Ford Prices Its Sub-$30,000 Electric Truck, Names It Fathom

Ford put a name and a price on its long-rumored affordable electric pickup on Thursday, confirming the truck will be called Fathom and will start at $28,350 before fees, or $29,945 with a $1,595 destination charge included. The announcement, made through Ford's own newsroom and echoed by outlets including The Drive, TechCrunch, CNBC, and Bloomberg, positions the Fathom as Ford's answer to a growing field of budget electric trucks from startups and legacy rivals alike.

The Fathom is the first vehicle to ride on Ford's new Universal EV (UEV) platform, a modular architecture the company says was engineered from scratch to strip cost out of electric-vehicle manufacturing without stripping out features. The platform uses large front and rear structural castings that sandwich a central lithium-iron-phosphate battery pack, which doubles as the floor of the cabin. That battery pack is built with domestically produced LFP cells from Ford's BlueOval Battery Park Michigan plant in Marshall, using manufacturing technology licensed from China's CATL. The truck also runs a 48-volt low-voltage electrical system, which Ford says allows for a lighter, simpler wiring harness than its earlier EVs.

Despite the low price, Ford is positioning the Fathom as a full-featured vehicle rather than a stripped-down commuter. Standard equipment includes hands-free BlueCruise highway driving, bidirectional charging, a digital key, and a large center touchscreen, along with both a front trunk and a conventional pickup bed. Ford says the truck will seat five adults and offers more interior passenger volume than a Toyota RAV4, despite being classified as a midsize truck sized somewhere between the compact Maverick and a Ranger.

Kay Hart, general manager of Ford's Model e electric vehicle division, said the goal was to keep the content customers actually want while cutting costs elsewhere. "It is not a stripped down vehicle," Hart said. "We have given customers content that we know they love and removed costs where we know they don't." On range, Ford is holding details back for now: "We know customers seek 300 miles of range," Hart said. "So we will have options, but we're not in a position to announce what that range is at this stage."

Ford also detailed how it landed on the Fathom name, saying the process took roughly nine months and considered a run of Ford heritage nameplates, including Ranchero, Galaxie, and Taurus, before settling on a word tied to nautical depth measurement and, by extension, a "deep" understanding of how customers actually live with a truck. The Louisville Assembly Plant, where the Fathom will be built, is being retooled around Ford's Universal EV Production System, which the company says enables roughly 40 percent faster assembly than its conventional lines.

What Ford still hasn't shown is the truck itself. Thursday's reveal included no photos or renderings of the Fathom's exterior or interior design, only spy shots of camouflaged prototypes previously seen in cold-weather testing and Ford's own nameplate imagery. The company says the full design will be unveiled alongside the opening of pre-orders in early 2027, with customer deliveries expected to follow later that year.