Ford has been hard at work for a couple of years in its Long Beach, Calif., skunk works facility developing an affordable electric pickup. Now, thanks to an announcement Ford made on Thursday, we know it will be called the Fathom and will start at $29,945.
The name isn’t all that impressive, subjectively, but it’s the price that we’re really interested in. Ford is clearly seeking to take a big ol’ bite out of Slate’s potential market share in the budget electric truck category. Given the rocky starts that most new car companies go through, the Fathom will probably feel like a safer bet than the Slate for buyers looking for their first EV.
The Fathom is also being billed as a mid-size truck, which would put it in a class above the Slate, or even Ford’s own combustion-powered Maverick. It’s probably going to be pretty close to the Ranger in size, which isn’t a bad thing.
What Details We Have
What else do we know about the Fathom? Not a ton, to be honest. Ford states that it will be built in its Louisville factory on the new Universal Electric Vehicle platform, which, as we mentioned previously, was designed and engineered in California. We also know that all Fathoms will be Ford Blue Cruise–capable. If you’re not familiar with Blue Cruise, it’s Ford’s hands-free driving assistant à la GM’s Super Cruise or Tesla’s Autopilot.
Ford claims the Fathom will have more interior volume than a Toyota RAV4, which is impressive for a small-ish truck, and that in addition to its bed, it will have a frunk — something we always like to see in an EV. Other than that, Ford’s not giving us much new information in Thursday’s announcement beyond this animated video replete with annoying stomp-and-clap music.
Ford’s EVDC
I had the opportunity to tour the Electric Vehicle Development Center in Long Beach earlier this year to get a peek behind the curtain at the development process for what we now know is the Fathom. It’s an interesting move from Ford that seeks to make the development process much more streamlined, reducing the many layers of bureaucracy that big car companies tend to have in place.
The EVDC was conceived of as a soup-to-nuts facility that would include everything from styling and interior design to chassis engineering and electrical architecture. Battery pack design and testing can be carried out there, as well as environmental testing in climate-controlled dyno rooms. It’s all very cool.
The Fathom is the first full vehicle to come out of EVDC, and we’re excited to see it in person and out of camouflage, probably sometime in the middle of next year. Ford’s Fathom will be open for preorders in early 2027, with customer deliveries set to begin in late 2027.
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