Ford put out a sleek, well-produced video bragging about how it was putting out a “bounty” on various things to save weight and improve the aerodynamics of its $30,000 electric truck. It’s the “the best part is no part” philosophy, and it extends to concepts as simple as having the small motor that adjusts the mirror double as the motor for sucking the mirrors in when you park, or as complex as replacing hundreds of fastners and pieces with a big “unicast” (I guess gigacasting isn’t the cool term anymore). There’s a lot of predictable, Tesla-or-Rivian-did-it-firstness here about advancements such as zonal architecture, and that’s good. Ford is learning from its predecessors. But there’s also an image here I keep thinking about, and I am intrigued by it.
If you somehow missed it, Ford decided that it was mostly cancelling its big electric vehicle plans and putting its eggs in a “skunkworks” plan for a Universal Electric Vehicle (UEV) platform that could sit under a bunch of different models. This is Ford, so the first vehicle is going to be a truck, given that Ford only makes one single car, and that car kinda needs a V8. With the death of the Escape, Ford also needs something affordable-ish, and that means a $30,000 EV pickup. It’ll have an LFP battery, a cheaper battery chemistry than is in most cars, which means the company has to work a little harder to get the same range.
And work they shall. Here’s how Ford itself describes the process:
Historically, engineers in traditional automotive companies can be siloed in departments that match the component or system they are assigned to. They’re expected to advocate for the part they are working on while decreasing its cost, often without the context of understanding how it impacts the customer’s experience or performance of the vehicle.
For example, the aerodynamics team always wants a lower roof for less aerodynamic drag; the occupant package team wants a higher roof for more headroom, while the interiors team wants to decrease the cabin size to reduce the cost. Usually, these groups negotiate until they find a middle ground, one that inevitably ends in a tradeoff led by yet another department tasked with making tradeoffs on behalf of the customer.
Bounties change the negotiation, making the true cost of a tradeoff much clearer by connecting it to a specific value tied to the range and battery cost. Now, the aerodynamics team and interior team share the same goal, and both understood that adding even 1mm to the roof height would mean $1.30 in additional battery cost or .055 miles of range. With bounties, each team has a common objective to maximize range while decreasing battery cost — a direct linkage to giving our customers more.
That’s fun, and all, but that means a truck that almost certainly does not look like a regular truck. Right? And this image, which may or may not be real, has me wondering what that’s going to be:
There’s a clear delinator marking a bed, so presumably it has one of those. I do think the bed also looks quite small, which makes me think that it probably has a midgate. Is there a flying buttress there? It’s hard to tell. Jason has written about the Ford Bronco Lobo concept, which did have a pretty aggressive flying buttress setup:
I’m not sure this is that, but it does have me wondering. BTW, it’s worth pointing out that our own Adrian Clarke gave us a preview of what it might look like based on Ford’s existing design language and some other hints:
Here’s how Adrian described it:
It’s a safe bet this new truck is not going to be aimed at the heartland F-150 customer, so what do we think it could look like? I’ve written before about how fewer and simpler parts help lower the Bill of Materials (the total cost of all the parts in a car), but here we must deal with the specter of aerodynamics. Aero efficiency is more important for electric vehicles because it makes up something like 80% of their overall efficiency. With ICE vehicles, this number is much lower at around 30%. So even though a truck might not appear to be the most aerodynamic shape, the reality is aero count is gained and lost by things like flushness, sealing, and as few openings as possible. Another factor to consider is that drag doesn’t really come into effect until about 40-50 mph.
I agree, although the potentially misleading aerodynamic graphic below has a way rounder and pod-like nose than you’d expect from a truck. Even the Maverick is fairly slab-nosed.
I guess the Santa Cruz gets away with not having a traditional truck-like front:
Even looking at that, it looks more truck-y than what the Ford truck could look like. Here’s a version of it from Peter:
In this version, which is more expertly done, you get a lot more bed, but maybe at the expense of headroom.
Here’s the full video if you think there’s more here I’m missing:
Again, I don’t have the answers. I’m just asking the question. How weird is this thing going to look? How weird can Ford get away with it looking?
I’m intrigued and excited.
