Ford Names Its $28,350 Electric Truck Fathom, Undercutting Slate but Still a Year From Showrooms

Ford announced Thursday that its long-teased cheap electric truck has a name: Fathom. It also has a price: $28,350 before fees, according to Ford, TechCrunch, and CNBC. Add the $1,595 destination charge and you're at $29,945, just under the $30,000 line Ford has been promising since 2025.

Nobody can buy one yet. Ford says preorders open in early 2027, with customer deliveries starting later that year, according to CNBC. The company hasn't even shown what the truck looks like. What it has released is a name, a price, and a spec sheet full of promises.

What you get for $28,350

The base Fathom seats five, has a bed out back and a frunk up front, and Ford says it has more interior volume than a Toyota RAV4, according to The Verge. It comes with a large touchscreen running Apple Maps natively, plus support for Android Auto and Apple CarPlay, though not Apple's newer CarPlay Ultra, per TechCrunch.

Every Fathom ships with the sensors needed for Ford's BlueCruise hands-free driving system already built in. Actually turning BlueCruise on will cost extra. Ford currently charges $2,495 as a one-time fee or $495 a year for that feature on other vehicles, according to The Verge, and there's no reason to expect the Fathom will be free. The base price also only buys you the standard-range lithium iron phosphate battery. Ford hasn't said how far the truck goes on a charge.

The Slate comparison Ford clearly wants you to make

The timing and framing invite a direct comparison to the Slate Truck, the buzzy no-frills EV startup selling a stripped-down two-seat truck for $24,950, no paint, no touchscreen, no power windows, according to The Verge. Fathom costs $3,400 more and comes with all the stuff Slate deliberately left out. Slate bet on austerity, Ford is betting people still want a normal truck, just cheaper. Whether buyers actually want Slate's DIY minimalism or Ford's fuller feature set is an open question neither company has tested with real sales yet, since Slate hasn't shipped trucks either.

Why Ford thinks it can hit this price

The Fathom is the first vehicle built on Ford's new Universal Electric Vehicle platform, which relies on what the company calls an "assembly tree" process at its Louisville Assembly Plant, according to CNBC. Instead of one line building a truck front to back, the front, middle, and rear sections get assembled in parallel and joined near the end. Ford says that, combined with simplified components, is what makes the price work, not extra factory capacity, according to The Verge.

A Ford spokesperson told CNBC the company believes "the UEV platform will be a strategic advantage" and that Ford has "the best chance to make it work." That reflects a company talking its own book, given how badly Ford needs this to succeed.

The money problem this is supposed to fix

Ford's electric vehicle unit, Model e, has been bleeding cash. The company reported $19.5 billion in restructuring charges tied to its EV push last year, according to CNBC. Ford's stated goal is for Model e to break even by 2029, with every UEV-platform vehicle turning a profit within a year of launch.

That's an aggressive target given the track record. The F-150 Lightning, Ford's first electric truck, never topped roughly 10,000 units in its best quarter, according to TechCrunch. Tesla's Cybertruck posted stronger initial numbers but has since seen sales fall off sharply. Electric trucks, as a category, have not been the slam dunk automakers hoped for a few years ago.

Federal EV tax credits are also gone, which makes Ford's timing riskier. The company is trying to sell a mass-market electric truck into a market with less government support for buyers than existed when the Lightning launched, and against a backdrop CNBC describes as "a massive slowdown in EV adoption."

CEO Jim Farley has framed this as Ford's answer to Tesla and to Chinese EV makers he has separately argued should be kept out of the U.S. market, according to TechCrunch. Whether a truck can be the vehicle that proves that strategy, rather than a cheaper sedan or crossover, is the bet Ford is making with its first UEV product.

Ford won't reveal what the Fathom looks like until early 2027. Until then, the only things on record are a name, a price under $30,000, a list of features, and a production process the company insists will make the math work. Everything else, including range, real-world reliability, and whether buyers show up, remains unproven until trucks actually start rolling off the Louisville line in fall 2027.