Ford rethinks EV strategy again—ditching 3-row SUVs, adding vans

Enlarge / Ford hoped to build 600,000 EVs a year by now, a mix of Mustang Mach-E crossovers, E-Transit vans, and F-150 Lightning pickups. This year, sales are up 71 percent so far; by the end of June, Ford had sold almost 45,000 EVs. (credit: Ford)

Ford has scrapped plans to build some big three-row electric SUVs and is revising its North American electrification roadmap, the company announced this morning. The automaker, which comes in at a distant second to Tesla in the US electric vehicle sales charts, says the focus will now be on cheaper, more efficient EVs, including some new commercial vehicles. Those big SUVs will still show up at some time, but they’ll be hybrids, not fully electric.

Ford has never been afraid to tear up an existing plan, particularly when it comes to EVs. The Mustang Mach-E was supposed to be a much more boring compliance car until an internal skunkworks called Team Edison came up with the idea of a crossover that could only be a Ford in 2017.

But it also had big ambitions for its EVs. It created a new division, called “Model e,” to be responsible for EVs and announced it had locked up supplies for 600,000 EV batteries a year from 2023. In addition to the midsize Mach-E crossover, it created a fully electric version of its best-selling F-150 pickup truck and an electric E-Transit van.