The Ford Fathom will be Ford Motor Co.'s first vehicle built on its new Universal Electric Vehicle Platform — a midsize truck that'll start at $28,350 plus $1,595 destination and come with a standard-range battery.It's not a heritage name like Bronco or Maverick from deep in the 123-year-old Dearborn automaker's archives. But perhaps that's the point: Ford is doing something different with this all-electric truck. Executives say it needs to because it's struggled to win mass consumer acceptance of its first-generation EVs, and because Chinese automakers are expanding globally and rapidly with subsidized, low-cost electrified models customers want.The first vehicle built off Ford Motor Co.'s Universal Electric Vehicle Platform will be the Ford Fathom, a midsize truck starting at $28,350."That owner's motivations," Kay Hart, general manager of Model e, Ford's EV division, said in a blog post about the target buyer of the Fathom, "look a little different from the traditional truck customer's, and defining them guided every decision on the first vehicle built on our Universal EV Platform. Which meant the name had to do more than sound good. It had to capture a mindset, shifting the focus from specs to a spirit of adaptability."AdvertisementAdvertisementCustomers can sign up for Fathom updates, though pre-orders won't open until early next year. First deliveries are expected later in 2027. Timing for a true reveal hasn't been shared, though customers already have spotted camouflaged pre-production models on the roads.Naming the vehicle was a nine-month process, Hart said. The company evaluated archived names: Galaxie, Taurus and Ranchero. Each, Hart said, came with a specific implication that might not fit with the new electric truck.Two Ford copywriters separately brought Fathom forward among hundreds of other options. The naming team asked engineers to pick their favorites. One engineer who fit the vehicle's customer profile chose the winner before every meeting."Long before it meant depth, fathom described the span of a person's outstretched arms, roughly six feet," Hart said. "Sailors borrowed that span to measure water they couldn't see the bottom of. And eventually the word came to mean something else entirely: to understand a thing completely.AdvertisementAdvertisement"A name about measuring what you can't see, that grew into a word about understanding," she continued. "For a truck that started with years of trying to understand a specific customer, that was the whole brief in six letters."Executives have described the five-seater, midsize truck as similar in size to the Maverick, but having more passenger room than the latest Toyota RAV4, the most popular SUV in the United States. Ford has said it will have a 0-60 mph time on the truck to be as fast as the Mustang EcoBoost with more downforce. Like the Tesla Cybertruck, a 48-volt system will replace the traditional 12-volt battery that operates in-vehicle electronics.Executives have said the pickup will support drivers who need 300 miles of range, similar to the EVs it already has offered but with a third of the battery cells. That, however, is not what the standard-range battery will offer, spokesperson Emma Bergg said. Fathom will have bidirectional power capability that can charge a home without a generator, though the company declined to share for what length of time. The full-size, first-gen electric F-150 Lightning could power a house for up to six days, according to the company.Every Fathom will be capable of BlueCruise, launching with Ford's Level 2+ hands-free highway driving assistant. The company has said the UEV platform also will support its launch of Level 3 eyes-off-the-road driving in 2028. Plus, a high-resolution touchscreen will have Apple Maps embedded, though consumers still will be able to use Android Auto and Apple CarPlay should they desire. The vehicle will have a digital key.AdvertisementAdvertisementThe truck will be a test for Ford. EV demand has missed expectations as consumers remain wary of their range, cost, speed to charge, and reliability. Mustang Mach-E's U.S. sales are down 50% through July. The elimination of federal tax credits hasn't helped.But global regulators are pushing for zero-emission vehicle adoption, and Chinese companies are expanding around the world with subsidized, affordable electrified vehicles. Ford CEO Jim Farley has called them an "existential threat."The UEV is a simplified underpinning developed by Ford's California-based EV hardware and software "skunkworks" team, a group launched in 2022 at a tenth of the size of what Ford typically would hire for this kind of work. The intentional separation of the group was done for the sake of innovation outside of the legacy, bureaucratic system, executives have said.Ford is investing $2 billion into Louisville Assembly for the UEV and is abandoning the traditional moving assembly line developed by founder Henry Ford in 1913. The new tree-shaped manufacturing design brings together three sub-assemblies and reduces parts by 20%. It will be Ford's most automated assembly plant, and the investment secures 2,200 hourly jobs at Louisville Assembly.AdvertisementAdvertisementLarge, single-piece aluminum unicastings replace dozens of smaller parts so the front and rear of the vehicle can be assembled separately. They then combine with the structural battery, which is assembled independently with seats, consoles and carpeting.The midsize truck will use batteries from the $3 billion BlueOval Battery Park Michigan in Marshall that began pre-production manufacturing earlier this year. It's producing lithium-iron-phosphate batteries, which don't use cobalt or nickel, making them less expensive than traditional EV batteries. They also are less likely to catch fire, though they also are less energy dense. The technology is licensed from China's Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd. Ford expects to be the first manufacturer of LFP batteries for automobiles in the United States."We wanted to choose a name," Hart said, "to give the vehicle personality, a soul, and make it a character in our customer's life."[email protected]X: @BreanaCNobleThis article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Ford reveals name, pricing of upcoming electric midsize truck
