Ford’s affordable midsize electric truck officially has a name and starting price
For the past few years, Ford Motor Company has been working on an affordable midsize electric truck—the automaker’s answer to Tesla’s sub-$40,000 EVs, the rising domination of ultra-affordable electric vehicles out of China, and Americans’ general frustrations with sky-high car prices.
Now, Ford is finally revealing both that vehicle’s name and official starting price
The Ford Fathom will have a starting MSRP of $28,350 (not including destination and delivery fees, which will add another $1,595).
That means the Fathom comes in below the $30,000 threshold that Ford had recently given for this electric truck.
By contrast, Ford’s F-150 Lightning started at $54,995 in 2024. (Production ceased at the end of 2025.) The average new car as of May 2026 set Americans back $49,220, according to Kelley Blue Book.
Kay Hart, general manager for Ford Model E, the company unit focused on EVs, says she’s “super confident” about that price point. “It really is in the heart of the affordable market,” she adds.
High-tech features at a low price
The Ford Fathom will come with bi-directional charging capabilities, a high-resolution touch screen, a digital car key, and BlueCruise, which is Ford’s hands-free driving assistance system. The system works on 130,000 miles of designated, pre-mapped highways the company calls Blue Zones.
It will have a “standard-range battery,” though Ford did not disclose a mileage number for the range; that detail will come closer to the Fathom’s launch.
It will also have a frunk and bed for added cargo, and can seat five adults. The Fathom will be available for pre-order in early 2027, with customer deliveries beginning in fall 2027.
Some of those tech features are in stark contrast to an electric truck announced last year from Slate Auto: a stripped-down, bare-bones EV with a base cost under $25,000.
That base model will have no power windows, infotainment system screen, speakers, and so on, though customers can add on such accessories at an additional cost.
To Ford, it was important to pair affordability with high-tech features the company says its customers love and use constantly. (Fathom’s BlueCruise is also integrated with Apple Maps, and the truck is Apple CarPlay and Android Auto capable).
“We had to have a ruthless, relentless focus on efficiency,” Hart says. “We were never going to strip down this vehicle and take content out. This vehicle and the platform were always to be high-tech and adaptable.”
The Ford Fathom is the first vehicle to be manufactured via the company’s Universal EV Platform, a reimagining of the typical assembly line into a three-branch system, in which workers build the vehicle’s front, rear, and structural battery all on separate lines that run in parallel.
Those three branches then come together so workers can build the interior.
The Universal EV Platform makes vehicle assembly 40% faster, Ford has said, while requiring fewer parts and fewer workstations, and also reducing strain on workers (like less twisting, turning, and bending).
A dynamic EV market
Affordability has become a key concern for automakers, and customers are even more attuned to prices as they deal with rising costs for goods like groceries and gas.
Though U.S. customers no longer have access to federal tax credits for EVs after President Donald Trump repealed those subsidies, purchases of electric vehicles actually rebounded globally in the second quarter of 2026.
Global car sales still fell that quarter in the United States, but EV sales saw strong global growth, sparked by the energy crisis and spotlight that the war in Iran has put on oil costs.
“Road vehicles account for nearly half of global oil use, making the sector particularly exposed to fuel price spikes and supply disruptions,” according to a report on those sales from the International Energy Agency.
While fuel prices may remain high for a while, it’s hard to say what the EV market will look like by the time the Ford Fathom launches.
“Truthfully, the market will continue to change. It’s so dynamic,” Hart says. “We’re confident that we have the best cost platform, and that we’re really focused in the right market in terms of ‘affordable,’ and therefore that this platform and Fathom will be a really big strategic advantage for us and our dealers.”
Because of that dynamic market, it’s not only affordable new options like Slate that make up Ford’s competitors. For the Fathom, Hart says it’s also competing with used EVs—cheap versions of which are flooding the market due to the nature of how long some of these EV models have existed.
What’s in a name
The Ford Fathom, and the Universal EV Platform, came out of a skunkworks team the automaker first formed in 2022. Naming this electric truck was its own lengthy process: a nine-month journey that included “hundreds” of options.
“This was an all-new nameplate, all-new platform, all-new engineering process, all-new manufacturing process, and so we knew that it had to live up to all of that,” Hart says. “It was definitely a labor of love in terms of the naming process.”
Ford wanted the name to be bold, and to communicate the innovation of the vehicle. “Fathom” evokes depth and span, as well as a complete understanding.
“The team asked themselves: What communicates depth below the surface? How do we communicate an emotional feeling of a vehicle that’s more than it appears to be?” Hart writes in a blog post about the truck’s name.
Two separate copywriters came up with “Fathom,” and the team went through multiple rounds of considerations, asking engineers on the floor to pick their favorites.
“Fathom was always at the top of every cut that we were doing,” Hart says. “It was a pretty clear winner.”