How do you design a $30k electric pickup? Inside Ford's skunkworks

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2026/05/how-do-you-design-a-30000-electric-pickup-inside-fords-skunkworks/

by PaulHoule • 2 months ago

88 84 2 months ago

iNerdier• 1 month ago

Who says you need Ford to do it? Aging Wheels tried a prototype of a small electric pickup a year ago from a team making one without the support of a huge car company. I have no dog in this fight, other than wanting more of transport to go electric but if Americans refuse to buy vans which probably make more sense for transporting goods this might be a good option.

Video: https://youtu.be/1OgN_qctcGs

Cthulhu_2• 1 month ago

You don't need Ford per se, but you do need an experienced manufacturer to take a concept car to mass production, and you need mass production to make something affordable.

mft_2• 1 month ago

I'm watching Slate [0] with interest; they aren't following a path according to your assumptions.

[0] https://www.slate.auto/en

toast03• 1 month ago

Americans refuse to buy vans

I don't know that that's true. Van popularity comes and goes. So does van manufacturing. When van sales are high, we get more makes, when sales slump, some of the exit. People who buy vans don't like to buy new ones unless the old one is totalled or falls apart...

I don't think you can buy a Ford or Chevy minivan right now, but Honda, Toyota and Chrysler usually have one. VW has one now, too. I just missed the window to a get Ford Transit Connect when my 2017 Pacific died, so I ended up with an 81 VW Vanagon... But I also have a pickup with a 6 foot bed. Sometimes you want your load enclosed; sometimes outside is better.

jf• 1 month ago

Slate seems closer to shipping a ~$30k electric pickup: https://www.slate.auto

Markoff3• 1 month ago

I will believe when I see it, until then it's just vaporware, let's see the price if they ship at all by the end of 2026/beginning 2027 maybe.

kotaKat3• 1 month ago

We'll know the price in two more weeks. I'm yolo'ing it and I can't wait for my little orange-wrapped pickup.

So far their manufacturing and progress videos are quite impressive. The fact there's 25-50+ basically production-ready prototypes if not more now driving around their factory and doing testing compared to most of the other vaporware companies out there has me holding out strong.

(How many Elios are out there doing testing? How many TELOs? Oof.)

Grombobulous5• 1 month ago

I think Slate can get it shipped, that won’t be the issue.

The issue is that Slate has completely underestimated customer preference for four door vehicles.

Two door vehicle variants have absolutely died off in the market and I’d say with good reason.

Find a two door Jeep Wrangler. You’ll find 20-30 four door jeeps before you find a two door.

Can you even imagine in 2026 the idea of an Accord Coupe, a Camry Solara, Volkswagen Eos/Cabriolet, Ford Explorer/Bronco 2-door, Civic Coupe, Ford ZX2, Chevy Cavalier 2-door, the list just goes on and on.

Back in the day chopping off two doors was a semi-legitimate way to get a barebones base model or I guess look cooler or something. Honestly, I don’t understand how the practicality trade-off ever made sense.

Maybe in the days before heavily automated assembly lines, two door vehicles were legitimately cheaper to make?

da_chicken• 1 month ago

Kelly's 14 points are still a great read and should resonate with a lot of people here.

That said, when they tried this in the past they did it by changing the sticker price to $65k+. So, color me skeptical.

wongarsu2• 1 month ago

The list of 14 rules for running a skunkworks program and how they apply here is great and well worth reading the article, regardless of how you feel about the likelihood of Ford ever successfully executing on a $30k ev truck

WorldMaker3• 1 month ago

I think Ford is technically capable of building a $30k EV truck and have been for some time. The F-150 Lightning was surprisingly close and only the overshot the mark in the direction most of the rest of the F-150 line has leaned in the same years.

