Ford turns to F1 and invests in a $30,000 electric car

Ford promises to offer an EV next year that starts at $30,000 and can compete with Chinese automakers without compromising profit margins. A combination of 3D-printed Lego-like parts, Formula 1 thinking, and a quality program will help the company achieve that goal, Ford said Tuesday.

It will have to. Ford took a $ 19.5 billion hit in December and completed the development of its electric battery F-150 Lightning. It is unlikely that this new EV business model will fall flat.

Ford’s bet on a line of affordable EVs began a few years ago with a the skunkworks team led by Alan Clarke, a 12-year Tesla veteran. Parts of its plan were revealed last August, when Ford said it would drop its regular lineup investing $2 billion in its Louisville factory to implement a new manufacturing process that promises to speed up production by 15%.

The company said at the time that its line of EVs will be built on a universal platform with one-piece aluminum unicastings – large components that are cast as a single piece to remove parts and allow rapid assembly – and lithium iron phosphate batteries with technology approved from China’s CATL.

Now Ford is sharing information in a the number of blog posts and social media posts about how it will deliver on its promise of an affordable EV that will be $20,000 cheaper than a typical new car while still making a profit. Ford did not share the model, features, or charging times of this future EV. But it did reveal how it plans to build lightweight, low-cost, low-cost EVs.

It all starts with the universal EV platform, or UEV. The platform will power a midsize car first, then it could power a sedan, a crossover, a three-row SUV, and even small commercial vans, according to Clarke. The UEV is Ford’s first “white paper” EV built from the ground up — a welcome change for the company, which built the Mustang Mach-E and Lightning EVs using the same architecture and manufacturing process.

“It’s a platform that’s built around performance,” Clarke said in a press conference. “It’s designed to make it possible to make long-distance electric vehicle travel more affordable.”

To achieve this, Clarke began to create a new culture made up of Formula 1 talent and companies such as Apple, Lucid Motors, Rivian, and Tesla, as well. The Power of Auto Motivethe beginning that was acquired by Ford in 2023. The group, which includes about 450 people at its site in Long Beach, California, and 200 people in the office in Palo Alto, also received a good program to help professionals understand how their daily decisions affect customers and the end product, Clarke said in an interview with journalists.

The purpose of the bounty program was to be successful. Numerical metrics were provided for every aspect of the UEV, including traffic volume, aerodynamic drag, and even other vehicle parameters. In fact, this means that Ford may choose to use a more expensive part if it helps reduce the EV’s weight, thereby making it more efficient and cost-effective.

“We’ve been very focused on making sure that the price we’re going with the price doesn’t take away from the value,” Clarke said. One example is that even the basic part of the EV car will have a folding windshield, an important feature for many cars, because it reduces aerodynamic drag, according to Clarke. The company saved money by using one motor, instead of two, to handle the glass transition and bending.

The acquisition also includes a team of former Formula 1 engineers working closely with Ford’s design team. The result, according to Ford, is a mid-size EV that is 15% more efficient than any other vehicle on the market today.

This team of former F1 engineers used 3D printed materials and mechanical engineering to create a Lego-like building for its test car. Numerous 3D-printed components, which are accurate to within fractions of a millimeter of Ford’s prototypes and can be interchanged in minutes, were used to measure the aircraft’s performance. These Lego-like prototypes were used for wind tunnel testing early on – and often – to measure aerodynamics, a technique Ford used only when the car’s design was almost complete.

The natural area of ​​focus was on the battery, which can account for about 40% of the vehicle’s total cost. A lighter and more efficient car allows Ford to use a smaller battery, which lowers costs. The result, according to Clarke, will be an EV with a range of about 15%, or 50 miles, than the equivalent gas model.

The push for efficiency also led the group to adopt manufacturing methods that Tesla had adopted and popularized, including the use of aluminum unicastings and the move from 12-volt to 48-volt electrical systems that would be used in some of the vehicles.

Ford also promoted the design of the UEV electric vehicle, taking the same approach as Tesla and Rivian. Instead of scattering electronic control units (ECUs), or computers, throughout the vehicle, Ford has integrated most of the vehicle’s functions into five modules. This reduces complexity, cost, and copper usage and has made the EV’s wiring harness 22 pounds lighter than one of its first-generation electric vehicles, according to Luccas Di Tullio, a Ford software engineer who previously worked at Auto Motive Power.

Di Tullio said the company carried the same philosophy to the electric power, finding ways to share parts and reduce parts with a single unit that manages the distribution of electricity and battery management and provides AC power back to the customer’s home during downtime.

Ford reprogrammed its five major ECUs, right down to the performance part, according to Clarke. Because Ford has the software — down to a very low level — it’s very flexible, Clarke said.

“Besides being able to control the infotainment, what’s on the screen, (and) how you interact with the car, all the controls are directly connected,” he said. “So you can imagine that the information that can be generated by integrating the various sensors around the vehicle is now within our reach and within our reach.”