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Pickup trucks in the U.S. have gotten expensive, so Ford got a lot of attention this week when it promised a new truck by 2027 for a relative steal - just $30,000. And not just any pickup, an electric pickup. NPR's Camila Domonoske was in Louisville, Kentucky, for the company's big announcement and brings us this story.
CAMILA DOMONOSKE, BYLINE: Standing on a sweltering stage in the heart of the Louisville assembly plant, Ford CEO Jim Farley said the vehicle they'll build here next is a big challenge.
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JIM FARLEY: To create an affordable vehicle that delights customers in every way that matters - design and innovation, flexibility, interior space, driving pleasure and lower cost of ownership.
DOMONOSKE: Delight - that's how car executives think about EVs. Roomy, fun to drive, no gas to buy - those are benefits that come when you don't need an engine, but it's proven tricky to build that for cheap. Electric trucks in the U.S. today cost from $50,000 to over a hundred grand. But Ford designers say they have radically simplified this vehicle's design. The battery is part of the structure. They'll build the truck in three big chunks that are assembled separately, then combined.
Ford executives say those changes, many of which are specific to an EV and wouldn't work for a gas car, cut costs significantly. Sam Abuelsamid with the market research and communications firm Telemetry says that Ford's price point is at least plausible.
SAM ABUELSAMID: Most of what we know so far about what Ford is doing is not entirely new. Most of what they've talked about has been done before.
DOMONOSKE: Done before by Tesla and by Chinese companies like XPENG. And Abuelsamid says that means Ford can learn from them.
ABUELSAMID: So I think it is conceivable that they could hit that $30,000 price point.
DOMONOSKE: And this is really important to Ford and similar companies. They're in a global race with Chinese automakers, which are making electric vehicles very well and very affordably. Those vehicles aren't currently for sale in the U.S., but automakers have customers around the world. Farley has said before that competing with those Chinese rivals is essential to Ford's future. Standing on that stage in Louisville, after talking about how hard it is to build a cheap EV, Jim Farley went on.
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FARLEY: But we need to do it and be sustainable and make money.
DOMONOSKE: By sustainable, he wasn't emphasizing that EVs are cleaner than similar gas cars and better for the climate.
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FARLEY: We're talking about a vehicle that can sustain itself, have strong profits so all of our workers and the community here has actually a sustainable future.
DOMONOSKE: Ford and some other legacy automakers have been losing money on EVs, and that was even before the Trump administration started rolling back support for them, like by ending the federal tax credit for EV buyers. But this vehicle, Ford says, will be different. Maybe. It's a bet, Farley acknowledged, in an industry with no guarantees.
Camila Domonoske, NPR News, Louisville, Kentucky.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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