I think Ford still hasn't solved its Dealer Problem that it currently would not have dealers willing to sell a $30k EV truck in the US.

pilotneko• 1 month ago

Where did you see a F-150 Lightning new for less than $40k anywhere?

brikym• 1 month ago

#15 Don't tell anyone about it.

voxadam• 1 month ago

Kelly's 15th rule was actually "Starve before doing business with the damned Navy. They don't know what the hell they want and will drive you up a wall before they break either your heart or a more exposed part of your anatomy."

kotaKat3• 1 month ago

Can't wait for Ford's $40,000 electric pickup.

Pepperidge Farm remembers the $19,995 MSRP Ford Maverick with its standard hybrid drivetrain. Missed my chance to buy one, watched the price bloat out and nope.

Grombobulous5• 1 month ago

To be fair to Ford, the Maverick launched in 2022 right before a period of accelerated inflation, especially in the car industry.

You’d be hard pressed to find any new vehicle that hasn’t seen a significant price increase since that time.

It’s still a truck you can get for $26k-28k and is only about $3k more than the cheapest cars sold in America.

I think your sentiment is an understandable bit of cynicism around EVs, and one that US consumers have felt for a while. It seems like the whole concept of the EV is dead. Nobody wants it, carmakers are pulling back.

Meanwhile, EVs are exploding in popularity and value basically all the other markets outside of the United States.

In my opinion, the idea that a good and affordable EV product will not become mainstream is sticking around because American car buyers have been starved of new EV models due to a market of weak demand and revoked incentives. This is going to change soon, and this change will hit the consumer market relatively suddenly. A lot of the cost challenges with EVs have evaporated.

In other words, yeah, Ford is easily going to make a $30,000 EV pickup. I totally believe it.

Remember when Toyota said they’re done bothering with EVs? Then all of a sudden the 2026 bz refresh is a legit EV, and now the new Lexus ES is launching with the EV model being the highest performance and cheapest model.

The Rivian R2 is yet another huge deal about to launch on the premium side of the market. I’d have a hard time figuring out why what I would choose something like a gasoline BMW X3 over the R2 - they’re pretty much in the same price range.

In other words, the era of EVs costing $10-20k more than an equivalent gasoline car is abruptly ending.

gyulai3• 1 month ago

I live in Germany and am sure as hell that I will never be driving a $30k electric pickup here. They'll make sure nothing like this ever becomes legal to import or drive on German roads until after there's a German car brand on it, and it costs 10x that while being identical, just to subsidize lots of local jobs that are low-wage, high-tax, and taking away manpower from other sectors/fields where it's more needed.

snowpid• 1 month ago

vw offers a electro pickup for 36k excluding tax (43k EUR with tax, ). https://www.volkswagen-nutzfahrzeuge.de/de/modelle/transport...

Its less than 10x

cheschire2• 1 month ago

I mean, you can see how a kastenwagen nutzfahrzeug is a very different vehicle from a consumer mid-size pickup, right?

Sure, technically some would call the vehicle you linked a pickup, and technically German law still identifies the consumer pickup truck as a nutzfahrzeug instead of a PKW, but it doesn’t feel like you’re making a best effort to meet GP in the middle.

CalRobert4• 1 month ago

That sounds similar to the lamentations of American buyers who want Japanese kei trucks.

It’s protectionism all the way down I guess.

Though I see tons of US pickup trucks in the Netherlands, and have seen even lifted ones in Germany too for that matter.

cucumber37328423• 1 month ago

Lamenting the difficulty of registering kei trucks is kind of rich coming from the patron saint of "the roads are horribly dangerous and we need to do everything to safen them up and drivers can bear whatever that costs"

Protectionism when I don't like it, public safety when I do I guess.

In any case, they're pretty easy to register if you don't lick the boot. Whatever state you're in typically isn't gonna come after you for tax evasion for an object they aren't in the business of taxing if you catch my drift.

throwaway20373• 1 month ago

    > American buyers who want Japanese kei trucks.

It is crazy when I hear people say they want to drive a kei truck on American roads. American SUVs and trucks are enormous in both height and weight. The kei truck does not offer the necessary crash protection.

