Ford's $30K EV Truck Made Headlines. The Factory's The Real Story.

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🌟 Editor's Note

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This Week’s Big Charge

💡 Ford’s New EV Plan Reinvents The Assembly Line

“The factory is the product.” That’s a frequent Elon Musk-ism that, as far as I can tell, dates at least back to the early, ambitious plans to scale up the Tesla Model 3 into a mass-produced electric car for the mainstream market.

In reality, pulling that off was much harder than Musk anticipated. And that saying became synonymous with an over-reliance on automation that sent Tesla back to the drawing board more than once.

Mea culpas aside, Musk was right. The Chinese automakers proved this. It turns out the future of cars isn’t just about making them electric and software-driven: it’s about inventing new ways to make them, period. And cheaper and faster than ever.

That quote was on my mind this week when Ford CEO Jim Farley and his team went down to Kentucky to announce a $30,000 electric Ford truck due out in 2027. The truck is exciting, to be sure, especially at a time when car-buyers are getting squeezed out on costs. (The average F-150 monthly payment is over $900!)

But to me, the real “product” is the factory itself, and how it reinvents the assembly line that Henry Ford himself used to get the world motoring.

(By the way—I’m very proud of how our team at InsideEVs covered this news from all angles this week, especially reporter Suvrat Kothari on the ground. You can also read a longer explainer about why this matters from me at The Atlantic. Here are the highlights:)

🛻 What We Know About Ford’s EV Truck:

• It sounds like the kind of compact, affordable truck that many folks have been waiting for—imagine an electric version of Ford’s ultra-popular Maverick truck.

• However, the two are completely unrelated; this is built on a new, from-the-ground-up EV platform.

• It’ll have more interior space than a Toyota RAV4, with a bed and a “frunk”, while quicker than the four-cylinder turbo Mustang EcoBoost. All for $30,000.

• It won’t be “stripped-out”—perhaps a dig at the Slate Truck, which is aiming for a $25,000-ish price tag and will be much more spartan.

• The battery is small. We’re guessing around 50 kilowatt-hours, about 25% less than what you get in a Tesla Model Y. No word on range yet, except that Ford says it’ll be very competitive, thanks to advancements in efficiency.

• It will be exported, but Ford won’t say where.