H/T to zestyg in the Autopian Discord!
Top graphic image: Ford
All I want is a 2 door, 2 seat pickup with a 4×8 foot bed, that you don’t need to climb into. I don’t care about creature comforts or anything like that. I just want basic function.
Ford already sells that – even comes with plain steel wheels. Almost nobody buys it but it is still for sale.
(Ford F-150 XL, regular cab, 4×2, 8 foot bed)
More options available over at the commercial vehicle page.
Even has vinyl floor, (split) bench seat, and column shifter.
Oh, wait, it doesn’t come in brown with manual windows, manual trans, and sealed beam headlamps, though. No buy.
Electric? News to me. Got a link?
Mike made no mention of powertrain is his comment.
I know. You didn’t mention a powertrain in your comment either. Hence my excitement. Thought I missed something.
One would assume it was inferred that we’re talking electric trucks when the article is about Ford’s new electric truck at the 30k price point. Unless stated otherwise in a more direct manner by the original poster Mikebola.
If you can’t tell I’m new…lurked around here for a while though.
And FYI that Ford that they already sell ticks all the boxes except for ease of access. All the new trucks are tall and so high that you can’t reach over the bed like older models. I’d bet that’s why he mentioned it so specifically. Because it doesn’t really exist anymore regardless of it’s powertrain. Not sure if you’ve had experience with old single cab trucks.
No harm meant and I realize this comment might come off as snarky…don’t take it that way.
I’m familiar with trucks back to the 70’s. Yes, late model trucks have become annoyingly tall – especially 4wd versions. 2wd versions aren’t to bad. The solution for a truck that is going to be used for work is a flatbed or utility bed.
Regular cab electric trucks simply aren’t going to happen. Even in gas trucks regular cabs are only 3 % of sales. For full size trucks a regular cab still makes sense because 3% of 850k is still 25k trucks a year and that tooling can pay back. A truck like the Maverick that sells 200k a year that is only 6k trucks – the tooling will never pay back. An EV selling 50k a year – forget about it
Zonal Architecture is so last century. Seriously Ford did it before Tesla even existed. The Ford, Lincoln and Jaguar cars on the DEW98 platform used zonal architecture.
Ah, but “the cloud” wasn’t part of the digital infrastructure infographic back then!
That’s fun, and all, but that means a truck that almost certainly does not look like a regular truck. Right?
Ute? Maybe a Ute?
If only Ford had a previous ute that they just happened to recently renew the naming rights for…
Giving me old Maxell advert vibes.
For a second I thought you meant the “New Good Maxwell” marketed by Walter P. Chrysler when he took over Maxwell Motir Company. Marketed as such to distinguish it from the old, not-very-good Maxwell that had a tendency to break its rear axle. “We’re not making cars like we used to when we sucked” is a helluva self-own advertising campaign.
Though it worked for Maxwell, which morphed into Chrysler. Maybe Stellantis needs to bring the slogan back?
https://books.google.com/books?id=8ylaAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA191#v=onepage&q&f=false
The front is probably flatter than those air streamlines would mislead you to believe. The front air stagnation point tends to make the outer streamlines (the ones seen in the visualization) take a more rounded path. There’s probably some styling tricks that can be done to make a rounder nose appear more squared off than it is.
check out the Dodge Charger “R wing” structure between the grill and the hood. very clever.
The options I imagine to resolve the lines as shown are either generically bland or awkwardly milquetoast unless they go with something that’s aesthetically (loosely) inspired by the Raptor T1+.
All they are all fluff these days, huh?
Their useless CEO has relegated one of the oldest carmakers to being a
cartruck company that relies on Apple-levels of gimmicks and marketing bullshit. None of the stuff they’ve mentioned or alluded to is new. These massive castings have been around for many years. Tesla and GM were early adopters but now, years later, Ford is going to start using them, so they act like they invented the technology and idea.This unibody-like pickup is simply a Silverado EV shrunken down to Maverick levels. I’ll give them credit for that. I do hope Chevy releases a small EV pickup, but even this idea isn’t exactly new since Slate has been showing their $25k pickup for a few years now.
