In the Pursuit of Efficiency, Has Ford Designed the First Mass-Market SDV?
- Alex Oyler
- 2 minutes ago
- 6 分钟阅读
Today, Ford lifted the hood on how its Universal Electric Vehicle (UEV) program team has leveraged bounties, vertical integration, and a new approach to vehicle design to achieve unprecedented efficiency in the pursuit of an affordable, mass-market electric vehicle program. In doing so, Ford might have also just designed the first mass-market “true” software-defined vehicle (SDV).
Last year, Ford unveiled initial details on its long-rumored skunkworks program, whose remit was to design an affordable, mass-market electric vehicle – now known as the UEV. At CES 2026, Ford revealed additional details on its AI & ADAS capability in UEV, including an in-house, 30% cheaper SAE L2+ (hands-off, eyes-on) system in 2027 and plans to launch highway L3 (hands-off, eyes-off) in 2028. Ford hammered on the theme of technology affordability – a key issue in today’s automotive industry.
With today’s bounty of details, Ford has shown how its multi-pronged approach to efficiency through the use of “bounties” – iterative performance metrics that can directly result in cost savings – has resulted in a platform that could form the foundation of Ford’s future EV, SDV, and potentially multi-energy vehicles.
The Four Axes of Efficiency
Ford’s bounty program resulted in significant improvements in four axes of efficiency: compute, electrical, structural and cost.
Compute Efficiency
In non-software-defined vehicles, the tangled web of suppliers, hardware and software components create a requirements nightmare that often results in a bloated, fragmented, expensive, and unscalable compute platform that limits re-use across future generations of vehicle platforms. This is the reason most disruptive OEMs have foregone the traditional electronics supply chain in the pursuit of vertical integration. Direct ownership of the electronics design and software intellectual property allows for faster iteration based on requirements on constraints over time. In time, the current automotive supply chain may figure out a new approach to supporting OEM software needs faster, but Ford’s UEV team opted for vertical integration as well due to the relatively immaturity of supplier SDV approaches and fast-moving nature of enabling technology.
What we heard from Ford today and at CES echoes many of the themes from Rivian’s various tech demonstrations, illustrating the power of their approach – Volkswagen’s $6 billion investment in its joint venture with Rivian proves its merit. But this might be the first time we’ve seen a volume western automaker approach the same capability.
With UEV, Ford developed its own verification and validation (V&V) pipeline in order to accelerate software-in-loop vehicle software simulation. Across the 5 in-house ECUs, Ford designed its own full-stack architecture that allows them to squeeze every bit of compute capability from its system-on-chip.
Even more, the UEV team explained to SBD Automotive that the homogenous architecture used across the 5 ECUs allows them to dynamically move compute load across the system based on the runtime needs of the vehicle. This manifests our view of the true software-defined vehicle – “Vehicle 4.0” – in the framework we published to the industry in 2021.
Notably, GM is on a similar path through their next-generation Vehicle Intelligence Platform (VIP) – but with one key difference. While Ford is implementing a true zonal architecture, where compute is distributed across those 5 primary ECUs (with other commodity ECUs supporting these), GM has opted for the central compute approach. This consolidates compute into a single high-performance SoC, so instead of needing to distribute workloads across physical components, these workloads can be distributed between “virtual” components in its central compute stack. The book is still unwritten on which approach will provide greater cost and scalability benefits.
Electrical Efficiency
Ford has opted for a 48-volt electrical architecture in its UEV to drive weight and cost savings in its wiring harness – something that the automotive supply chain is already starting to adopt thanks to Tesla’s full-throated endorsement of the technology.
Undoubtedly, the combination of 48V with the consolidated compute approach described above will drive significant savings in battery cost through better performance and lower weight, requiring less battery content than equivalent vehicles to achieve sufficient range to appeal to a mass-market consumer. According to Ford, the UEV will require 4,000 less feet (1219 meters) of wiring generating 22 pounds (10 kg) of savings in weight.
