Ford Wants Its $30,000 EV Truck To Do Something Only Tesla Has Done

Ford wants to sell 100,000 Fathom pickups in its first year. It won’t be easy.

Photo by: Ford

By: Iulian Dnistran

Sep 3, at 3:13am ET

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Ford has an ambitious sales plan with its affordable new EV pickup, the Fathom.
The American automaker reportedly wants to sell over 100,000 units in the first year.
No other car company except Tesla has ever managed such a performance with a single electric model.

Ford is shooting for the stars with its upcoming Fathom electric pickup truck. The American automaker wants to sell over 100,000 units of the affordable EV in its first year of production, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter.

So far in the U.S., only Tesla has managed to crack 100,000 units annually for an EV. Hitting that goal would quickly make the $30,000 pickup one of the country's top-selling electric models. Setting it signals that Ford is still serious about the EV game, despite canceling the F-150 Lightning along with projects that were in development for years. Whether or not customers will actually show up at dealerships and make this target a reality is still up in the air.

Ford Fathom Prototypes in Las Vegas

Photo by: Ford

It will be a tall task. The end of the $7,500 EV tax credit about a year ago has dampened demand for EVs. Even before all the policy changes, growth in U.S. sales had slowed. As major automakers waded into the U.S. EV market over the last several years with ambitions of taking on Tesla, none of their products managed to come close to the EV leader's sales volumes. The best-selling EV not made by Elon Musk last year was the Chevy Equinox EV, which racked up some 58,000 sales.

Ford itself has overpromised and underdelivered before; at one point, it targeted annual F-150 Lightning production of 150,000 units. In its best year, the truck did about a fifth of that. Now Ford is betting that a lower price point and a new way of making EVs will allow it to crack the EV market like it never has before.

Ford is betting on a new EV platform for its $30,000 Fathom truck.

Photo by: Ford

With the budget Fathom, set to kick off production in the fall of next year, the Blue Oval has reworked the way it makes electric vehicles specifically, and cars more broadly. The goal was to make the truck as cost-effective as possible, as opposed to the previous-generation EVs that the company struggled to turn a profit on.

The first model using Ford's new Universal Electric Vehicle platform, the truck will be produced using a novel assembly technique where the front, middle, and rear of the vehicle are built out on separate lines, then joined together at the end. Ford calls it an "assembly tree," rather than a typical "assembly line," and says it should make churning out EVs more efficient.

Following in the footsteps of Tesla, the carmaker has also employed the use of large castings to keep the number of individual parts as low as possible. The truck's electrical architecture has been developed from the ground up. It will be powered by lithium iron phosphate batteries, which are cheaper than high-nickel options and can be charged to 100% frequently without issue.

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Jim Farley, Ford’s CEO, has said in the past that the Fathom will offer more interior space than a Toyota RAV4, which is one of the best-selling crossovers in the country. The company has always referred to the upcoming truck as being mid-sized, but people who have seen the prototypes up close have said that the Fathom is similar in size to the compact, gas-powered Maverick. The pickup will also be available with either rear-wheel drive or all-wheel drive, and the infotainment system will integrate Apple Maps natively–a first for the company.

Ford Fathom Prototypes in Las Vegas

Photo by: Ford

There’s still a lot we don’t know about the Fathom, and Ford is still trickling out information without revealing anything big. We should learn more in the next few months as the truck gets closer to the streets; orders open up in early 2027, and the pickup will be made at Ford’s assembly plant in Louisville, Kentucky, where the Ford Escape and Lincoln Corsair were built until last year. What's clear already is that Ford thinks it has a hit on its hands.