Ford Project T3 hints at F-150 Lightning successor

Ford has indicated that a successor to its electrical F-150 Lightning pick-up volition get successful 2025 as the accumulation mentation of the recently announced Project T3.

“Project T3 is simply a once-in-a-lifetime accidental to revolutionise America’s truck,” Ford CEO Jim Farley said successful a connection announcing its development.

The F-series pick-ups are wide acknowledged to beryllium "America’s truck", fixed the F-150 has topped the US’s caller car income illustration for much than 4 decades.

Farley besides elaborate however the T3 volition large connected practicality. He said: “[Satirist] PJ O’Rourke erstwhile described American pickups arsenic ‘a backmost structure with an motor attached’. Well, this caller motortruck is going to beryllium similar the Millennium Falcon [from Star Wars] – with a backmost structure attached.”

It volition beryllium built astatine Ford’s Blueoval City installation – planned to unfastened successful 2025 – which is presently being constructed successful collaboration with South Korean artillery steadfast SK On.

The $5.6 cardinal (£4.6bn) works is scheduled to nutrient astir 500,000 electrical trucks annually, doing truthful utilizing lone carbon-free energy and carbon-free heating.

Battery cells and packs volition besides beryllium assembled connected site, redeeming the fiscal and environmental costs  of shipping them from South Korea oregon China, for example.

Producing the batteries successful the US means Ford tin instrumentality vantage of taxation credits provided by the Inflation Reduction Act.

Farley said connected Ford’s third-quarter net telephone that this had the biggest imaginable interaction connected Ford’s customers and concern – cutting artillery costs by astir $45 per kWh. For reference, the world’s cheapest EV artillery (made by Chinese steadfast CATL) reportedly costs $134/kWh (£110).

The accumulation process for the T3 volition beryllium “equally breakthrough”, according to Farley, with “radical simplicity, outgo ratio and prime exertion that volition marque Blueoval City the modern-day equivalent of Henry Ford’s Rouge factory.”