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Title: Ford Announces Investment To Bring Affordable EVs To Market

Link: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/08/11/...

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Detroit Free Press: Ford is
announcing the creation of a new electric vehicle production system and a new
EV platform that will allow the automaker to more efficiently bring several
lower-cost EVs to market, the first of which will be a midsize, four-door
electric pickup that seats five, to launch in 2027. That pickup, which is
expected to start around $30,000, will be assembled at Ford's Louisville
Assembly Plant for U.S. and export markets. The Dearborn-based automaker said
it will invest $2 billion to retool the Louisville plant starting later this
year. [...] Ford's investment in Louisville Assembly is in addition to Ford's
previously announced $3 billion commitment for BlueOval Battery Park in
Marshall, Michigan, where Ford will make the prismatic LFP batteries,
starting next year, for the midsize electric pickup. Together, the nearly $5
billion investments mean Ford expects to create or secure nearly 4,000 direct
jobs while strengthening the domestic supply chain with dozens of new U.S.-
based suppliers. Ford executives and Kentucky officials also introduced on
Monday, Aug. 11, the new Ford Universal EV Production System, which they said
will simplify production and ease operations for workers. Ford leaders also
announced the creation of the Ford Universal Electric Vehicle Platform, which
will enable the development of "a family of affordable electric vehicles
produced at scale." The vehicles will be software-defined with over-the-air
updates to keep improving the vehicles over time. "We took a radical approach
to solve a very hard challenge: Create affordable vehicles that are
breakthrough in every way that matters design, technology, performance, space
and cost of ownership and do it with American workers," Ford CEO Jim Farley
said in a statement. "Nobody wants to see another good college try by a
Detroit automaker to make an affordable vehicle that ends up with idled
plants, layoffs and uncertainty." Farley has teased this announcement since
Ford's second-quarter earnings when he said Ford would have a "Model-T
moment" on Aug. 11. He's referring to the classic vehicle that helped turn
Ford into a mass market automaker and perfect the assembly line process. At
that time, Farley said it was critical that Ford unveil an EV strategy that
would position it to make money selling the electric cars and effectively
compete against the Chinese, who are known for making high-quality, desirable
and affordable EVs. "So, this has to be a good business," Farley said of
Ford's investments in the new process and platform. "From Day 1, we knew
there was no incremental path to success. We empowered a tiny skunkworks team
three time zones away from Detroit. We reinvented the line. And we are on a
path to be the first automaker to make prismatic LFP batteries in the U.S. We
will not rely on imports." Ford says its new Universal Electric Vehicle
Platform "reduces parts by 20% versus a typical vehicle, with 25% fewer
fasteners, 40% fewer workstations dock-to-dock in the plant and 15% faster
assembly time." The new EV pickup built using this platform is targeting a
"starting MSRP at about $30,000, roughly the same as the Model T when
adjusted for inflation," adds Farley. He shared additional details in an
interview with Wired, such as how the automaker hired Tesla veterans Doug
Field (who also helped lead Apple's now-defunct EV project) and Alan Clarke.
"Turns out, Doug and Alan and the team built a propulsion system that was
like Apollo 13, managed down to the watt so that our battery could be so much
smaller than BYD's," said Farley.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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