Ford says it will roll out a cheaper electric pickup truck : NPR

Ford CEO, Jim Farley, speaks at the Louisville assembly plant in Louisville, Ky., August 11.

Darron Cummings / AP

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Darron Cummings / AP

Ford is betting on several billion dollars on electric vehicles.

Monday morning, at the Louisville assembly plant in Kentucky, Ford managers announced that they plan to reorganize the factory so that they could deploy an intermediate van in the $ 30,000 range in the 18 months.

It would not only be cheap for an electric vehicle, but at a competitive price for a truck – period. Ford’s clean F-150 Lightning and the Chevrolet Silverado EV both start at around $ 50,000. Among their competitors, the Tesla Cybertruck starts at more than $ 62,000, and the cheapest rivian is more than $ 70,000. On the gas side, the medium gas Ford Ranger and fueled by gas starts at $ 35,000.

This is not the first time that Ford has grown big on electric vehicles. The Lightning, a full-size pick-up, was an ambitious vehicle when it made its debut in 2022, but Ford never managed to earn money on it. It is a similar story with the Mustang Mach-E. The plans for a large electric SUV stopped in 2024.

Now, Ford pivots towards slightly smaller and much cheaper electric vehicles – and the fact that the American electric vehicle industry faces important opposite winds, including the efforts of the Trump administration to find policies that promote electric vehicles and fight on climate change in general.

During Monday’s event, Ford leaders did not argue that the future was clean or green or ecological. Instead, a word reigned the day: affordable.

This has long been the goal for a number of car manufacturers: a Really Affordable EV – The one that competes with petrol fueled cars with regard to the price of initial sticker, without taking into account in government grants or savings not to use petrol. And, no less details, it must also be profitable for businesses.

Chinese car manufacturers have cracked this code, and Western car manufacturers are painfully aware of the need to catch up. Tesla teases a cheaper vehicle for years, and CEO Elon Musk says it happens this year. Chevrolet is about to bring the chevy bolt to the price of a good deal.

And at a price of $ 30,000, Ford thinks that it can unlock a wide range of buyers who are not tempted by the more expensive EVs available at the moment. “It is a radically better proposal for some customers, who charge at home, do not travel long distances, less than 300 miles,” said CEO Jim Farley after the event.

The Ford plan focuses on the considerable simplification of the vehicle and dividing it into three distinct parts, which will be built in parallel and then combined together.

It’s always ambitious. “There are risks,” said Farley. “The automotive industry has a cemetery strewn with affordable vehicles that have been launched in our country with all good intentions. And they collapsed.”

But after having canceled its large electric SUV and very recently by delaying a next generation of full -scale trucks and vans, Ford organized this splashing event in Louisville to indicate that it goes forward – really – with this project.

Political Volers, World Realities

Technically, what Ford has announced is not only a single vehicle, but a vehicle platform, which will ultimately be adapted to a variety of vehicles which are all built in the same way. They will be assembled in Kentucky with batteries of lithium iron phosphate at a lower cost of a Ford battery plant in Marshall, Michigan. In total, it is an investment of $ 5 billion for Ford.

The Kentucky factory, which is currently manufacturing the Ford Escape and Lincoln Corsair, will end for renovations and the restailling and will reopen with 2,200 jobs, 600 people less than it currently uses. (Farley said there will be no layoffs.) The Marshall factory, which had faced an uncertain future, should now open its doors with some 1,700 jobs created.

It may seem a strange moment for a business to boast of a large EV project. President Trump, who followed a campaign promise, systematically dismantled the incentives and regulations that have prompted car manufacturers to make more electric vehicles. The demand for cars fueled by battery has become lower than the expectations of the manufacturers, and with federal tax credits expired at the end of September, this trend should slow even more.

But Farley has been clear for years now that having electric vehicles at a competitive price is an existential priority for Ford – and for other car manufacturers.

Chinese car manufacturers are growing on markets around the world with attractive electric vehicles at a competitive price. If the manufacturers of the world’s world established cannot compete, they could end up with a share in narrowing of the world car market.

Addressing journalists after the event on Monday, Farley said that in certain aspects of engineering, it is impossible to compete with companies like Byd, the Chinese electric vehicle giant. “Their batteries will be cheaper than ours,” he said. “They have 120,000 engineers power. We got 1,200.” Left without mention: Super fast battery load, flashy technology of vehicles and important government subsidies from the Chinese government.

But, he said, Ford could be more effective for the car to need less battery that its Chinese competitors. “The only way to compete with them is innovation,” he said. “And that’s what we did. It’s our bet.”

Is it possible?

Farley used the word “bet” intentionally, clearly indicating that there is no guarantee of success. The manufacture of vehicles at budgetary prices is a challenge that has already defeated the automakers of Detroit, and the history of Ford with EVS includes many false departures and lost money. In a nod to these past challenges, Ford managers have repeatedly declared that the new vehicle should be “durable” – a reference not to the environmental advantages of electric vehicles but to the need for the car to be sustainable as a business proposal.

And, at risk of euphemism, companies do not always make their initial price objectives; The F-150 Lightning and the Cybertruck were both promised for the first time at $ 40,000, a price they have never reached.

Sam Abuelsamid, Vice-President of Market Studies of the Company of the Automobile Insistence Company, said that although there is no guarantee that Ford can succeed, the new price objective is “plausible”.

“Most of what we know so far on what Ford does is not entirely new” for the VE industry, “he said. Ford plans to reduce costs and complexity using a small number of very large metallic parts for the body of a truck, instead of a large number of small pieces; It is an innovation that Tesla was launched. He will use the battery as a structural component of the car; Tesla and Chinese manufacturers have done that too. There are tested history for these strategies; What is new is for a large brand inherited to implement them together.

The vehicle itself is still rather mysterious. There was no prototype on stage inside the Louisville stifling assembly plant and no photos on the screen. Instead, Farley was standing next to a classic Model T truck when he called the new vehicle for a moment “Model T” for the company.

And although he made promises on high -tech and future characteristics, managers have also told the factory workers that they could look forward to a more commonplace of the investment of $ 2 billion: when the factory will reopen next year, said Bryce Currie, VP Ford, it would have soaked temperate air – and a much cooler temperature.