Ford takes on unreleased Tesla Model 2 and Cybercab with $30K pickup truck on budget EV platform

Faced with what CEO Jim Farley calls an "existential threat" from Chinese cars and a tepid EV market, Ford has developed its first dedicated universal EV platform (UEV) to allow for low-cost vehicles.

It will launch an electric pickup truck that will be about half of the Ford F-150 Lightning price, or about the tag of the proverbial affordable Tesla Model 2 that never materialized. Needless to say, this will be a midsize pickup truck with a smaller battery, but the sheer work that Ford put in to achieve that price point is pretty impressive.

Ford's $30,000 EV is all about efficiency gains

The truck's aerodynamic efficiency exceeds any other pickup sold in the US, and its structure is crafted from two aluminum halves, similar to Tesla's gigacasting approach, rather than the more than a hundred different parts of its other midsize pickups like the Maverick.

The other Tesla-inspired feat that Ford pulled is its first 48V low-voltage vehicle architecture, which, just like with the Cybertruck, cuts drastically on the electrical components and cable length needed throughout the vehicle. As a result, Ford's affordable electric pickup requires fewer parts and half the time to build with 600 fewer workers than before at the Louisville factory in Kentucky. Ford also turned to a structural LFP battery pack that uses the cells as part of the chassis, further cutting costs.

The $30,000 pickup truck will undercut the price of even the most basic Tesla Model 3 when it launches in 2027 and might mark a new era for Ford's EV strategy after a multibillion write-off related to its initial efforts. The move is not exclusive to Ford, as the automaking industry collectively lost about $65 billion when the EV market turned sour, plagued by high prices, tepid demand, and the federal tax credit expiration. Tesla was no exception, logging its first annual revenue decline last year, nixing its pricey Model S/X vehicles, and launching APR financing deals to shake up flagging Model Y sales.

"You’re not going to beat them—you've got to get close on cost—but then you have to apply the innovation," opined Jim Farley, while the UEV team lead added that "customers don’t want stripped-down, all-feature-content-removed" vehicles, so the cheap truck will be a pleasant surprise in that respect. Ford intends to bring autonomous driving to it in 2028, for instance, again at a lower cost compared to similar systems and will use the platform to release a ride-share vehicle like the Tesla Cybercab, too.

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