Ford is fighting against physics to build affordable electric cars

To say that Ford has struggled to make profitable electric vehicles would be an understatement. The company recently pulled the plug on its F-150 Lightning, the truck once heralded as the hottest electric vehicle ever, after taking over It made a staggering $19.5 billion in profits on its electric vehicle investments In 2025. A new focus on hybrids and long-range electric vehicles, as well as vehicles with internal combustion engines that still generate the most revenue, is now the new way forward for the iconic 122-year-old company. Everything old is new again.

But Ford still sees electric vehicles as the future — not just full-size cars that “don’t have a path to profitability,” like the Lightning, Andrew Fricke, president of Ford Model e and Ford Blue, said last year. Instead, the automaker is betting on affordable electric vehicles, custom-built with unique designs and smaller batteries, that can reignite customer demand while also turning a profit. Oh, and it should be a lot of fun to drive, too.

He is responsible for this huge challenge Ford’s skunkworks lab in Silicon ValleyLed by Alan Clark, the automaker’s executive director of electric vehicle programs who worked at Tesla for 12 years. Until now, Ford has hidden much of this work from the public, but now it’s ready to start showing off. At a news conference with a small group of reporters last week, Clark brought back the curtain The so-called Ford Universal Electric Vehicle (UEV) platformwhich will eventually support an entire family of low-cost electric vehicles, starting with a $30,000 midsize truck in 2027.

The team consists of about 500 engineers, spread across Silicon Valley and Los Angeles, and is organized around two core principles: efficiency and affordability. Success in the former – losing weight, reducing friction, enhancing aerodynamics – is seen as crucial in promoting the latter. Clark said the skunkworks team is now preparing to graduate to the main event. The product is fully integrated into Ford’s manufacturing engine, aiming to combine innovation with the company’s massive scale. In other words, Ford’s UEV team is moving beyond the design phase and moving on to the “heavy lifting” of securing the supply chain and preparing for mass production.

“Once you do that, it’s much less of a ‘skunkworks’ model and much more of the way Ford operates. So, it’s smaller than a typical program, yes; but it’s also the biggest product and platform change Ford has made in at least a decade.”

The biggest barrier to lowering the cost of an electric vehicle is the battery, which typically makes up about 40 percent of the vehicle’s total cost, Clark says. But instead of holding out hope for a mythical, long-promised innovation like solid-state batteries, Ford’s skunkworks team has instead chosen to focus on squeezing the widest range out of the smallest battery pack possible.

To do this, Ford introduced a new system called “rewards” to guide the decisions of its engineers. These are digital gauges dedicated to key efficiency drivers such as vehicle mass and aerodynamic drag – factors that directly impact range and cost.

For example, changing the ceiling height by one millimeter can save $1.30 in battery costs. Or perhaps a small increase in material costs results in reduced brake drag, which then translates into improved efficiency and range. As they design different materials and designs, Ford engineers are constantly thinking about these trade-offs thanks to a new reward system, Clark said.

“Rewards are a very tangible way for every engineer, every product person, and every designer to understand how their small decisions on a daily basis impact the customer and the final product,” he said.

In low-cost cars, it may seem counterintuitive to use a more expensive part just because it’s lighter. But by putting a monetary value on weight savings in terms of lower battery cost, Ford engineers can determine that these types of parts actually reduce the overall cost of the entire vehicle.

Ford’s quest to develop affordable electric vehicles is also a battle against physics itself. Every bit of drag-induced inefficiency robs you of range. At higher speeds, drag becomes a bigger drag. “If you go twice as fast, the air is holding you back four times as much, and you need eight times more energy to keep going at that speed,” Clark says.

With that in mind, Ford engineers came together with some of the brightest minds in Formula One and took aim squarely at the problem. They simplified the underside of the UEV by making the bolt holes shallower, carefully directing airflow around the tires and suspension, and shaping certain components to hide the front tire footprint behind the rear tires. Estimate the reward? Added 4.5 mile range.