I know it’s been a long year, but I’m pretty sure the Slate wasn’t revealed until late March last year (or maybe April?).
Feels like an eternity ago, but yeah, you are right. It was in April of 2025, but they had been running cammo’ed prototypes of their truck around LA for a while before that. They’ve been around since 2022.
They were on the whiteboard in Summer 2022. That’s not remotely the same as what “they’ve been showing off a truck for years” implies.
“Showing for a few years now” isn’t an achievement.
Aptera needs this reminder.
Nor is it true.
I don’t personally care if a truck has a blunt/upright front end, but part of me thinks that average truck buyers do, even if we’re talking about potential buyers for something that’s not supposed to overlap with the F-150 at all. I will say that car-based AWD would be both usefull and a selling point (to make it seem more capable, even though most will never leave pavement). I know a single cab and longer bed is probably too much to ask for or expect, but if the bed is shorter than the Mavericks, Ford’s gonna have a tough time selling it as a ‘truck.’
I also know that if some theoretical/base-to-be-available-in-the-future) version manages to MSRP for $29,999. the reality is that Ford dealers will add $10K to the price for the first couple of years if it’s any good, just as they did for the Maverick. Maybe Ford will find a way to sell it direct to customers online somehow, though of course the powers-that-be frown upon such things.
If it were to be such a breakout hit (surely there will be a “reservation program” soon, and if Ford did figure out a way to sell it direct, then Ford would be adding the $10k themselves. Exactly the same way they did with the Maverick and the Lightning. Announce a ludicrously low price that they know they can’t sustain or actually make money on, then bump it up significantly and fast once all the free marketing based on the price point is harvested.
Then their dealer network adds 10k to the sticker plus 4k in door edge guards that “are already on the truck and we can’t remove them.”
And then “the market has spoken, obviously nobody wants an affordable small EV”…
My life involves a fair bit of parking lots. I’d rather have a sloped front end. I drive an F450 at work. It sucks anywhere but the open road or rural situations. I’m not dailying a big square pickup or SUV. Life is too short for that.
Seems a similar ethos to the once promised but never delivered Fusion Active crossover back in the 2010s (see the Chinese market Ford Evos for what it actually would have been) – occupy what Ford calls the “white space” between existing automotive architectures. I’m excited too.
You know, an entry-level truck becomes sort of exempt from the “I need to pull a trailer on a road trip twice a year” use case that EV trucks have so much trouble with.
You wanna do that, just buy an F-150. You don’t need to, you can buy this one.
Good comment. Like if you don’t like the show, change the channel. I am very interested in this trucky
To be fair the need for a trailer increases inversely relative to the size and weight capacity of the bed.
Big bed and high payload: Less need for a trailer.
Small bed and low payload: Greater need for a trailer.
For that reason logically this pickup will likely have a passthrough.
If I were Ford I’d give the work version an optional “panel van” treatment by deleting the rear door windows and rear seats, then add a bed extension that takes up the space previously occupied by the rear seats. That way you get the 2 door long bed dimensions with the same chassis.
EVs are great for towing in town where you don’t need to charge until after you detach the trailer, but currently 99.99% of EV chargers are built into pull in parking spots instead of the drive through style I’ve seen at every gas station ever.
My unscientific therefore 100% correct wild guess is that the actually-towing-stuff to saying-they-need-to-tow-stuff ratio approaches zero among people who buy trucks as their daily (excluding people who use their trucks for work, like contractors and farmers etc).
The number of times I see a non-work truck towing anything is infinitesimally small.
It’s a low percentage to be certain, but so is hauling stuff in the bed.
It’s a balance of capability and practicality.
If you have to rent a truck or pay someone to tow and or haul something for you it’s not as practical (especially with how expensive it can be)
If you live in the city and parking is not only rare, but it’s also a PITA (parallel parking in particular) then towing and or hauling probably isn’t high on the practicality scale.
I personally prefer smaller cars and smaller pickups. However I got a Ram 1500 Crew Cab 6’4″ Bed Big Horn with the 6 seat interior, 3.0L I6, and height adjustable air suspension on order.
Why?
Because I’ll be hauling horses at least once a year, I got 95lb dog that looks like a black lab, an Irish Wolfhound, a godson who is 2 and his mother.
