Ford on Friday confirmed the venture identify for its next-generation electrical truck: Challenge T3.
Quick for “Trust The Truck,” the venture goals to create a truck that’s “fully updatable, constantly improving, and supports towing, hauling, exportable power and endless new innovations owners will want,” in accordance with a press launch from the automaker.
Challenge T3 – future Ford electrical pickup venture
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 might be able to producing 500,000 electrical vehicles a 12 months at its peak price.
That’s a number of instances the accelerated 150,000-per-year price at which Ford plans to make the F-150 Lightning, and next-generation EVs from this plant might be a good portion of the two million EVs per 12 months Ford intends to make globally by late 2026.
BlueOval Metropolis building, March 2023
Ford has confirmed that a number of merchandise might be produced on the BlueOval Metropolis plant, together with from the Lincoln luxurious model. The venture, 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 can be constructed on a devoted EV platform and be made in “incredibly high volume.”
An announcement included in an accompanying launch, from CEO Jim Farley added some coloration in regards to the upcoming product.
“PJ O’Rourke once described American pickups as ‘a back porch with an engine attached,’” mentioned Farley in an accompanying launch. “Well, this new truck is going to be like the Millennium Falcon—with a back porch attached.”
Future Ford autonomous driving interface teased at truck occasion
A teaser video briefly confirmed an inside that could be one other technology of autos sooner or later—with a sophisticated assisted-driving interface that seems to stow away the steering controls completely, plus an augmented head-up show.
The longer term truck to be inbuilt Tennessee might be fast and quiet, in fact, however Farley additionally promised “exportable power, much more than today.” And he hinted that software program updates might be a daily factor, not a special day.
“Literally every morning you get in your truck that’s built here, it will be better and different; it will learn how you use it,” elaborated Farley later, in an deal with from the long run plant location. “We’re going to send software to it every day, every week, every year to make your truck better.”
2022 Ford F-150 Lightning
That goes proper together with what Farley mentioned in February. Then, he additionally mentioned future Ford EVs might be “radically simplified” with fewer physique types, a restricted variety of construct combos, 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 having the ability to scale up EV manufacturing, making them extra accessible to prospects. Farley has mentioned that an EV value struggle may make the market extraordinarily aggressive—one thing that will have been unfolding out there in latest months with Tesla’s across-the-board value cuts and ensuing Mach-E value reductions, as an example.
Ford Blue Oval Metropolis – rendering of producing advanced in Tennessee, September 2021
Ford Blue Oval Metropolis – rendering of producing advanced in Tennessee, September 2021
Ford Blue Oval Metropolis – rendering of producing advanced in Tennessee, September 2021
Farley additional mentioned that the truck would be the product of a breakthrough manufacturing course of with “radical simplicity, cost efficiency and quality technology.”
Vertical integration is constructed into the plant. Ford boasted that battery making might be intently aligned with manufacturing and the battery provider, SK On—to the extent that battery cells might be made, put into packs, and delivered in lower than half-hour to the meeting plant.
It is going to even have its personal upfit middle the place bedliners, toolboxes, and the like might 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. Will probably 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 vegetation with “renewable and carbon-free” electrical energy by 2035.
