Less than a year and counting until its first “Universal EV” debuts, Ford wants to change the equation with a new approach to designing and manufacturing battery-electric vehicles. While we’ll have to wait to see if it meets that lofty goal, the automaker claims the new lineup will be less expensive, offer longer range, and be more capable than any EV now on the market.
First off the line will be a Maverick-sized pickup offering Ranger-sized roominess and at least 300 miles of range, starting under $30,000. Over the next several years, Ford confirmed today, it will add a variety of other body styles, the new EV platform capable of supporting everything from a small sedan to a midsize commercial van.
To pull that off, Ford has radically reshaped its approach to developing new vehicles, offering “bounties” to a small team of designers and engineers. It’s also retooling an old plant in Louisville, Ky., to adopt an entirely new manufacturing system, which, it claims, will be as revolutionary as the assembly line process developed by company founder and namesake Henry Ford more than a century ago.
A Costly Do-Over
Ford clearly needs to start over. Only a few years ago, it positioned itself as a leader in the EV market, rolling out products like the Mustang Mach-E SUV and F-150 Lightning, a full-sized pickup. While initial reviews were solid, sales didn’t meet expectations, especially for the Lightning, which was pulled from production in December 2025.
Meanwhile, Ford scrubbed plans for several other all-electric models, including a three-row SUV. It faced the perfect storm: trouble moving from early adopters to mainstream buyers, high prices, and pushback from a Trump administration determined to reverse the pro-EV policies put in place under former President Joe Biden. Federal tax credits were phased out last September, leading to a plunge in EV sales.
All told, Ford was forced to take a $19.5 billion charge during the fourth quarter, largely blamed on its EV pullback. That, along with the hit from Trump tariffs, contributed to an $8.2 billion loss for 2025.
Starting All Over
The goal of the Universal EV program, said project leader Alan Clarke, is to “build electric vehicles that are not just fun to drive but which can compete on price with the best, including gas vehicles.”
To get there required adopting a very different mindset, he explained during a background briefing. Traditionally, automakers like Ford divide things up into silos, each focused on a specific aspect of a vehicle’s development, whether design, engineering, or manufacturing. With the Universal EV project, Ford brought everyone together as teams, offering “bounties” to find more efficient solutions.
Counter to the traditional approach, this sometimes meant spending more money on specific parts and components — if they could shed weight, for example, and ultimately improve the vehicle’s efficiency.
One Silly Millimeter Shorter
Little things are proving to have big results. Lowering the roof of the pickup by a single millimeter from the original design, for example, resulted in a measurable improvement in drag. This tiny change shaves about $1.30 off the cost of the battery pack needed to deliver the same range.
Other design tweaks eliminated the turbulence normally created around the pickup’s bed. “To the air, it’s no longer a pickup,” explained Saleem Merkt, the team’s aerodynamic lead. A cleaner underbody reduced drag around the truck’s wheels, while smaller mirrors yielded additional improvements.
All told, improved aerodynamics alone yielded about $100 in savings on the battery pack, Merkt said. He noted, “If the same battery were married to the aerodynamics of the most aerodynamically efficient midsize gas truck in the U.S., we believe our new truck would have 50 miles, or 15% more range.” And, at highway speeds, where drag increases exponentially, the data shows a 30% improvement.
Rethinking the Battery Pack
The battery pack in a typical EV today accounts for about 40% of the vehicle’s total cost. Ford took direct aim at that in a number of ways. It started by making a decision to switch from familiar lithium-ion to lithium-iron-phosphate chemistry. While less efficient, the LFP cells Ford will produce at its new Blue Oval Battery Plant in Marshall, Michigan, don’t need exotic and costly nickel or cobalt, reducing costs.
Countering lost efficiency, Ford has adopted a new method of packing battery cells together as part of the vehicle’s structure. The approach means more of those cells in a substantially smaller space than on Ford’s Mach-E and Lightning EVs.
In most EVs, as much as half or more of the pack space is effectively wasted, Sam Abuelsamid, Vice President of Market Research at Telemetry, told GearJunkie.
Wired
The battery pack is paired with a number of changes in control electronics, starting with a flexible, multilayer circuit board that consolidates what are hundreds of components in existing Ford EVs into a single part. The team also combined parts from both the high-speed DC and lower-speed onboard AC chargers into a combined unit.
Not everything on the Universal EV platform is unique. The Ford team lifted an idea first used by Tesla, opting for a zonal electrical system. Conventional vehicles incorporate dozens, in some cases more than 100, electronic control units scattered across their four corners.
Ford centralized these into five centralized units, with an E-box overseeing key operations. Among other things, this will save as much as 4,000 feet of costly copper in the wiring harness, shaving 22 pounds of range-depleting mass.
Another step being adopted for the Universal EV: low-voltage components are migrating from 12V to 48V, a move the industry as a whole is slowly adopting.
Central Casting
Tesla gets credit for another idea: the use of large aluminum unicastings. In the current Maverick pickup, for example, there are 146 separate parts in the front and rear chassis structures. Here, that’s reduced to just two.
This first-ever use of unicastings at Ford will yield a 27% reduction in weight, said Vlad Bogachuk, who oversees vehicle structure development, and a 25% reduction in the number of fasteners.
The use of unicastings has generated some debate in automotive circles. They can be difficult to deal with following even modest crashes since they replace so many different traditional pieces. Ford has taken steps to address that, Clarke claimed. There are literally “dotted lines” showing where the structures can be cut and then repaired, rather than having to make large-scale replacements.
All-New Approach to Manufacturing
Switching to unicastings will also eliminate some of the robots normally found in the body assembly operation at a typical plant. That is expected to further reduce manufacturing costs once production at Ford’s Louisville (Kentucky) Assembly Plant ramps up later this year.
The facility, which had been rolling out the Ford Escape SUV, among other products, is in the midst of a $2 billion makeover. Another $3 billion is going into the Blue Oval Battery Plant.
One of the biggest changes enabled by the Universal EV program will see a transformation in traditional automotive manufacturing. Instead of having a single, moving assembly line, vehicles will start coming together on three adjacent sub-assemblies — one for the front of the vehicle, one for the rear, and a third for the battery pack — that only merge together relatively late in the manufacturing process.
When the project was first announced last August, Ford estimated this approach “could” mean rolling out vehicles 40% faster than what the Louisville plant previously could manage.
The End Results
Ford has yet to show any pics of the upcoming Universal EV pickup. It’s keeping that for future teasers we can expect to see roll out as the project comes closer to launch. We’ll also have to wait a while to hear about specifics such as power and range.
Clarke did confirm the pickup will be offered with more than one battery pack; some buyers are likely to accept a modest range in order to hold down costs. On the other hand, he added, “We know (most) customers want more than 300 miles range.” We likely also will see the truck offered in two and four-wheel-drive options.
Looking further into the future, Ford has strongly hinted that the pickup will be followed by an SUV. In fact, it released rough renderings suggesting it could come out with both two- and three-row packages.
Whether it all will come together as promised remains to be seen, of course. But Ford has far too much riding on this project to screw it up. The hit the company took with that $19.5 billion write-off doesn’t mean it’s done losing money on its EV program.
During an earnings call earlier this month, Ford CEO Jim Farley advised investors it likely will take until 2029 before the company drives the EV side of its business into the black. But the Universal EV program, if it delivers, could yield what Ford had previously hoped to do, giving it a leg up on the competition and helping kickstart interest in EVs.
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