Automotive Engineering - November/December 2021 - 4

EDITORIAL
EDITORIAL
Bill Visnic
Editorial Director
Bill.Visnic@sae.org
Ford C2 is model for EV scale, lower costs
Has the auto industry ever seen a more
dynamic and outright crazy time than
today's second coming of the electric
vehicle? Few of us who visited Rivian
Automotive's L.A. auto show display a
few years ago would have imagined
startup Rivian generating such a blockbuster
IPO in 2021. Twelve years in the
making, with a mere 200-odd units
built to date (most sold to employees),
Rivian made history by eclipsing the
market valuation of Ford and Nio and
briefly topping General Motors - in its
first trading day.
Crazy indeed - but
Rivian's inaugural product is
cleverly engineered and
compelling. Recently I drove
a production-spec R1T on a
50-mile loop around Ann
Arbor, Michigan. My route,
with a development engineer
riding shotgun, included an interstate
highway, rural 2-lane roads and
in-town driving. It showcased the R1T's
multiple drive modes, sophisticated suspension
and intuitive human-machine
interface. Overall, the Rivian pickup is
state-of-the-art. But to my thinking, it's
still not yet a practical choice to satisfy
most pickup owners' duty cycles - that
thinking being informed by data showing
that more than 90% of Tesla owners
have at least one other vehicle on which
to rely. And these happen to be ICengine
powered. Even the products of
Wall St. darlings, many customers seem
to believe, have limitations.
Lucid Motors' Air is another recent
The biggest
'gotta-have' for
electrification is
significantly lower
vehicle costs.
Lindsay Brooke
Editor-in-Chief
Lindsay.Brooke@sae.org
territory. Of a similar stripe is GM's
Hummer EV, brought to market in a
remarkable high-speed, aggressive development
program. The beastly
Hummer, with its $108,000 base sticker
is, sadly, another play to rich folks.
While the Hummer EV leverages GM's
new electric truck platform and Ultium
propulsion system (shared by upcoming
Silverado/Sierra EVs and their electric
SUV counterparts to eventually build
production scale), Rivian, Lucid and
many other EV startups lack similar
bandwidth. Broad and deep product
pipelines that are engineered
for platform, subsystems
and component
commonization, at high
volume, are essential for
lower cost. And the biggest
" gotta have " for electrification
right now is significantly
lower vehicle costs.
OEMs seeking inspiration on how to
EV entrée that's receiving rave reviews
- an " electron-fueled magic carpet
ride " is how one colleague described
the electric luxury sedan. The Air's wow
factor is enhanced by the fact that
many of Lucid's key technologies, including
the electric drive module and
infotainment system, are in-house developments,
with higher costs. Like the
Rivian R1T, the Lucid's base price is
more than $74,000, putting these two
electric interlopers into rich-customer
4 November/December 2021
leverage their upcoming EV architectures
should consult Ford's C2 playbook.
The global C2 platform currently underpins
Escape, Escape Hybrid, Bronco
Sport and the conventional and hybrid
variants of the new Maverick compact
pickup. While it doesn't encompass battery-electrics,
C2 is a case study in getting
the base platform right - particularly
costly-to-reconfigure hard points
which carry over into subsequent models.
The C2 architecture has proven its
ability to successfully support a growing
range of models, bodystyles and powertrains
and to help drive down cost.
Every new EV program needs the
cost/features/quality balance that Ford
achieved with the Maverick hybrid, resulting
in the truck's revelatory $19,995
base price. Most of all, the EV customer
needs it. GM's recent claim to have an
upcoming EV priced less than $30,000,
likely on a new compact platform, and
Volkswagen's efforts with its modular
MEQ, give hope that others are pursuing
similar strategy.
Lindsay Brooke, Editor-in-Chief
Paul Seredynski
Senior Editor
Paul.Seredynski@sae.org
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AUTOMOTIVE ENGINEERING
Automotive Engineering - November/December 2021

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