“It turns out that finding people who love motorsport who want to ‘build a buffet in Vegas’ – a $30,000 EV that’s nice-looking and fun to drive – is hard,” he said.
“A lot of people want to stay in F1, and the challenge is picking people from motorsport who can actually design a breakthrough product.
“But when people see what we did with this skunkworks, they will say: ‘Wow, that’s cooler engineering than a hypercar.’ They will be shocked.”
Farley said the extreme aerodynamic focus of modern F1 cars was a key attraction in recruiting people for the skunkworks.
“Every bit of aero we can improve will help us reduce the size of the battery, and F1 has the best aero people in the world,” Farley said.
As a result, Ford claims the Fathom is 15% more aerodynamically efficient than any pick-up currently on sale in the US.
Farley said the intense focus on aerodynamics and powertrain efficiency would enable Universal EV models to use smaller batteries, in turn keeping weight and pricing down and improving packaging options.
Indeed, Ford claims the Fathom has more passenger space than the Toyota RAV4 SUV.