- Ford is betting that affordability will be the best feature it can give its $30k EV pickup.
- The automaker knows buyers will likely never use the truck for towing or hauling, so it built it for something else entirely.
- This is the secret sauce for building an affordable EV: going back to basics.
Ford’s new affordable electric pickup could have had a massive battery. But then it wouldn’t have been able to be priced at $30,000. It could have been the supercross between the Ford Maverick and electrification, but then it wouldn’t target the right buyer. Instead, Ford did its homework and put a ton of effort into figuring out who the heck actually wants a cheap EV and a pickup.
It turns out that Ford’s ideal buyer isn’t someone who actually wants a truck primarily for truck things at all. In fact, that buyer may very well never even hook up a trailer or fill the bed with mulch ever. If you’re reading this and questioning the entire point of making the affordable EV a pickup, then I’ve got some bad news for you: you’re not who this truck is meant for.
Ford Universal EV Platform Pickup
Photo by: Ford
The development boss of Ford’s affordable EV skunkworks program, Alan Clarke, recently sat down with InsideEVs to talk shop about Ford’s upcoming affordable pickup.
“Towing for big trucks is very, very important. Towing for small trucks is significantly less important,” Clarke said. He later continued to justify the point: “Less than 25% of Maverick owners have towed a single time in the life of the vehicle.”
Clarke compared buying a truck for towing to a small family with two children buying a seven-seater, three-row SUV. Do they need three rows? Not necessarily. In fact, studies show that the occupancy rate of most third-row seats is only around 3%.
“People buy all these vehicles that have three rows of seats,” according to Clarke, later adding: “You buy it for the third-row seat, but you never use it.”
Photo by: Ford
His point is that many people buy a vehicle that’s equipped to handle a specific task, yet rarely (if at all) use that specific feature. Ford’s vision is to cater the vehicle to the potential customer and enable the vehicle to perform tasks like towing; however, if building the vehicle up to handle towing would compromise a core product tenet like affordability, then its purpose has already been compromised. That’s where balance comes in.
“[It’s not like] we don’t care about towing. We want our customers to tow. We want them to be able to. But it’s something that’s typically infrequent,” explained Clarke. “Towing your boat, towing your jet skis, those are the most common ones. [With] this class of vehicle, you’re not towing a fifth-wheel trailer across the country.”
Ford, like many automakers, is now using telematics from its connected cars to determine just how their customers use their vehicles and utilize that data to build better vehicles in the future. This means studying how much its customers drive, their driving and charging habits, as well as vehicle-specific stats. The data enables them to make determinations like what kind of battery to stuff into the truck and how much range it actually needs.
Clarke stayed tight-lipped about the actual technical details of the battery, but through some careful deducing, we were able to estimate that Ford is likely to ship the unnamed pickup with around 51 kilowatt-hours of usable energy. For comparison, the Tesla Model 3 RWD has an estimated usable capacity of around 60 kWh.
“Range is another third-row seat,” said Clarke. He clarified:
“We’re looking at what we can give to the customer, which is cost direct with range, and accessing that range is dependent on charging speed. Ultimately, because of volumetric energy being lower in lithium-ion phosphate, you have to really lean on the things that it gives you. And those are things like, every time you leave your house, we will encourage you to be at 100%.”
What we do know is that Ford does not expect buyers of the Maverick to actually cross-shop this new EV. In fact, based on Clarke’s explanation, it seems that Ford is actually expecting this affordable EV to be more of a capable lifestyle vehicle capable of enabling you to go on adventures.
“EV buyers in general, many of them are looking for more utility and don’t have anywhere to look for it,” said Clarke. “Go on an adventure, bring the stuff you want with you. If it enables your lifestyle and it enables you to do those things, then ultimately you will vote with your wallet and buy the product.”
Affordability is rapidly becoming the name of the EV game for automakers. To Clarke’s point, creating more modular, tailored vehicles and skipping the “third-row seat” might actually help carve out buyers and cut costs at the same time.
