Ford is pretty confident about the draw of its next-generation electric truck.
In a press release, the company announced that it will be building its next electric truck, which is definitely not a sequel to the F-150 Lightning, at its upcoming BlueOval City manufacturing hub in Tennessee. Ford says that the truck, codenamed Project T3, will enter production at the plant in 2025.
The company says that it expects the plant to eventually produce 500,000 electric trucks a year when it is at full capacity, but it did not say when it expects to reach that point. Jim Farley, Ford’s president and CEO, said in a statement that “Project T3 is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to revolutionize America’s truck” and that the new truck “is going to be like the Millennium Falcon – with a back porch attached.”
“We are melding 100 years of Ford truck know-how with world-class electric vehicle, software and aerodynamics talent. It will be a platform for endless innovation and capability. PJ O’Rourke once described American pickups as ‘a back porch with an engine attached.’ Well, this new truck is going to be like the Millennium Falcon – with a back porch attached,” he said. “The manufacturing process will be equally breakthrough, with radical simplicity, cost efficiency and quality technology that will make BlueOval City the modern-day equivalent of Henry Ford’s Rouge factory. A factory of the future that people from all over the world will want to tour.”
With Project T3 (which apparently stands for Trust The Truck) in its lineup, Ford says that it expects to ramp up production of its electric vehicles to 2 million globally every year. While we don’t currently have any sense of what to expect from the new truck in terms of design, the company seems to be clear that it will have many of the features of the F-150 as, in the statement, it said that future trucks should be “fully updatable, constantly improving, and supports towing, hauling, exportable power, and endless new innovations owners will want.”
Ford’s upcoming next-generation electric truck isn’t the only mysterious vehicle we have to look forward to. Tesla also just recently announced that it will be building its next-gen electric vehicle at its upcoming Gigafactory in Mexico. Elon Musk also failed to provide any actual details of what to expect from the vehicle in terms of design.
