Analysis by Clean Cities of Department for Transport data has found that registrations of the most commonly sold pickup trucks have risen by 92% in just over a decade, with close to 600,000 (590,587) now on UK roads, compared with 308,103 in 2014. This is a particular problem in urban areas, where the vehicles are not suited to narrow streets, pavements and school environments.
While Ford ( NYSE: F) was eating through billions of dollars in an attempt to gain a large market share in the US EV market and its EU and China units stagnated, its best-selling, and likely most profitable vehicle, the F-150, continued its gargantuan unit sales. The F-150 is part of the F-Series of full-size pickup trucks. Last year, unit sales of these in the US reached 828,832, up 8.3%.
Stellantis quietly debuted the production version of the delayed RAM 1500 REV extended-range electric pickup. The original version of the truck, called the Ram 1500 Ramcharger, was unveiled in 2023. The now-renamed Ram 1500 REV is expected to go into production in the second half of the year as a 2027 model. The range-extended version of the Ram 1500 electric pickup is real, despite it being unveiled back in 2023 and seemingly continually delayed.
On Thursday, CEO Jim Farley gave a brief update on the project's progress on social media. That included a bit more on how exactly the company plans to radically simplify manufacturing and reduce the number of parts needed to build a car. More On Ford's 'Skunkworks' EV Project "Ford will use large unicastings for the first time on the Universal EV Platform," he said. "The radically simplified aluminum unicastings condense over 146 parts into two, and enable the assembly tree method at the Louisville Assembly Plant." Ford has mentioned the use of large castings before. But the specifics of condensing well over 100 parts into two seem to be new.
Ford is preparing to launch its Universal Electric Vehicle platform, its next-gen EV architecture. The first model on the platform will be a mid-size electric truck with a starting price around $30,000. It'll have a 400-volt battery, a 48-volt power system, a true software-defined architecture and an LFP battery. Ford needs an electric-vehicle reset. Its attempt to own the EV truck market, the original Ford F-150 Lighting, ended in that model's cancellation amid concerns over its high price, poor towing performance and chronic unprofitability.
Besides making cars, what do Rivian and Toyota really have in common? I'd say that they share an unfortunate sense of bad timing. It's not their fault, either. But both companies picked a rough year to launch crucial new electric-vehicle products, now that EV tax credits are gone and the U.S. government has largely soured on electrification from a policy perspective.
