Ford’s Coming New Midsize EV Truck Is Taking Shape In California
The development of its 2027 all-electric pickup is part Ford's next-generation approach to automaking.
The future of Ford’s electric vehicle efforts is taking shape outside the company’s traditional home of Dearborn, Michigan, in a city the company once left long ago: Long Beach, California. Alongside hangars driving the future of both commercial air travel and spaceflight, Ford’s new EV Development Center (EVDC) will serve as the home for the formerly secret skunk works team headed up by Alan Clarke, the ex Tesla engineering head who joined Ford three years ago. Here, the team is currently working on a platform that’ll underpin a slew of future Ford EVs, including an affordable midsize electric pickup truck and compact SUV when it debuts for 2027.
The development work going on at the Long Beach facility, which we had a chance to visit, is designed to turn many of the company’s established automaking processes on its head. Rather than methodically moving a vehicle from concept to production through different design, aerodynamics, packaging, and engineering teams (and often back again as problems arise), Clarke’s team of 350 engineers, designers, and other technical staff are working collaboratively with outposts in Palo Alto, California and Dearborn as they shepherd Ford’s first second-generation EV—which Ford just confirmed is a midsize pickup—into production. The team, which works much like how Clarke’s teams worked at Tesla, places aerodynamicists with designers, closures engineers with chassis engineers, and body engineers with powertrain engineers. The goal, Clarke tells us, is not just to have the team challenge preconceptions and existing constraints, but to also empathize with one another and understand what their challenges are.
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Other advantages are hard fought but no less important. “Sometimes [an advantage] could be, ‘Hey, the function of your part is doing the same thing that mine is doing. Maybe this could be one part.’ So when you start celebrating two people that can delete their job by deleting their part and then they get to both work on that one and make it twice as high quality, the product gets less expensive, and the customer doesn't notice,” Clarke said.
This is especially important given the goals set out for the EVDC team by Ford head Jim Farley: build a low-cost modular EV platform that starts around $25,000, is competitive with both Chinese EV makers and Tesla globally, and produces a profit within a year.
Regardless of the challenge, Clarke seems confident that Ford’s existing EV experience, manufacturing prowess, and newfound agility will prime Ford’s new Long Beach-developed affordable EV for success—even with outside noise about a new Chevrolet Bolt, stripped out Teslas, Slate's $27,000 pickup, and cheap Chinese cars. “I think being first is not necessarily going to win here. I certainly think that investing in the right technologies to get there, the right battery technologies, the right drive unit technologies, the right power electronic technologies, having the right software—you have to have the recipe. You can't just do one thing.”
With Ford set to make a big EV announcement next week—what it calls its “next Model T moment,” we might not have to wait long to see our first glimpse of its new Long Beach-bred 2027 electric pickup.
I generally like writing—especially when it’s about cars—but I hate writing about myself. So instead of blathering on about where I was born (New York City, in case you were wondering) or what type of cars I like (all of ’em, as long as it has a certain sense of soul or purpose), I’ll answer the one question I probably get most, right after what’s your favorite car (see above): How’d you get that job? Luck. Well, mostly. Hard work, too. Lots of it. I sort of fell into my major of journalism/mass communication at St. Bonaventure University and generally liked it a lot. In order to complete my degree senior year, we had to spend our last two semesters on some sort of project. Seeing as I loved cars and already spent a good portion of my time reading about cars on sites such as Motor Trend, I opted to create a car blog. I started a Tumblr, came up with a car-related name (The Stig’s American Cousin), signed up for media access on a bunch of manufacturer’s websites, and started writing. I did everything from cover new trim levels to reviewing my friends’ cars. I even wrote a really bad April Fool’s Day post about the next Subaru Impreza WRX being Toyota-Corolla-based. It was fun, and because it was fun, it never felt like work. Sometime after my blog had gotten off the ground, I noticed that Motor Trend was hiring for what’s now our Daily News Team. I sent in my résumé and a link to my blog. I got the job, and two weeks after graduation I made the move from New York to California. I’ve been happily plugging away at a keyboard—and driving some seriously awesome hardware—ever since.
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