Structural Efficiency
The bounty program incentivized iterative design improvements in the UEV’s structural platform and design by driving testing and modeling of how even the small changes in the vehicle’s aerodynamic profile might impact range efficiency. Through this process, Ford claims that the truck profile that the first-generation UEV will support has a 15% more efficient aerodynamic profile (30% at highway speeds) than any other pickup market available in the US market today, driving an additional 50 miles of range for the same battery cost
Furthermore, breakthroughs in 3D printing, virtual wind tunnel modeling, and sensing drove Ford’s rapid iterations that allows them to experiment with all aspects of the vehicle’s aerodynamic profile. Through this process, the UEV team designed a new side-mirror profile – alongside an in-house consolidated actuator – that improves range by 1.5 miles.
Cost Efficiency
Many of these bounties are designed to ultimately drive cost efficiency by reducing the amount of battery content required to provide the same range performance as an equivalent vehicle. These are the iterative technological improvements that will ultimately enable mainstream adoption of electric vehicles. By leveraging a domestic LFP supply chain and manufacturing its battery cells at its BlueOval battery plant in Michigan, Ford can relentlessly optimize the entire supply chain for its battery content – both the raw materials, and the performance of the cell itself.
However, not all of the bounties drive cost efficiency through battery content reduction. The in-house development of the electronics hardware & software drove a 30% improvement in the cost of Ford’s L2+ ADAS system. Vertical integration of this stack also drives better long-term total cost of ownership (TCO) of the platform as iterative feature development can be driven through the in-house V&V pipeline much faster than through traditional supply chain-based feature development. While the up-front cost – and risk – of this approach is higher than others, the TCO for vertical integration in this case ultimately wins out as more vehicle volume adopts the platform.
Ford’s position here is that both EV and SDV (and AI) technology is moving too quickly to be stuck in 4-5 year product cycles – and they are right. To stay competitive in a fast-paced, disruptive industry cycle, automakers must take control of their core IP to stay competitive. And this is the ultimate cost efficiency – not just in the ability to drive feature competitiveness, but also the ability to manifest top-line revenue and margin growth by enabling new business models through disruptive technology like autonomy and AI.
Can Ford pull it off?
With a launch date planned for 2027, the UEV is well on its way to production as a mass-market truck, but Ford must still clear a variety of hurdles to ensure its success:
Will there be sufficient consumer demand for a mass-market EV truck (that has far more capability than other vehicles in the segment at that price point)?
Can the final product pass all of the safety and durability testing needed to ensure an automotive-grade experience deserving of the Ford brand?
Can Ford quickly adapt the capability of the platform to adopt multi-energy powertrains (like extended range EV, or EREV) in order to support a broader range of vehicles in Ford’s portfolio?
Can UEV technology – and culture – effectively integrate with – or disrupt - “legacy” Ford programs?
For other mass-market automakers, Ford’s “skunkworks”, bounty hunter-style approach is worthy of study – will it be successful? If so, could a similar approach be one option to consider in the pursuit of affordable EVs & scalable SDVs?
For the supply chain, UEV is a call to action. Business won’t be handled through simple requirement specifications for much longer – integrated design and development approaches on scalable yet customizable components are needed to serve customers who adopt Ford’s fast-paced systems engineering philosophy that could be the norm of the future. A relentless focus on customer value will be needed to drive product development and business models that serve the OEM customer of the future.
“When we unveiled our industry-first framework for software-defined vehicles in 2021, we had a vision for the endgame - but the book was unwritten on how to get there. What has surprised us is that the pursuit of the SDV is now part of a broader industry need to drive efficiency throughout their business to improve the affordability and scalability of their vehicle platforms.
China's pressure on global automotive markets has created a crucible of competitiveness that is driving bottom-up innovation, like those discussed here. Contact us if you'd like an outside-in perspective on your own organization's pursuit of efficiency and affordability.”
At SBD Automotive, we are tracking these massive changes to OEM product development strategies and processes and providing advisory to both automakers and suppliers navigating the murky waters of the modern automotive industry.
The customers who we partnered with 3, 4 and even 5 years ago on their own software-defined vehicle strategies have had the blueprint for success – the key is adapting it to the unique people, processes and constraints on your business. Book a meeting to see how SBD Automotive can help.