Ford turns to Formula 1 and gets bonuses to build a $30,000 electric truck

Ford promises to deliver an electric truck next year at a starting price of $30,000 that can compete with Chinese automakers without undermining profit margins. A combination of 3D-printed Lego-like parts, Formula 1 thinking and a rewards program will help the company achieve that goal, Ford said Tuesday.

You will have to. Ford took a $19.5 billion loss in December and ended production of its battery-powered F-150 Lightning electric vehicle. This new electric vehicle business strategy cannot afford to collapse.

Ford’s bet on a range of affordable electric vehicles began several years ago with a skunkworks team led by Alan Clark, a 12-year Tesla veteran. Parts of its plan were unveiled last August, when Ford said it would ditch its traditional moving assembly line and invest $2 billion in its Louisville plant to adopt a new production system that promises to speed up manufacturing by 15%.

The company said at the time that its line of electric vehicles would be built on a global platform containing aluminum one-piece monocoques — large components molded as one piece to remove parts and allow faster assembly — and lithium iron phosphate batteries with technology licensed from Chinese company CATL.

Ford is now sharing more details in a series of blogs and social media posts about how it will deliver on its promise of a desirable electric truck that will be $20,000 cheaper than the average new vehicle while still turning a profit. Ford did not share specifications such as range, features or charging times for this future electric vehicle. But it revealed its plans to build lighter, cheaper and more efficient electric cars made with fewer parts.

It all starts with the Universal EV Platform, or UEV. The platform will support a midsize truck first, then could support a sedan, crossover, three-row SUV, and even small commercial trucks, according to Clark. The UEV is Ford’s first electric vehicle built from the ground up, marking a strategic shift for the company, which has built the Mustang Mach-E and Lightning EVs using existing infrastructure and manufacturing practices.

“It is a platform built on efficiency,” Clark said in a press conference with the media. “It’s built on affordability to be able to make long-distance electric vehicle travel accessible to more people.”

To achieve this, Clark set out to create a new culture cultivated by talent from Formula 1 and companies such as Apple, Lucid Motors, Rivian and Tesla, as well as Auto Motive Power, a startup acquired by Ford in 2023. The team, which has about 450 people at its base in Long Beach, Calif., and 200 people in an office in Palo Alto, has also adopted a rewards program to help engineers understand how their daily decisions impact the customer and the company. The final product, Clark said in an interview with reporters.

The focus of the reward program was efficiency. Digital metrics are mapped to every aspect of the UEV, including vehicle mass, aerodynamic drag, and even specific parts of the vehicle. In practical terms, this means that Ford may decide to use a more expensive part if it helps reduce the weight of the electric vehicle, thus making it more efficient and cost-effective.

“We’ve been very focused on making sure that the cost we pass on of the product doesn’t diminish its value,” Clark said. One example is that even the base trim of an electric truck will have a power-folding mirror, a premium feature on most vehicles, because it reduces aerodynamic drag, according to Clark. The company saved money by using one motor instead of two to handle adjusting and folding the mirror.

This obsession with efficiency included a team of former Formula 1 engineers who worked closely with Ford’s design team. The result, according to Ford, is an electric midsize truck that is 15 percent more aerodynamically efficient than any other pickup truck on the market today.

This team of former Formula 1 engineers used 3D printed and machined parts to create a Lego-like design for their concept car. Thousands of 3D printed components, which are accurate to fractions of a millimeter from Ford’s simulations and can be replaced in minutes, were used to measure aerodynamics. These Lego-like prototypes were used in wind tunnel testing early — and often — to measure aerodynamics, a process Ford has traditionally used only when the car’s design was nearing completion.

The natural place of focus was the battery, which can account for about 40% of a vehicle’s total expenses. A lighter, more efficient vehicle allows Ford to use a smaller battery, reducing cost. The end result, according to Clark, will be an electric truck with about 15% more range, or 50 miles, than a gas-powered pickup truck.

The efficiency push also led the team to adopt manufacturing methods adopted and popularized by Tesla, including the use of monocoque aluminum and the transition from a 12-volt system to a 48-volt power system that will be used in some of the car’s functions.

Ford has also changed its UEV electric vehicle architecture, taking a regional approach similar to Tesla and Rivian. Instead of scattering dozens of electronic control units (ECUs), or computers, throughout the vehicle, Ford has consolidated the vehicle’s many functions into five main units. This reduces complexity, cost and copper use, and helps make an EV truck’s wiring harness 4,000 feet shorter and 22 pounds lighter than one of the first-generation electric vehicles, according to Lucas Di Tullio, a software engineer at Ford who previously worked at Auto Motive Power.

The company has implemented the same philosophy with its power electronic components, finding ways to share components and reduce parts through a single unit that manages power distribution, battery management and delivers AC power to a customer’s home during an outage, Di Tullio said.

Ford also developed its own software for the five major ECUs, down to the application layer, according to Clark. Since Ford owns the software — to the lowest level — it has become very portable, Clark said.

“Other than being able to control the infotainment system and what appears on the screens, [and] “How you interact with the car, all the body controls are then directly linked,” he said. “So you can imagine that many experiences that could only be created by coupling all the different sensors around the car are now at our fingertips and under our control.”