Ford on Friday confirmed the challenge identify for its next-generation electrical truck: Mission T3.
Quick for “Belief The Truck,” the challenge goals to create a truck that’s “absolutely updatable, continuously enhancing, and helps towing, hauling, exportable energy and limitless new improvements house owners will need,” in response to a press launch from the automaker.
Mission T3 – future Ford electrical pickup challenge
The announcement got here simply earlier than an occasion scheduled Friday to preview the corporate’s mammoth BlueOval Metropolis plant in Tennessee, which Ford says will likely be able to producing 500,000 electrical vehicles a yr at its peak fee.
That’s a number of occasions the accelerated 150,000-per-year fee at which Ford plans to make the F-150 Lightning, and next-generation EVs from this plant will likely be a good portion of the two million EVs per yr Ford intends to make globally by late 2026.
BlueOval Metropolis development, March 2023
Ford has confirmed that a number of merchandise will likely be produced on the BlueOval Metropolis plant, together with from the Lincoln luxurious model. The challenge, and accompanying imaginative and prescient, could have been underway by late 2021 amid very sturdy curiosity within the F-150 Lightning electrical pickup, even earlier than it had been delivered. Then, Ford confirmed that the next-generation truck could be constructed on a devoted EV platform and be made in “extremely excessive quantity.”
A press release included in an accompanying launch, from CEO Jim Farley added some shade in regards to the upcoming product.
“PJ O’Rourke as soon as described American pickups as ‘a again porch with an engine hooked up,’” mentioned Farley in an accompanying launch. “Nicely, this new truck goes to be just like the Millennium Falcon—with a again porch hooked up.”
Future Ford autonomous driving interface teased at truck occasion
A teaser video briefly confirmed an inside which may be one other technology of autos sooner or later—with a complicated assisted-driving interface that seems to stow away the steering controls totally, plus an augmented head-up show.
The longer term truck to be inbuilt Tennessee will likely be fast and quiet, after all, however Farley additionally promised “exportable energy, far more than right this moment.” And he hinted that software program updates will likely be an everyday factor, not an important day.
“Actually each morning you get in your truck that’s constructed right here, it will likely be higher and totally different; it can find out how you employ it,” elaborated Farley later, in an deal with from the longer term plant location. “We’re going to ship software program to it every single day, each week, yearly to make your truck higher.”
2022 Ford F-150 Lightning
That goes proper together with what Farley mentioned in February. Then, he additionally mentioned future Ford EVs will likely be “radically simplified” with fewer physique kinds, a restricted variety of construct mixtures, and a discount in weight and complexity—to do extra with the smallest battery pack attainable.
The corporate famous that BlueOval Metropolis is a key a part of with the ability to scale up EV manufacturing, making them extra accessible to prospects. Farley has mentioned that an EV worth battle might make the market extraordinarily aggressive—one thing which will have been unfolding available in the market in latest months with Tesla’s across-the-board worth cuts and ensuing Mach-E worth reductions, as an illustration.
Ford Blue Oval Metropolis – rendering of producing complicated in Tennessee, September 2021
Ford Blue Oval Metropolis – rendering of producing complicated in Tennessee, September 2021
Ford Blue Oval Metropolis – rendering of producing complicated in Tennessee, September 2021
Farley additional mentioned that the truck would be the product of a breakthrough manufacturing course of with “radical simplicity, value effectivity and high quality know-how.”
Vertical integration is constructed into the plant. Ford boasted that battery making will likely be intently aligned with manufacturing and the battery provider, SK On—to the extent that battery cells will likely be made, put into packs, and delivered in lower than half-hour to the meeting plant.
It can even have its personal upfit middle the place bedliners, toolboxes, and the like could be put in robotically.
The automaker along with SK On are investing $5.6 billion within the campus, and it’ll create about 6,000 new jobs. It will likely be the corporate’s first carbon-neutral manufacturing and battery campus. Within the case of the brand new Tennessee facility, it’s utilizing recovered warmth from the utility infrastructure plus a geothermal system. The corporate seeks to energy all of its crops with “renewable and carbon-free” electrical energy by 2035.