The Truck will get a camper shell put on the back and a nice mattress pad for the Irish Wolfhound to stay cozy (the truck has a sliding rear window so it’ll get heat in the bed as well), the Giant Black Lab will get to sit in the middle front seat or take up both front passenger seats, and lay his head on my lap while I drive, there will be room for the baby, mother, and one more passenger in the back. It’ll suck to park around town, and any sort of tight maneuvers, but I live out in the country now, with a 35 minute commute, 15 minutes on washboard gravel roads, 20 minutes on a 70 MPH highway, and all at 7500ft+ of elevation.
And I can use the Truck without a trailer to haul hay for the horses and firewood for the wood stove.
Everything is a tradeoff, and frankly I feel that the Ram was the best balance of Comfort, Towing, Hauling, and general practicality compared to the other Trucks on the market.
I was considering a Maverick Tremor and having the horses moved to where they needed to go by dedicated horse haulers, but the back seat would have been small for the baby and the Big Black Lab, either resulting in the dog being in the footwell, or taking up both rear seats, either way meaning no comfortable way for anyone else to ride in the pickup.
> I’ll be hauling horses at least once a year, I got 95lb dog that looks like a black lab, an Irish Wolfhound, a godson who is 2 and his mother.
> The Truck will get a camper shell put on the back and a nice mattress pad for the Irish Wolfhound to stay cozy
The horse trailer counts as farm use in my super scientific survey 🙂
Now we need pics of the Irish wolfhound. I love those giant gangly shaggy dogs.
I call him the House Horse, no countertop is safe
Nay.
Calling it now: a Ranchero style car/truck with Probe derived styling for the front end- you know, the vehicle that was always their advanced aero concept.
In the line drawing, I’m not really seeing space for a conventionally-hinged rear door. I wonder if it’s a reverse-hinged door (we can’t say “suicide door” anymore, I’m told) like the extended cabs of the 90’s/2000s.
“Coach doors” is an acceptable and less-alarming term.
Aerodynamics and pickup trucks… Great until you have something in the bed. Just make the thing cheap and be able to drive around town for the people that need something like that. Tons of trades begging for cheap trucks and vans. I’m surprised they haven’t picked up the side mirror fight yet. The way things are going Toyota could figure out how to get the imv in the us and it would be the number 1 seller if it was cheap. I’m not sure if people really want a jelly bean truck but they don’t want a weird triangle one either. Squares are safe.
Well there is a generation of Ford trucks referred to as the Jelly Bean, they were a huge success despite the Aero influenced design, though they did walk back the styling to something more “truck like”. Note I do say despite as there were a ton of other advancements that gave the truck even wider appeal than its predecessor.
Trucks with faces not even a mother could love.
While I can’t say I love the face they are good hard working trucks that were a significant leap in many ways vs their predecessors and ushered in significant changes in the truck segment. It introduced what is now the default pickup, the 1/2 ton crew cab short bed.
I still think they should’ve used that cab and nose up to the F350 like they had up to that point. One-tons, especially 4WD, used to have a wiry look to them, a bit awkward when new but now looking like an old man who’s been to busy doing farm work since he was preschool age to worry about teh gainz, while the ones made since look like gym rats.
While the looks are subjective I’m happy that the Super Duty went its own way and didn’t get the smaller cab of the Jelly Bean. I say this as one who owns both.
“or as complex as replacing hundreds of fastners and pieces with a big “unicast””
Ah yes, this is code for ‘the slightest fender bender will total the truck’…
No thanks.
Word, dude. Then will battery mitigation become a business? Vehicles totalled due to the bigcasting ™ then donate stuff? Interesting junkyard possibilities.
Replace the hundreds of varyingly complex metal parts with one extremely complex metal part! Now that’s saving on cost per unit!
To be frank, this is becoming the standard. I got a decent sized dent in the extended cab part of my 94 Toyota like 10 years back, local body shop wanted to cut out that half of the extended cab, weld a new half a cab where the old one went, and repaint it. No pulling the dent whatsoever.
If body shops won’t pull dents and do other you know, BODY WORK. Then it makes sense to just have cheap replacement panels and parts.
