process we’ve basically been incrementally improving over the last 120 years or so, where it’s a systems integration process,” Ford Vice Chair John Lawler said at the Deutsche Bank Global Auto Industry Conference. “It’s agile. The engineers do not rely on suppliers for design. They’ll work with suppliers. We go down into the supply base a couple of tiers.”
“We will own the entire electrical architecture. It’s a distributed electrical architecture. We’ll own the software on the modules, the systems integration between the vehicle and the digital architecture and then the experiences that come from that, the pace of development, and then the cost structure. We’re developing those vehicles to be competitive with a return at between $25,000 and $30,000. And the thing is we have people that have done that in the past and they’re doing it for us now.”
The very first model to be underpinned by this new Ford skunkworks EV platform is slated to be a mid-size pickup, as Ford Authority previously reported, and it could be joined by a small crossover and a rideshare vehicle at some point in the future. Those models will be a bit more simplistic in nature in order to keep costs low, with Ford CEO Jim Farley recently confirming that they won’t be sold with things like Level 3 autonomous driving technology.
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Still recklessly spending all this money on EVs that no one will want. And ignoring or backing out of segments that they do. Fantastic plan.
Amen!!!
Thie/these articles seem to be repeated, as there is no real news of what the Skunkworks team has been working on and when in reality it will release a vehicle. Yes, they keep saying 2027 and that’s still a bit away, but nothing to show for at least 3-5 years of work.
They want to release a low-cost EV that won’t have a lot of features in it to compete with the Chinese EVs that Farley himself stated was really advanced. Consumers can’t continue to pay for expensive vehicles, but on the other hand, they also want features in their vehicles. Ford is being left behind and won’t be able to catch up because they aren’t thinking of what people want and are too worried about squeezing every penny out of the consumers.
Instead of selling low volumes at high prices, they need to think about lowering the prices and selling at ton of vehicles. Look at what BYD is doing. Their vehicles aren’t that expensive, they have a ton of features, and they sell a lot of them. This is how they are profitable.
Ford won’t be able to build their EVs for $20-30,000 like they say/want to because they outsource too many parts and become too dependent on other factors and prices are impacted by them. They need to start doing more things in house to control supply and pricing.
If you believe the latest reporting, it seems that Chinese manufacturers are really not profitable, but are just trying to grab market share with artificially low prices.
All Chinese companies are government backed. So maybe not highly profitable but supplemented by the government to keep the doors open and many people employed.
I’ll believe it when I see it. They are spending billions on a market that is essentially stalled for now, but meanwhile their core ICE product is either pared or left to whiter and die.
” left to whiter and die.”
I like my Fords on the “whiter” side too, not dead though.
I like white vehicles also, the whiter the better.