Ford Just Put a Bounty On EV Energy Efficiency. Will It Pay Off?

From Transport Evolved.

Last year, Ford held an event in Louisville, Kentucky, where Ford CEO Jim Farley promised Fords new mid-size electric pickup truck and unveiled, for the first time, Ford’s new Universal Electric Vehicle Platform.

Developed in a special skunkworks facility separate from Ford’s usual Detroit and Cologne engineering teams, the resulting vehicle platform was billed by Ford as being a new "Model-T Moment" for the brand.

Since then however, Ford has significantly cooled on EVs, canceling its F150 Lightning, and recording significant losses throughout last year due to its Model E division.

But earlier this week, despite all of that – and what feels to be mounting political pressure in the U.S. to stop developing EVs – Ford shared more details of the first vehicle due to be made on the new UEV platform, a mid-size electric pickup.

While we’re still in the dark on names and final specs, the 15-minute video did give us a better idea of what to expect, and today, we’re asking if what Ford unveiled was as revolutionary as it would like everyone to believe – or just a necessary, smart engineering step in an EV world where the choices are to fall behind – or catch up with China.

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*⏱️ Chapter Breakdown:*

00:00 – Introduction
03:43 – A quick note…
05:52 – What we’ll cover
06:11 – The history…
08:00 – What we learned this week…
09:44 – A note on "Bounties"
12:55 – Don’t forget to support the channel!
14:39 – Parts flexibility, reduction
15:34 – Wiring changes
16:09 – Flexible one-piece PCB for the battery interconnects
16:55 – Many unknowns remain
17:27 – Is this new and revolutionary?
19:48 – Hedging Bets
22:48 – Thanks, and goodbye

*🔗 Links to relevant videos*

Ford’s original video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlfiQ4YkIgs

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🌱 Electric Vehicle Association – https://www.myeva.org
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*🎙️ Credits:*

Hosts: Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield
TE Camera, Edit, Color: Vi Horton
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