Everything at Ford’s “skunkworks” platform in Long Beach, California, was designed so that its elite engineering team could design a new line of electric vehicles that broke convention. Still, after years of experimentation, the automaker is trying to reinvent a format it didn’t get right the first time: the pickup truck.
Inside a maze of imposing buildings thousands of miles from Ford’s headquarters in Dearborn, Michigan, designers and engineers are working to simplify and speed development of what the company says will be a stylish, lightweight plug-in pickup truck with a starting price of $30,000.
This is not an “F-150 Lightning 2.0”. This time, the automaker says it is trying to revamp its electric vehicle strategy to finally convince the polarized American public that electrification remains the future of transportation, as long as it is combined with a low price, attractive design and useful in-cabin technology. The model is based on Ford’s first EV platform designed from the ground up, but the company doesn’t sell that as its main differentiator — even in times of soaring gas prices.
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“People shouldn’t care about the powertrain in this case, they should care about the fact that it’s the best vehicle to drive every day,” said Alan Clarke, a former Tesla Inc. engineer who joined the automaker in 2022 to lead the project. “And then, okay, fourth or fifth on the list comes the fact that it saves you money on fuel.”
It remains to be seen whether pickup truck buyers will be willing to bet again on Ford and another electric pickup truck, even if it offers better range.
The share of EVs in the American market has fallen by half since President Donald Trump last year withdrew consumer incentives to buy electric cars, which he pejoratively described as part of the “green new scam.” Ford’s electric vehicle sales plummeted 70% in the first quarter after the company ended production of its low-demand F-150 Lightning and today offers just one electric model — the Mustang Mach-E, introduced five years ago.
In December, Ford said it would record $19.5 billion in charges related to underperforming EV assets. Its top electric vehicle executive, Doug Field, announced last month that he will leave the company.
Inside the Skunkworks
Although Ford last week allowed visitors into its secretive “skunkworks” operation for the first time last week, the company is not yet ready to reveal the pickup itself. Instead, as reporters were guided from one building to another, a small pickup truck covered in black and white camouflage emerged from a dark tent and sped by. Photos were not permitted, and tour participants had their cell phone camera lenses covered with tape as they entered the facility.
Ford has been more transparent in explaining how it is trying to squeeze every penny of cost out of what it calls its Universal Electric Vehicle (UEV) platform. “The best part is no part” became the rallying cry of the 350-person team that designed Ford’s UEV to be lighter, more aerodynamic and electrically efficient — capable of running further on a charge and still starting at $20,000 below the average cost of a new car in the United States. This mantra comes directly from Clarke’s former employer, where CEO Elon Musk encouraged the Tesla team to do the same.
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Clarke, a tall, youthful-looking engineer dressed in a black leather bomber jacket, jeans and red and white Nike Air Jordan high-tops, has dedicated most of his career to making electric vehicles a mass product. At Tesla, he led the advanced development of several of the automaker’s models, including the best-selling Model Y and the angular Cybertruck.
To simplify the number of parts at Ford, Clarke instituted something he calls a “bounty culture,” which rewards engineers for finding innovative ways to reduce weight and cost. The result is a vehicle that is 15% more aerodynamic in the wind tunnel and takes 40% less time to produce. According to Ford, it is substantially lighter than rival EVs because it uses just two large aluminum structural parts, compared to 146 structural parts used in the company’s Maverick compact pickup truck.
The company internalized much of the design process and began to depend less on external suppliers. This means that instead of waiting three months for a prototype part from a supplier, Ford can manufacture a test part in just a few weeks. This allows UEV engineers to test more variations of, for example, a seat design.
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“This allows us to come up with a lot of silly ideas that end up being big ideas that we can take to market,” explained Scott Anderson, senior seating manager who works in the finishing lab, surrounded by foam blocks and fabric samples.
When Ford set out to design an affordable electric vehicle four years ago, it intended to develop a more mainstream model, similar to the “slipstream” SUV style that has become the most popular format for electric cars. But when he presented the idea in consumer research, he realized that a “more of the same” EV wouldn’t win over skeptical buyers.
Then, two years ago, the automaker changed course and decided to return to the pickup truck, but create a much smaller and more affordable model than the F-150 Lightning plug-in pickup truck, which was already on the market facing lukewarm reception. It wasn’t an easy decision.
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“We suffered, we suffered a lot,” Clarke said in an interview. “It’s very easy to make something ‘vanilla’, it’s easy to make a washing machine, a toaster. It’s very difficult to make something that, in the end, affects people’s emotions.”
A full-size pickup truck like the Lightning has never achieved that. It was too expensive, and all that towing and carrying capacity drained the battery too quickly. But at its core, Ford is a pickup truck specialist — and that history informs its new EV architecture.
Without a large combustion engine up front, Ford was able to design a passenger cabin larger than the interior of Toyota Motor Corp.’s RAV4 SUV. And Clarke is convinced that this will attract both SUV and pickup truck buyers — and ultimately help stem the tide of Chinese automakers when they finally arrive in the US.
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“Just because it’s a low-cost vehicle doesn’t mean it has to be boring,” Clarke said.
The concept is getting closer to reality as Ford has begun building hundreds of prototypes of its electric pickup truck in Dearborn while renovating its former SUV plant in Kentucky to begin production of the plug-in pickup in 2027.
From pickup trucks to robotaxis
To say that Ford’s modestly sized and priced electric pickup truck will launch in an uncertain environment is almost a comical understatement. Electric vehicles have become a politically inflamed topic, but they have also become a barometer of the global competitiveness of the American auto industry.
Today, China leads the world in EV design and battery technology — a fact recognized, repeatedly, by Ford CEO Jim Farley himself. For now, Chinese electric vehicles, which are high technology and low cost, are out of the American market due to strong trade barriers. But they have been dominating the rest of the world, including Mexico, and will soon reach Canada.
Lately, Farley has been advocating the need to keep the Chinese out of the American market. But he and other industry executives recognize it’s just a matter of time.
Clarke argues that his EV project could act as a kind of barrier in the face of the approaching competitive “tsunami”. He believes that the electric vehicles his team is developing could be so attractive that they overcome both political resistance and competition. The pickup will be just the beginning, he says. Several models should follow, potentially including a three-row SUV, a van, a compact car and a family sedan.
“A platform needs to survive multiple presidential terms, multiple rate changes, and it needs to be agile enough,” Clarke said, “to adapt to whatever market conditions are at any given time.”
That includes entering the nascent robotaxi market that Tesla and Alphabet’s Waymo are racing to develop in the United States. Clarke stated that the UEV platform has the technological capability to operate in a semi-autonomous mode. If it hadn’t, he said, the company would be making a big mistake.
“We are currently involved in a kind of tariff blanket, but we know that we need to compete with everyone who can come here, in everything — from technology to cost, to content and resources,” said Clarke. “Everyone here is worried, and worried in a healthy way, because this provokes a reaction: either you protect yourself, or you fight.”
© 2026 Bloomberg L.P.
