Ford Project T3 hints at F-150 Lightning successor

Ford has indicated that a successor to its electric F-150 Lightning pick-up will arrive in 2025 as the production version of the newly announced Project T3.

“Project T3 is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to revolutionise America’s truck,” Ford CEO Jim Farley said in a statement announcing its development.

The F-series pick-ups are widely acknowledged to be "America’s truck", given the F-150 has topped the US’s new car sales chart for more than four decades.

Farley also detailed how the T3 will major on practicality. He said: “[Satirist] PJ O’Rourke once described American pickups as ‘a back porch with an engine attached’. Well, this new truck is going to be like the Millennium Falcon [from Star Wars] – with a back porch attached.”

It will be built at Ford’s Blueoval City facility – planned to open in 2025 – which is currently being constructed in collaboration with South Korean battery firm SK On.

The $5.6 billion (£4.6bn) plant is scheduled to produce around 500,000 electric trucks annually, doing so using only carbon-free electricity and carbon-free heating.

Battery cells and packs will also be assembled on site, saving the financial and environmental costs  of shipping them from South Korea or China, for example.

Producing the batteries in the US means Ford can take advantage of tax credits provided by the Inflation Reduction Act.

Farley said on Ford’s third-quarter earnings call that this had the biggest potential impact on Ford’s customers and business – cutting battery costs by about $45 per kWh. For reference, the world’s cheapest EV battery (made by Chinese firm CATL) reportedly costs $134/kWh (£110).

The production process for the T3 will be “equally breakthrough”, according to Farley, with “radical simplicity, cost efficiency and quality technology that will make Blueoval City the modern-day equivalent of Henry Ford’s Rouge factory.”