JumpCrisscross6• 1 month ago

That sounds similar to the lamentations of American buyers

Is there a good international metric for how much a given country’s car buyers pay extra due to tariffs, duties, protectionist regulation, et cetera?

wongarsu2• 1 month ago

In Germany it's mostly US service members and their families who drive US pickup trucks. They can ship personal vehicles to Germany without having to make them fully compliant with German regulations, and generally seem to like them

Away from US bases, pickup trucks are very rare in Germany. The closest thing you will see are 3-ton flatbed trucks as work vehicles, or something like a VW Transporter. But generally tradespeople prefer vans, and commuters prefer hatchbacks or SUVs (which are bad enough)

ramgine• 1 month ago

I’ve wanted a kei truck for a while. Then when you park it next to suburban mom’s expedition/escalade/luxury bus it’s so tiny it looks unsafe. Unfortunately I live in a city where small town trips are difficult without getting on a 70+ mph freeway and competing with those vehicles

laurencerowe• 1 month ago

Cars in the US cost pretty much the same before taxes as in Europe. If Ford can build this truck in the US for this cost there seems little reason it couldn’t build it in the EU for a similar cost. Whether it will offer this body style or not is of course another question (Ford have stopped selling all regular cars in US, only offering crossovers, SUVs and trucks.) This is rather different to the perceived threat of cheap imports from China.

leethargo• 1 month ago

From the title, I expected this to be about electric guitars :-(

TomMasz• 1 month ago

I've worked on skunkworks projects. It's all fine and dandy until it becomes a product and the main company takes over.

xtiansimon• 1 month ago

Meh. I want that IMV Origin from Toyota

https://www.core77.com/posts/139132/Toyotas-Brilliant-Plan-t...

dyauspitr• 1 month ago

I liked Fords erev plan for a brief moment before China destroyed that with 1 MW charging. There is zero need for gas in a world when you can go from 20-80% in 3 mins.

newtonianrules• 1 month ago

Simple. You strip out all the bullshit and don’t put a 100 kWh battery into it. There, I’ll await my check.

Jblx2• 1 month ago

Anyone have semi-reliable data on the volume price for lithium ion cells in mid-2026? (or packs if that data is easier to come by).

Schiendelman2• 1 month ago

The batteries are less and less of an issue now - that battery would now be less than $10,000.

testing22321• 1 month ago

Structural battery pack with seats bolted to it. 48 volt, less wiring, castings front and rear. Focus on less parts, ease of manufacturing and aerodynamics.

Makes sense with so many ex-Tesla people there.

Looks like ford will only be ~5 years behind if they can pull it off

Innittech• 1 month ago

They designed a $70,000 electric pickup that ended up costing $100,000 not too long ago. You don't see them on the road.

jayofdoom• 1 month ago

They sold >100,000 of them, including one to me. The F-150 Lightnings are coming off lease and are available used now for a reasonable price.

m463• 1 month ago

You don't SEE them on the road, because they look like other F-150s.

You see the cybertruck, because you can't help it.

Meanwhile the F-150 lightning outsold the cybertruck.

thebruce87m• 1 month ago

In the UK EVs have a green rectangle on the number plate. I personally think this is helping adoption as it changes the mindset of people who have been programmed to think that “nobody wants EVs” - it’s hard to argue with the sheer number of them driving around now that you might otherwise miss since a lot of them just look like the ICE equivalents.

Schiendelman2• 1 month ago

Honestly, most of the F150s I see on the road in the Pacific Northwest are Lightnings. I just glanced up from my laptop and see one now.

liampulles• 1 month ago

The original Skunkworks optimizes for a low production volume of vehicles which operate in a very extreme band of performance. And yes these projects are able to deliver within budget, but they are still very expensive machines. This is totally opposite to what is applicable to Ford, where really the innovation needs to be in the factory.

The other key lesson from the Skunkworks book, which is applicable, is that to the greatest degree possible, one should not reinvent the wheel. Reuse parts from other high production vehicles, which have proven their reliability. Focus the innovation tactically.

How do you design a $30k electric pickup? Inside Ford's skunkworks

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