More than a century after Henry Ford revolutionized the auto industry with the world’s first moving assembly line, the Detroit automaker announced Monday it has come up with a completely new way of designing, engineering and, yes, manufacturing automobiles.
The work of a small “skunkworks” team based out of Long Beach, Calif., the project was put in motion by Ford CEO Jim Farley last year in a desperate bid to slash the cost of bringing new EVs to market. And, if the $5 billion “Universal EV” project lives up to its billing, the automaker will begin rolling out a midsize battery-electric pickup in 2027 for about $30,000 — half the price of today’s typical EVs.
“We took a radical approach to a very hard challenge: Create affordable vehicles that delight customers in every way that matters — design, innovation, flexibility, space, driving pleasure, and cost of ownership — and do it with American workers,” Farley said Monday ahead of a news conference revealing the new EV program.
What’s New
An automobile is a complex product to design, engineer, and then assemble. It typically consists of tens of thousands of parts, everything from sheet metal to powertrains, and the countless fasteners needed to hold everything together.
And ever since Henry Ford switched on his first moving assembly line in Highland Park, Mich. in 1913, that “build of materials,” or BOM, has been put together one piece at a time as each vehicle rolls along a conveyor belt. There have been plenty of subtle tweaks to the process, occasionally big ones, like the Toyota Manufacturing System. But the one-piece-at-a-time approach continues to dominate.
Until now, anyway. Ford’s skunkworks team started by rethinking the EV itself, in key areas replacing dozens of individual steel parts with large aluminum “unicastings.” By repeating that process over and over, Ford claimed in a news release, it has come up with a system that “reduces parts by 20% versus a typical vehicle, with 25% fewer fasteners, 40% fewer workstations dock-to-dock in the plant, and 15% faster assembly time.”
Universal EV Platform
Ford’s approach isn’t entirely unique. The California-based team spent a lot of time benchmarking competitors ranging from Tesla — which has its own, large-scale “gigacasting” process — to China’s BYD. The trick is to combine it all together, as Ford is doing with its “Universal EV platform.”
Consider two examples:
- By adopting a new electrical “architecture,” with centralized computer processing, the wiring harness sheds more than 4,000 feet of copper, saving weight and cost.
- The battery pack uses lithium-iron-phosphate, or LFP, chemistry, rather than lithium-ion. There’s a small sacrifice in range but big savings in cost — and the chemistry is less prone to fire.
The Universal EV Production System
One of the biggest changes will take place at Ford’s old assembly plant in Louisville, Ky., which will undergo a $2 billion makeover. (Another $3 billion is going into the automaker’s new BlueOval Battery Park in Marshall, Mich.)
Instead of having a single, moving assembly line, vehicles will start coming together on three adjacent sub-assemblies — one for the front of the vehicle, one for the rear, and a third for the battery pack — that only merge together relatively late in the manufacturing process.
And there’ll be other big changes. The LFP pack here becomes a structural part of the vehicle, further reducing complexity. Seats, carpets, consoles, and other parts will be assembled onto the upper part of the pack, which becomes the EV’s load floor.
The combined approach, said Ford, “could” mean the Kentucky plant will be able to roll out the midsize pickup “40% faster than Louisville Assembly Plant’s current vehicles,” which include the Ford Escape and Lincoln Corsair. But by adding other operations to the plant currently done elsewhere, the final production rate will be about 15% faster.
Ford Products in the Works
“We live and breathe continuous improvement, but sometimes you need a dramatic leap forward. We expect ergonomic breakthroughs and complexity reduction — through elimination of parts, connectors, and wire — will flow through to significant quality and cost wins,” said Bryce Currie, Ford vice president, Americas Manufacturing.
The project will get off the ground sometime in 2027, according to Alan Clarke, a former Tesla executive now leading Ford’s Advanced EV Development team, with what he described as a midsize pickup. That term is actually a bit misleading, however, as he added it will have an exterior footprint closer to that of a compact Ford Maverick but “more interior space than a (Toyota) RAV4.” And that’s before factoring in the Ford EV’s frunk and cargo bed.
Ford CEO Jim Farley went on to tell us that this new electric pickup “will be faster than a twin-turbo Mustang (EcoBoost)” and “be able to power your home for 6 days.”
The Universal EV Platform, meanwhile, will have the capability of being stretched or compressed in every dimension. Ford indicates the truck will be followed by various two- and three-row EVs, for starters. And “We’re working on everything from vans to SUVs down to B-segment vehicles,” added Doug Field, head of EV operations at Ford.
They should start following a year or so after the pickup, several sources, indicated, depending upon demand and whether Ford can avoid the sort of start-up challenges it has faced on other recent programs.
Faster & Leaner = Fewer Jobs?
Ford said the new project will “create or secure” at least 4,000 jobs. The Louisville plant itself currently has more than 2,800 hourly workers on the payroll, and that will be cut to 2,200, Ford officials told GearJunkie. The others, explained spokesman Mark Truby, may take buyouts or move to other Ford facilities, such as the nearby Louisville Truck Plant.
Longer term, Farley has said on prior occasions, simplifying the EV manufacturing process will translate into reduced employment.
It is clear that the concepts underlying the Universal EV will, if successful, be adopted elsewhere within the company’s vast design, engineering, and manufacturing empire. What’s yet to become clear is if it will also show up at the Ford Blue Oval City manufacturing complex in Tennessee. That $5.6 billion project, announced four years ago, was intended to start operating about now, initially rolling out a replacement for the Ford F-150 Lightning. That EV has now been pushed back to 2028, the automaker confirmed last week.
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