Ford reportedly wants to move more than 100,000 copies of its upcoming Fathom electric pickup in the truck's first year of production — a number that puts the blue oval in company nobody else has kept.
No automaker besides Tesla has ever sold more than 100,000 units of a single EV in the United States in a year. Therefore, Ford setting that as a launch target, rather than a stretch goal reached after a model matures, is aggressive by any measure. It also signals the company hasn't walked away from EVs entirely, even after canceling several projects that spent years in development.
Whether buyers actually turn up to hit the figure reported by The Wall Street Journal is the open question, however, and one Ford can't answer with a press release.
The Fathom is engineered around a low sticker. Ford is targeting a starting price around $30,000, and it's using a manufacturing approach it hasn't tried before. As a result, the front, middle, and rear of the truck are built out as completely as possible on separate lines, then joined at the end. Massive casting machines cut the individual part count, the same playbook Tesla and Chinese manufacturers have leaned on for years, and the electrical architecture was developed from scratch.
Power comes from lithium iron phosphate batteries, which tolerate regular charging to 100% without much degradation worry. Buyers get a choice of rear- or all-wheel drive, and the infotainment integrates Apple Maps natively, a first for Ford.
Ford calls the Fathom midsized. CEO Jim Farley has said it offers more interior space than a Toyota RAV4. However, a since-corrected typo in an official sales report labeled it "small," and people who've reportedly seen the prototypes up close say it's closer in size to the compact, gas-powered Maverick.
Production is set to begin next year at Ford's Louisville, Kentucky plant, which built the Escape and Lincoln Corsair until last year.
[Images: Ford]
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