Ford’s next-generation electric truck will be called Fathom, and it will start at $28,350 when it goes on sale in 2027, the company said on Thursday.
A “destination and delivery” fee will bring that price up to $29,945, putting the Fathom just below the $30,000 mark that Ford has targeted since it first started talking more openly about the project in 2025.
The truck, when it arrives next year, represents a major bet for Ford. It’s the automaker’s second all-electric truck after the F-150 Lightning (third, if you count the limited-run Ranger EV from the late 1990s). But like many of its peers, the company has dramatically pulled back on its once-ambitious plans to build electric vehicles.
The Fathom is the first vehicle Ford is building on its new “Universal EV Platform,” or UEV, which will power a number of different EVs and involves a brand-new assembly line process meant to cut costs. It’s an attempt by CEO Jim Farley to try and catch up to category leader Tesla, as well as the many Chinese EVs that he’s argued against allowing into the U.S. market — all while building the truck in Louisville, Kentucky.
Deliveries begin in “fall 2027,” and Ford said on Thursday that it won’t reveal the truck until “early 2027,” which is when it will start taking pre-orders.
We do have some details, though. Ford has already said the Fathom will have Apple Maps built into its operating system, and on Thursday, the company said the truck will support Android Auto and Apple CarPlay. Notably, it will not support Apple’s next-generation CarPlay Ultra.
The Fathom will have five seats, which is more interior space than a Toyota Rav4; a “large, high-resolution touch screen,” and a “digital car key.” It will be capable of bidirectional power, much like the Lightning and the hybrid F-150.
Every Fathom will also be “BlueCruise-capable,” meaning it will come with the tech integrated, but buyers will likely have to pay extra to enable Ford’s hands-free advanced driver assistance system. The truck is supposed to have a newer, more powerful version of BlueCruise that Ford says will eventually be capable of handling supervised driving from starting point to destination. Eyes-off driving is expected in 2028.
The Fathom’s starting price also only includes the “standard range” lithium iron phosphate battery pack. Ford hasn’t yet said how many miles the truck can drive on a single charge.
Ford said the name represents “a deep understanding of the person who would drive” the truck, and how their “motivations look a little different from the traditional truck customer’s.”
“[T]he name had to do more than sound good. It had to capture a mindset, shifting the focus from specs to a spirit of adaptability,” the company wrote.
Electric trucks have not done terribly well in the U.S.. The Lightning only moved a little more than 10,000 units in its best quarter, and though Tesla’s Cybertruck had a higher peak, it has since crashed out.
Ford is gambling by choosing the truck form factor for its first UEV platform vehicle. But there are some inherent upsides: The Fathom and other vehicles built on the platform will be the first that Ford has designed from the ground up to use electric powertrains. That should mean fewer tradeoffs on range, efficiency, and overall packaging of the vehicle.
Both the Fathom and UEV have been in the works for a few years. It started as a skunkworks project that Farley tasked former Tesla exec Alan Clarke with leading, as TechCrunch first reported in 2024. The team is flush with talent from Rivian, Tesla and Apple’s now-defunct car project, and has purportedly been working in isolation in Los Angeles, separated from the bureaucracy of the rest of the company.
All of this likely contributed to getting the Fathom’s starting price to just under $30,000, a major accomplishment in a market where the average new car costs $50,000. The truck won’t have a lot of competition in that range — it’s essentially going up against just the spartan, Jeff Bezos-backed Slate pickup, and a few non-truck EVs like the Chevy Bolt.
Ford has found a ton of success with its small, low-cost Maverick pickup, which comes in both internal combustion and hybrid powertrain variants. The Fathom is an attempt to bottle that lightning, without going the way of the Lightning.
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Sean O'Kane Sr. Reporter, Transportation
Sean O’Kane is a reporter who has spent a decade covering the rapidly-evolving business and technology of the transportation industry, including Tesla and the many startups chasing Elon Musk. Most recently, he was a reporter at Bloomberg News where he helped break stories about some of the most notorious EV SPAC flops. He previously worked at The Verge, where he also covered consumer technology, hosted many short- and long-form videos, performed product and editorial photography, and once nearly passed out in a Red Bull Air Race plane.
You can contact or verify outreach from Sean by emailing sean.okane@techcrunch.com or via encrypted message at okane.01 on Signal.
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