The side mirrors also need to be rethought. Instead of using separate actuators to adjust and fold the mirror, Ford combined the two functions into a single actuator that moves the entire mirror body. This allowed the mirror to be 20% smaller than usual, reducing mass, cost and drag. Estimate the reward? 1.5 miles of additional range.

Weight is another enemy of aerodynamics. To reduce weight, Ford is for the first time using large aluminum blocks, which the automaker estimates will deliver a weight improvement of more than 27 percent over competitors. For context, the Ford Maverick uses 146 structural parts in its front and rear bodywork. The new midsize electric truck will only use two vehicles.

Ford also aims to reduce battery costs by 10%. Adopting cheaper LFP batteries Which avoids cobalt and nickel, which are two of the most expensive metals to obtain. Using prismatic cells, Ford has developed a highly efficient cell-to-body architecture that effectively turns the battery pack into part of the truck’s skeleton. Tesla is generally known as a leader in structural batteries; BMW, Volvo, and now Ford are seeing efficiency and weight gains in using them.

It will be a UEV platform Ford’s first crack at the regional wiring systeminstead of the domain style. Regional architecture means fewer electronic control units (ECUs), less wiring and, most importantly, lower production costs. Tesla pioneered the use, and it has since been adapted by many electric-only car shops, including… Rivian and searchlight.

But Clark challenged the idea that Ford was chasing other automakers in adopting a zone structure. He says the same term is often used in marketing, though it actually refers to a form of zoned assembly in most vehicles, where the ECUs essentially shorten the wiring harnesses while the logic remains central.

“In fact, very few vehicles in the world are actually regional designs,” he added.

In contrast, Clark says Ford’s approach brings that logic closer to where the functions actually happen in the car. This reduces belt complexity further and allows computing resources to be used more dynamically across the vehicle, depending on the functions required at a given time.

Ford is expanding this integration to include power electronics as well. The DC-to-DC converter and AC charger now share a single board and components in one compact unit, which also manages power distribution and battery management, and can provide AC power to the home during a power outage. By piecing these systems together and integrating common components, Ford created a small, serviceable unit known as the E-Box.

There are trade-offs, of course. With 400-volt designs, Ford’s new EVs won’t charge as quickly as Hyundai’s and Kia’s 800-volt EVs, for example. After extensive internal studies, the team concluded that 800-volt systems do not provide any meaningful charging or powertrain advantage for this vehicle segment, Clark explained. Ford wanted flexibility to support not only lithium iron phosphate batteries, but also future chemistry, which will be most evident at 400 volts.

In addition to fighting physics, Ford also Fighting political headwinds that directly contribute to slowing electric vehicle sales growth. But Clark says the company’s future success was never dependent on incentives such as tax breaks, which Ford always viewed as “icing on the cake.”

As a 122-year-old company with a sprawling network of suppliers, Ford has always lagged behind more vertically integrated companies like Tesla in developing software-driven electric vehicles. But the UEV project begins the necessary work to bring as much of those systems and components under Ford’s direct control, Clark says, so the company doesn’t have to negotiate with outside companies about future feature improvements.

In a video presentation, Ford teased some of the designs under consideration for its future truck. In contrast to most trucks today, Ford’s new electric pickup truck will be more aerodynamically designed, with an angled hood and a teardrop-shaped roofline. It’s not your average high-riding truck with a blunt front end, but rather another egg-shaped electric car — a design trend that has been criticized for overuse.

Clark explains that if aerodynamicists worked alone, the result would likely be a pure teardrop shape, which would be impractical and undesirable as a truck. Instead, by integrating aerodynamic experts alongside other Ford designers, every decision becomes an opportunity for shared learning.

“You can be the judge when you finally get to see the truck,” he added. “We know we want people to want it right away. They have to want to buy it. They have to like the way it looks.”