Ford is betting its electric future on the “Universal Electric Vehicle Platform,” a new way of making cars that debuts in a $30,000 midsize pickup truck. It’s an ambitious price tag and an appealing proposition, but Ford has shared very little about what that truck will be or look like.
On Thursday, CEO Jim Farley gave a brief update on the project’s progress on social media. That included a bit more on how exactly the company plans to radically simplify manufacturing and reduce the number of parts needed to build a car.
“Ford will use large unicastings for the first time on the Universal EV Platform,” he said. “The radically simplified aluminum unicastings condense over 146 parts into two, and enable the assembly tree method at the Louisville Assembly Plant.”
Ford has mentioned the use of large castings before. But the specifics of condensing well over 100 parts into two seem to be new.
Ford Universal EV Platform Pickup
Photo by: Ford
Tesla pioneered these kinds of large structural parts in the Model Y—it calls them “gigacastings”—that eliminate the need for countless welds and rivets. Now others are taking a similar approach. Volvo’s new EX60 EV, for example, is its first to use a large single casting for the rear structure of the vehicle.
Those large pieces are central to Ford’s novel “assembly tree” approach, where an EV is assembled in three sections that are then combined at the end of the line. They’re also key for slashing manufacturing complexity and cost, which the automaker has said is a priority for the UEV project. According to Farley, the Universal EV Platform is meant to match the production costs of BYD’s made-in-Mexico EVs.
A teaser of Ford’s midsize electric pickup truck.
Photo by: Ford
Ford has said its upcoming EV will use 20% fewer parts overall and 25% fewer fasteners, as compared with a conventionally made vehicle. On Thursday, Farley also said his team is “spending countless hours getting every last drop of aero efficiency on the mid-size electric pickup.”
That tracks with what Ford has described as a ruthless approach to minimizing drag, thereby boosting efficiency and range. Doug Field, Ford’s chief EV, digital and design officer, elaborated on his approach in an interview with Wired not too long ago. His takeaway was pretty fascinating:
Field’s team also focused on cutting aerodynamic drag to the absolute minimum, to use battery energy most efficiently. A reduction of “one count [0.01] of Cd [drag coefficient] is worth $25 of battery,” he said. “I’m obsessed by this,” Field told WIRED.
It all sounds promising, and like a big step forward over Ford’s earlier EV efforts. And for Ford’s sake, it had better work. The Blue Oval canceled the F-150 Lightning and some other future EVs, so a lot is riding on the Universal EV Platform and this midsize truck.
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