Ford on Friday confirmed the undertaking title for its next-generation electrical truck: Undertaking T3.

Brief for “Belief The Truck,” the undertaking goals to create a truck that’s “totally updatable, consistently bettering, and helps towing, hauling, exportable energy and limitless new improvements house owners will need,” in keeping with a press launch from the automaker. 

Undertaking T3 – future Ford electrical pickup undertaking

The announcement got here simply earlier than an occasion scheduled Friday to preview the corporate’s mammoth BlueOval Metropolis plant in Tennessee, which Ford says can be able to producing 500,000 electrical vehicles a 12 months at its peak charge. 

That’s a number of occasions the accelerated 150,000-per-year charge at which Ford plans to make the F-150 Lightning, and next-generation EVs from this plant can be a good portion of the two million EVs per 12 months Ford intends to make globally by late 2026.

BlueOval Metropolis development, March 2023

Ford has confirmed that a number of merchandise can be produced on the BlueOval Metropolis plant, together with from the Lincoln luxurious model. The undertaking, and accompanying imaginative and prescient, could have been underway by late 2021 amid very robust curiosity within the F-150 Lightning electrical pickup, even earlier than it had been delivered. Then, Ford confirmed that the next-generation truck could be constructed on a devoted EV platform and be made in “extremely excessive quantity.”

An announcement included in an accompanying launch, from CEO Jim Farley added some coloration concerning the upcoming product. 

“PJ O’Rourke as soon as described American pickups as ‘a again porch with an engine hooked up,’” stated Farley in an accompanying launch. “Effectively, this new truck goes to be just like the Millennium Falcon—with a again porch hooked up.”

Future Ford autonomous driving interface teased at truck occasion

A teaser video briefly confirmed an inside which may be one other era of autos sooner or later—with a complicated assisted-driving interface that seems to stow away the steering controls totally, plus an augmented head-up show.

The longer term truck to be inbuilt Tennessee can be fast and quiet, in fact, however Farley additionally promised “exportable energy, far more than right now.” And he hinted that software program updates can be a daily factor, not a special day.

“Actually each morning you get in your truck that’s constructed right here, will probably be higher and completely different; it should learn the way you employ it,” elaborated Farley later, in an handle from the longer term plant location. “We’re going to ship software program to it each day, each week, yearly to make your truck higher.”

2022 Ford F-150 Lightning

That goes proper together with what Farley stated in February. Then, he additionally stated future Ford EVs can be “radically simplified” with fewer physique kinds, a restricted variety of construct combos, and a discount in weight and complexity—to do extra with the smallest battery pack attainable.

The corporate famous that BlueOval Metropolis is a key a part of having the ability to scale up EV manufacturing, making them extra accessible to prospects. Farley has stated that an EV worth struggle may make the market extraordinarily aggressive—one thing that will have been unfolding available in the market in latest months with Tesla’s across-the-board worth cuts and ensuing Mach-E worth reductions, for example. 

Ford Blue Oval Metropolis – rendering of producing advanced in Tennessee, September 2021

Ford Blue Oval Metropolis – rendering of producing advanced in Tennessee, September 2021

Ford Blue Oval Metropolis – rendering of producing advanced in Tennessee, September 2021

Farley additional stated that the truck would be the product of a breakthrough manufacturing course of with “radical simplicity, price effectivity and high quality expertise.”

Vertical integration is constructed into the plant. Ford boasted that battery making can be intently aligned with manufacturing and the battery provider, SK On—to the extent that battery cells can be made, put into packs, and delivered in lower than half-hour to the meeting plant. 

It’s going to even have its personal upfit middle the place bedliners, toolboxes, and the like could be put in robotically.  

The automaker along with SK On are investing $5.6 billion within the campus, and it’ll create about 6,000 new jobs. It will likely be the corporate’s first carbon-neutral manufacturing and battery campus. Within the case of the brand new Tennessee facility, it’s utilizing recovered warmth from the utility infrastructure plus a geothermal system. The corporate seeks to energy all of its vegetation with “renewable and carbon-free” electrical energy by 2035.