That’s one reason I think the F-150’s aluminum body makes a ton of sense, as with small dents and scratches you don’t have to worry about the body rusting away, and for larger stuff you buy a new panel and the old one is near infinitely recyclable.
If you make enough Unicasts at a low enough price point and make the rest of the chassis durable enough that it’s not compromised by the failure of some of the unicasts from an accident, then I’d argue it’s better.
However that’s not the case, and likely won’t ever be the case, especially with insurance companies totaling cars because they don’t want to pay out for repairs.
You’d think the engineers already had that bounty system already baked into the “this is how we do things around here” manual given to new hires. It is certainly a superior system to what the finance departments demand: more profits at all cost.
You assume they have a “This is how we do things around here” manual. No such thing existed as of 2014, something tells me they haven’t rectified that.
I replied, check it out, i think we agree
I used to call it Hire and Forget. Hire an overconfident, fresh graduate, point vaguely at the target, tell them to seek mentoring from coworkers who have the interpersonal skills of a brick as well as their own crap to get done and come back weeks later wondering why the newbie hasn’t made much progress.
Corporate culture is a thing everywhere. People leave the building but the attitude doesn’t. Towns, cities, corporations, local food pantry
Have they considered asking their customers to lose weight?
From Tenacious D’s drive thru skit (lyrics retrieved from AZlyrics.com):
“Take the six nuggets and throw two of them away
I’m just wantin’ a four nugget thing
I’m tryin’ to watch my calorie intake”
“They come in six or twelve pieces, sir”
“Put two of them up your a**
And give me four Chicken McNuggets”
“[?]”
“Then, can I have a Junior Western Bacon Chee?
A Junior Western Bacon Chee, I’m tryin’ to watch my figure”
That’s the customer Ford is targeting.
This took me back in the best way
The same customer that can do a cock pushup then. Not those limp F series drivers.
Based on the wind tunnel part of the video I think the back of the cab is going to be pretty raked back like the Ioniq 9 is. I have no idea how curvy the front with be based on this video.
https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/2026-hyundai-ioniq-9-102-685c323f5c8b5.jpg?crop=0.692xw:0.584xh;0.0731xw,0.314xh&resize=1200:*
Ford Probe – pickup edition.
Ford – “We’re putting bounties on weight to really make this thing the most efficient it can be.”
Colin Chapman – “Hell yeah!”
Ford – “We’re trying to hit a target of 4 tons.”
Chapman – “Wait no wtf?!”
That’s only what, 8000 pounds? The Hummer EV, that was over 9000. If you can’t invoke a meme over the weight, it’s a lightweight EV truck.
…did they actually say 4 tons, or are we in the realm of hyperbole? I assume the latter just because of Ford’s talk about it having a relatively small battery, only being “mid-sized”, etc. But I can’t feel sure. Stuff like Rivian’s R1S, that’s 7000 lbs curb weight (glancing at Wikipedia).
With the F-150 Lightning’s numbers ranging 6-7k* lbs, I would 100% believe 2-3 tons.
*(I apologize for use of a contemporary “funny number”)
It’s a joke about putting a “bounty” on weight for a modern car that weighs a bunch. The idea being that someone from the past who espoused the benefits of lightweight vehicles would be truly shocked that such a philosophy could still result in a truck weighing multiple tons.
as in, just goofing around lol
It will look better than a Cybertruck
Well some research would work
What do you mean? I’m guessing one of his numerous kids thought it was pretty cool. What more research do you need?
It doesn’t take much research, seeing as just about anything looks better than a Cybertruck. It’s a safer bet than government bonds.
low bar
And considering it’ll almost certainly have electric external door handles that’s also an improvement over the Cybertruck’s no external door handles.
An extremely low bar.
I wonder if it’ll have height adjustable air suspension like the Cybertruck though, I’d argue that makes more sense on BEVs when it comes to aerodynamic gains than electric door handles.
A Geely Beauty Leopard looks better than a Cybertruck
Adrian’s beloved Rodius looks better than a CT.
How much lighter could it be with only 2 doors instead of 4? Please investigate, Ford…..
