Ford is working on a whole family of affordable electric vehicles to fend off the threat of Tesla and Chinese rivals, and the first model will reportedly debut in 2026. Bloomberg reports Ford will roll out a small ute, a compact SUV and, potentially, a vehicle to be used for ride-hailing. The first model to go on sale will reportedly carry a base price of US$25,000 , undercutting the outgoing Chevrolet Bolt and theoretically pitting it against Tesla’s yet-to-be revealed entry-level model.
Mr Farley had already confirmed the existence of a “super-talented skunkworks team” that has been working outside of the brand’s traditional framework for the past two years. This team, based in Irvine, California, reportedly has fewer than 100 people working on it. “They’ve developed a flexible platform that will not only deploy to several types of vehicles but will be a large install base for software and services,” Ford CEO Jim Farley told investors earlier this year.