Ford $F opened its Electric Vehicle Development Center in Long Beach, California, to reporters, offering the first public look at the facility where it is developing a midsize electric pickup truck priced at about $30,000 for a planned 2027 launch.
The automaker invited press into its Long Beach development center as it targets a 2027 launch for an affordable electric truck built to rival Chinese EVs
Bloomberg / Getty Images
Ford $F opened its Electric Vehicle Development Center in Long Beach, California, to reporters, offering the first public look at the facility where it is developing a midsize electric pickup truck priced at about $30,000 for a planned 2027 launch.
Spanning two buildings and 270,000 square feet near the Long Beach airport, the facility employs roughly 350 people whose backgrounds span Ford's own ranks, Tesla $TSLA, aerospace, and defense — all working toward the UEV, or Universal Electric Vehicle, platform. Ford CEO Jim Farley has described it as a $5 billion bet on U.S. manufacturing and compared its significance to the original Model T.
Leading the effort is Alan Clarke, who logged 12 and a half years at Tesla before joining Ford as the first hire on what was then a covert development team; he has since been elevated to vice president of Advanced Development Projects. "The EV industry has had massive headwinds, and so we've had to adjust," Clarke told CNBC at the facility. "We can hit this goal of getting it out next year."
The pickup is designed to use fewer parts and a simpler assembly process than Ford's existing vehicles. What The Wall Street Journal describes as an "assembly tree" organizes production around a pair of large aluminum castings and a battery pack that come together only at the final stage — an approach that echoes methods used by Tesla and Chinese manufacturers rather than traditional Detroit assembly. Measured against the Mustang Mach-E, Ford says the new design achieves a 20% reduction in total parts, 25% fewer fasteners, and a 15% improvement in assembly speed.
Among the technical specifications detailed by Electrek: the vehicle will draw power from domestically produced lithium iron phosphate cells, run on a 48-volt electrical system, and employ zonal architecture to reduce wiring complexity. Profitability is projected to arrive within a year of each new vehicle's launch, with the broader Model e division targeted for breakeven by 2029 — though that unit is currently on track to post losses of $4 billion to $4.5 billion in the current fiscal year.
The opening comes at a difficult moment for Ford's EV ambitions. Against that backdrop, accumulated EV-related restructuring charges have reached $19.5 billion, the company scrapped plans for both a three-row electric SUV and a next-generation all-electric F-150 Lightning, and Doug Field — who had overseen Ford's EV and technology operations — announced his departure in April. Clarke, who was recruited by Field, said Field "set us up for success."
The Long Beach facility is also intended to change how Ford builds vehicles broadly, not just EVs. "We're now integrating these skunk work breakthroughs back into our mainstream products and processes," Farley said. Clarke said the facility was set up not for the pickup — whose development was completed under the original secret team — but for future vehicles on the UEV platform.
Chinese automakers remain the central competitive reference point. Research firm GlobalData puts the five-year rise in Chinese brands' global market share at close to 70%. Clarke said Ford is "pretty confident" the UEV platform can compete, but acknowledged Chinese companies operate under different conditions. "We only win with speed," he said.
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