Ford's cheap pickup truck takes aim at Chinese EVs

Ford's US$5 billion bet to stave off competition from beyond America's borders is steadily taking shape. CEO Jim Farley revealed some stuff in the works on the company's latest product, a midsized electric pickup truck with a $30,000 targeted starting price.

This follows Ford's August 2025 announcement of its plans for a Universal Platform that will allow the automaker to build an entire new range of affordable EVs more efficiently. The idea there was to rethink the production process to streamline manufacturing, reduce the number of parts per vehicle, and bring down costs for customers. The first model from this grand experiment is the aforementioned truck scheduled to arrive next year, which sounds almost too good to be true.

In his post on X last week, Farley noted the team was working on several innovations set to enable Ford to "compete and win against China and the rest of the world." That includes aerodynamic efficiency on the upcoming pickup, multi-functional parts, and aluminum 'unicastings,' which combine dozens of components into a single simplified part.

The pickup, which is rumored to be named either 'Ranchero' or 'Ranger,' is said to be a four-door affair that promises "more passenger space than the latest Toyota RAV4," as well as a frunk, and a lockable truck bed. Ford says it'll have about 20% fewer parts than similar vehicles, and come in at a lower cost of ownership over five years than a three-year-old used Tesla Model Y.

The all-American marque is also promising exciting performance, with a 0-60 mph (96.5 km/h) time of less than 4.5 seconds. The company's electric vehicle (EV) head, Doug Field, confirmed to InsideEVs last year that it wouldn't be a "stripped-down" offering like you'd expect at its low asking price; it will even get Ford's BlueCruise hands-free driving assistance features.

Ford Motor Company

Ford will release more specs for this truck later on, but noted that it will get Lithium iron phosphate (LFP) prismatic batteries that are a bit on the smaller side – they're estimated to come in at 51 kWh. For reference, the outgoing base F-150 Lightning gets a 123-kWh extended-range battery.

That might sound like Ford cheaping out, but the company insists this makes for space and weight savings. It landed on the notion of a smaller battery after studying user data, from which it found that small pickups are rarely used for towing fifth-wheel trailers or covering long distances – and so, including an expensive high-capacity battery simply doesn't make sense for real-world driving habits in this segment.

If it can pull this off at the $30,000 price point, Ford will have a fighting chance at taking on the super-basic electric pickup truck from Jeff Bezos-backed Slate that's slated to begin rolling out by end-2026. That model is expected to come in around $25,000 sans powered windows and an infotainment system. Last December, the company noted that it had racked up more than 150,000 reservations for this truck.

This is all coming at a strange time, when some major automakers see the EV market faring poorly and are making moves to revert to hybrid and gas-powered offerings for the immediate future. That includes GM and Stellantis; heck even Ford announced last December it was discontinuing the all-electric F-150 Lightning flagship in favor of an extended range electric truck, with a gas generator.

For its part, Ford is investing $5 billion into its new EV platform. That includes nearly $2 billion for a Louisville plant where the upcoming truck will be assembled, and $3 billion as an investment in the BlueOval Battery Park Michigan, which will make the LFP batteries for that vehicle. It's not going to be easy to face these stiff headwinds, particularly in the US which recently saw generous Biden-era incentives for EVs wiped out, but it sounds like Ford's giving it all it's got.

Source: Jim Farley/X