Why Simplicity is The Blueprint for Our Future Electric Vehicle Platform

A century ago, Henry Ford said he would build a car for the great multitude, one "constructed of the best materials…after the simplest designs that modern engineering can devise." That car, the Model T, didn’t just change Ford; it transformed society. To this day, I remain fascinated by Its elegant and simple engineering.

That same vision has been a constant inspiration for a new, ambitious project a small group of us has undertaken in the last three years. A project like this is the reason I came back to Ford. I couldn’t pass up the chance to help merge the restless innovation of a startup with the industrial might of a 122-year-old icon.

The Model T was affordable not because it was a thrifted version of other cars, but because brilliant minds took fundamentally new approaches to old problems. That’s exactly what we set out to do in creating the Ford Universal Electric Vehicle Platform.

A New Way of Working

Physics is Not Proprietary

This philosophy of deep systems integration drove us to find ways for individual parts to perform multiple functions, relentlessly stripping out complexity. This led to investment in “unicasting”, where we form massive, single aluminum parts that act as structural elements of the body and as the base parts for standalone sub assemblies. Compared to a traditional pickup body, the team eliminated three-quarters of the parts, two-thirds of the welds, and half of the fasteners. In the electrical system, we removed over 4,000 feet of wiring—nearly a mile—compared to our first-generation electric SUV.

It’s easy to copy a part. It’s nearly impossible to copy a deeply integrated system design. This obsession with efficiency means we expect our vehicles to achieve a similar range as competitors with a battery that is up to one-third smaller. The disruption to how we build the vehicle is every bit as important as the product itself. We tore up the century-old concept of the moving assembly line. Instead, we’ve created an "assembly tree."

We will build the vehicle in three separate pieces — the front, the rear, and the structural battery core — and then put them together.

We're confident this is the first time a vehicle will be built like this anywhere in the world.

The Reason Our Universal Vehicle is Electric

You might wonder why this platform and vehicle had to be electric. The choice enabled how it is built, and we also believe electric vehicles are by far the best product for the customers we are going after.

You can charge at home, waking up every day with a "full tank."

The vehicle is a mobile power plant with high-power outlets and the ability to provide backup power for your home.

And it will be unbelievably fun to drive, with the low center of gravity from the battery, instant torque from the electric motors, and our obsessive chassis engineering.

Our target is a five-year cost of ownership that will be lower than buying a three-year-old Tesla Model Y — and they are pretty cheap right now.

The first vehicle built on this platform will be a midsize, four-door electric pickup truck. It will offer more passenger space than the latest Toyota RAV4, plus a frunk and a truck bed for all the gear that’s part of your life.

And this will not be a stripped-down, old-school vehicle.

Its ground-up, zonal electric architecture not only cuts that mile of wiring but will enable features digital experiences the industry has never seen before. We believe the primary battleground with competitors, especially from China, will be fought and won in the digital realm.

It will also support Ford BlueCruise, the hands-free driving feature that our customers are already finding transformative.

I don’t think many legacy car manufacturers could pull off a project like this. And I don’t believe new electric vehicle startups will be able to keep up with our Ford engineers and manufacturing teams making this a reality.

New ideas are easy. But innovation is delivering those ideas to the world in a way that millions can access. We have a hell of a lot of work to do to make that happen.

I know Ford is the company that can pull it off.

Doug Field is chief EV, digital and design officer at Ford.