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Fords new electric truck, Fathom, starts at $28,350
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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. 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. When you purchase thro
Although I grew up shifting my dad’s Chevrolet S-10 pickup truck from the passenger seat, I’m not exactly Chevy’s target market. I favor hatchbacks over cargo beds. But after tooling around Detroit for a day in the Silverado EV, I realized that Chevy might make a truck guy out of me yet. The Silverado EV drives, well, almost like a car. Yet the bed is massive; its frunk, cavernous. The back seat has enough room for me to cross my cursedly long legs, and the cabin is quiet. It’ll power your house in case of a hurricane, and it’ll haul, tow, and navigate down the freeway without a finger on the steering wheel. Plus it travel over 400 miles on a charge. That’s should be a dream combination for an American pickup lover. And yet, it hasn’t exactly been flying out of showrooms. GM sold about 14,000 last year in the U.S. and Canada. The fossil fuel Silverado sells ten times that in a quarter. After my drive, I’m kind of stumped. GM might have made the perfect American EV, but nobody’s buying it. The Silverado EV’s frunk is sizable, able to swallow several roller bags.Image Credits:Tim De Chant Maybe it’s the looks? At a glance, the Silverado EV resembles the old Chevy Avalanche, and whether that’s a good thing depends on how you felt about the original. Like the Avalanche, the Silverado EV has four doors, a short bed that can be extended into the cabin, and a “sail” between the cabin and the bed, a stylistic flourish that helps minimize drag. I thought the EV looked fine, but then, I’m not a truck guy. The Silverado EV is a polished full-size truck, literally.Image Credits:Tim De Chant Getting in requires a big step up, but once inside, it’s spacious and comfortable. Press the brake and the Silverado EV springs to life, with crisp screens dominating the lower third of your vision. The seats are great, and like many EVs, it’ll surge forward when poked with your right foot. At almost 20 feet long, no one will call the Silverado EV small, but thanks to rear-wheel steering, it’ll wind its way through a parking lot like a tidy hatchback. That is until you try to wedge it into a narrow parking space. The cockpit should look familiar to anyone who has sat in a recent Chevrolet EV.Image Credits:Tim De Chant The Google-powered infotainment system is crisp and clear and commendably responsive. It’s not quite as speedy as an iPhone, but it’s darn close, and the voice commands work well. There are volume and temperature knobs and some HVAC buttons below the vents, which can also be manually directed. Chevy still remembers how to make physical controls, thankfully. The nav is a Google service, so it works well. When I spoke my destination, it offered a selection of routes, just like Google Maps does on your phone, but with a twist: Below the usual time-to-destination readout, another estimates how long you’ll be able to use Super Cruise, GM’s hands-free driving option. Don’t feel like driving much? Pick the route to maximize time spent in Super Cruise. Over the years, GM has offered many reasons why it excised CarPlay from its EVs, and this might be one of its better arguments. Doesn’t mean I fully agree with that decision, though. The Silverado EV borrows the mid-gate feature from the old Chevy Avalanche.Image Credits:Tim De Chant Speaking of Super Cruise, the hands-free, Level 2 advanced driver assistance system is as good as they say. In March, I drove the Bolt with Super Cruise and came away impressed, though my time with it was short. With the Silverado EV, I traversed the Detroit metro area during peak commuting hours. On a truck of this size, Super Cruise is almost a requirement, making the drive relatively stress free. It had its downsides though. Keeping it in its lane can be a bit of a chore. Similar to my time in the Bolt, Super Cruise could be caught off guard by cars speeding up and cutting in from the right. There was one particular nerve-wracking Super Cruise moment when the Silverado EV nearly plowed into a dirty pai
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