The 'Universal Electric Vehicle' finally has a name and a price. We no longer have to call it Ford's affordable electric pickup, because the mystery vehicle finally has a name: the Ford Fathom. And the Blue Oval's soon-to-debut truck has an official starting price as of Thursday, too: a base Fathom will run you $29,945, including the $1,595 destination charge. That means Ford has managed to stay true to its initial claim of building a $30,000 electric pickup.
A few other details are surfacing alongside the name and price announcement. For starters, this under-$30K price is for a Fathom with the “standard-range battery.” This suggests there will be a longer-range battery option for an extra fee, should the standard model not offer enough miles for your needs.
View Price on AmazonThe Fathom is also claimed to have “more passenger volume” than a Toyota RAV4, meaning it should have plenty of backseat space for someone hoping to use it as a family vehicle. The BlueCruise semi-autonomous driving assistant won’t be standard, but every Fathom will have the hardware necessary to turn it on. (Presumably, Ford will offer it via subscription for folks who want hands-free driving capability.) By pairing that with Apple Maps as the vehicle’s native navigation system, Ford promises deeper integration for a “more seamless on-ramp to off-ramp experience.”
Other nice features listed are bi-directional charging capability and a digital car key function. Ford says the truck will have a high-resolution touchscreen, but it didn’t specify the display’s size.
If you were wondering why Ford chose “Fathom” as the name for this pickup, the Blue Oval has an answer for you. “The word Fathom itself has the layered quality we wanted,” writes Kay Hart, general manager of Ford Model E. “Long before it meant depth, fathom described the span of a person's outstretched arms, roughly six feet. Sailors borrowed that span to measure water they couldn't see the bottom of. And eventually the word came to mean something else entirely: to understand a thing completely.”
“A name about measuring what you can't see, that grew into a word about understanding,” Hart continued. “For a truck that started with years of trying to understand a specific customer, that was the whole brief in six letters.”
Production of the Fathom is scheduled to begin at Ford’s Louisville Assembly Plant in 2027, with pre-orders opening early next year. The first deliveries will be “later in 2027.”
Source: roadandtrack.com