If you remove them after you buy it? Probably 160lbs, 170 if one of the doors removed is the driver door
It looks like a potential Ranchero.
In a sop to the streamlined design they may call it the Ranchaero.
Ford engineers are now hunting “bounties” to reduce the mass of their new truck?
This Is The Weigh.
Take your smiley.
hope they don’t make it too weird: Of all the funky small trucks that have come out in the last 20 years, only the Maverik has seen commercial success…and its not because it didn’t look like a truck.
Soooo, they are admitting they screwed the pooch on the maverick by turning it into (checks Yahoo) $30,000 truck? SMH. Oh like americans “forgot” about not having affordable vehicles available to them https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/sedans-cars-trucks-detroit-afb034ee?gaa_at=eafs&gaa_n=AWEtsqfaesjIfYe7ckATU5vqEt-i3F5WnO1k272xfMKpbH7MhfCnrIvAm7hnDIQCwwQ%3D&gaa_ts=6994f0e9&gaa_sig=dRRou5Mm99l2-j4vEgOYihr7_FYSQGy5GZJnRU2d07xfPsJJKkHQkQR4o14FE3DFLnucRkUrqils5oo68V53Fw%3D%3D
GTFO FORD
Nah customers turned the Maverick into a $30K truck. Seriously, people wanted them so badly that dealers were still unable to get enough trucks to put one in every customer’s hands that were willing to pay the $7500 (at least around here) ADP. So yeah the early customers showed Ford what the market price was and they adjusted their price accordingly so they got the money instead of the dealers.
Ah yes, this is why Nintendo should raise console prices to match scalpers after the first batch goes out. This would be a reasonable and sustainable pricing model and not the symptom of a serious distribution problem, unfair business practices, victim-blaming consumers for allowing themselves to be ripped off…
You’re free to disagree with the comparison, but I don’t think it’s controversial to say it’s not a flattering defense/excuse for Ford raising prices long-term.
Ford is supply limited on the Maverick even after increasing capacity twice. Why would they not charge what people are willing to pay?
I definitely think there are some significant differences between the Nintendo scalpers and the Maverick. At the start there might have been some parallels but the fact is that the Maverick scalpers (dealers) were able to keep charging that ADP long after introduction. On the Video game front there are those that are willing to spend big money to be the first on the block but that market quickly evaporates.
It was Ford’s fault mostly. XL Hybrids made up 80% of orders, Ford made them 20% of production for the first few years, even though they said they hybrid engine was the “standard” drivetrain.
Last I read a couple years ago it was 60% of orders and 40% of production.
Then shitty dealers being allowed to be shitty were Ransoming or outright selling peoples orders to other people after months, and sometimes years of waiting.
If I were Ford I’d have a hotline dedicated to shit like this happening, investigators to confirm that it actually happened, then said dealerships moved to the back of the line for allocations for a given vehicle anytime this happened.
You ransom or ADM a Maverick unjustly? Your dealership is now 2831st in line for Maverick Allocations. Only way you move up in the line is other dealerships doing the same shit after you, because now they’re moved to the back of the line. Either way you’re fucked.
Demote them in the ‘dealerships near you’ search function on your site too while you’re at it.
I’ve had mostly good experiences with dealerships, but I would declare war against a dealership that fucked me out of my order.
I agree that Ford should have done something to stop and/or punish those dealers who sold vehicles out from people who ordered them, or changed the price of an ordered vehicle once it showed up on the lot.
The fact is that the Maverick represented a new market segment (At least in modern history) with no good history to be able to predict total demand or model mix. So they went conservative with sales projections and correspondingly the number of parts ordered from suppliers and allocations of in-house parts.
Meanwhile on the F-150 and to a lesser extent the Ranger most people ponied up the money for the more powerful engine(s). Even on the platform mate Escape the Hybrid take rate wasn’t real high. The production line mate the Bronco Sport was also exceeding sales predictions so Ford wasn’t really in a position to ramp up production in the short term. Even as they added additional shifts and were able to secure an every increasing supply of components they still had trouble meeting demand. So I can’t really fault Ford for adjusting pricing to take those profits back in house instead of giving it away to the dealers.