Ford Working On Affordable EVs, Setup A “Skunkworks Team” For New Platform

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Electric vehicles have high price tags and significant tradeoffs. This has made them a tough sell and adoption hasn’t risen as fast as many automakers were hoping.

Of course, it’s hard to blame consumers when the Mustang Mach-E starts at $42,995 while the once affordable F-150 Lightning now begins at $49,995.

Thankfully, Ford is working to address that as they’ve revealed affordable options are on the horizon. During the company’s 2023 earnings presentation, CFO John Lawler said “EVs are here to stay, customer adoption is growing, and their long-term upside is central to Ford+.”

While that’s not surprising to hear, Lawler teased the company is “developing next-generation EVs that are going to surprise customers and be profitable within a year of launch.” He added “the customer insights we’re getting by being an early mover in electric pickups, SUVs, and commercial vehicles are invaluable,” and will help pave the way for future success.

Ford CEO Jim Farley expanded on that by saying “Our next Gen 2 products will be profitable in the first 12 months of their launch” and “We’re going to spend less capital on larger EVs.”

More: Ford Announces Explorer And Aviator EVs, Hints At Bronco And Ranger EVs As Well

He continued by saying, “We’re going to focus those large EVs on geographies and product segments where we have a dominant advantage like trucks and vans. And those products will have breakthrough efficiency compared to our Gen 1 products, and they’re going to be packed with innovations that customers are going to be excited to pay for.”

More interestingly, the executive revealed they “made a bet in silence two years ago” and established a “super-talented skunkworks team to create a low-cost EV platform.” Farley pitched the team as being like a startup within Ford and said they “developed a flexible platform that will not only deploy to several types of vehicles but will be a large installed base for software and services that we’re now seeing at Pro.”

That’s not much to go on, but the executive said “All of our EV teams are ruthlessly focused on cost and efficiency in our EV products because the ultimate competition is going to be the affordable Tesla and … Chinese OEMs.” The executive also suggested they could delay some products given “market realities,” but this has benefits as it enables them to rationalize battery capacity to match demand.

That being said, Farley acknowledged mistakes were made. As he explained, “We learned that as you scale EVs to 5,000 to 7,000 units a month and you move into the early majority customer, they are not willing to pay a significant premium for EVs.”