Ford to follow Tesla Cybertruck with electrical tech in new EV pickup

DETROIT — Ford Motor‘s $5 billion “bet” on its next generation of all-electric vehicles will feature a budding technology that Tesla commercialized in the U.S. on its Cybertruck, the Detroit automaker said Tuesday.

The system, known as a 48-volt electrical architecture, had been discussed in the automotive industry for decades but Tesla was the first to bring it to consumers in 2023.

The auto industry has historically used a 12-volt system with a lead-acid battery for all vehicles to power the car’s accessories — but that’s been problematic and caused recalls for many EVs. The new architecture instead uses the EV’s high-voltage battery to power everything.

The 48-volt system improves efficiency, allows for additional electrical bandwidth and saves weight through the reduction of wiring, officials have said. The power also can be “stepped down” to 12 volts, when needed, through the use of new electronic control units, or ECUs, that handle different groups of an EV’s architecture.

The new electrical system is one of many innovations that Ford believes will allow its next-generation EVs — starting with a $30,000 small electric pickup truck in 2027 — to compete against Tesla as well as rapidly expanding Chinese brands in global markets.

“At Ford, we took on the challenge many others have stopped doing. We’re taking the fight to our competition, including the Chinese,” Ford CEO Jim Farley said during an August event at a plant in Kentucky that will produce the unnamed electric pickup. “For too long, legacy automakers played it safe.”

Farley has called it a “Model T moment” for the company, referring to the company’s flagship vehicle that came out more than a century ago and led to the mass adoption of vehicles during the early 1900s. He’s also called it a “bet” for Ford given the amount of changes it will make to the EVs as well as the company and its processes.

Ford expects the new EVs, which will be based on a common “Universal Electric Vehicle,” or UEV, to have comparable costs to gas-powered vehicles through new technologies and efficiencies. Currently, the massive batteries that power EVs have made them far more expensive to produce and have been infamously unprofitable.

The Detroit automaker has said the new EVs will reduce parts by 20% versus a typical vehicle, with 25% fewer fasteners, 40% fewer workstations dock-to-dock in the plant and 15% faster assembly time.

“It represents the most radical change on how we design and how we build vehicles at Ford since the Model T,” Farley said at the plant. “Now is time to change the game once again.”

Ford said those improvements, as well as price points that are more similar to gas-powered models, will lead to greater adoption of EVs….