Ford plans to reveal in November an all-electric version of its Ford Transit cargo van, the company said Wednesday as part of its broader third-quarter earnings report. The unveiling will showcase an electric van for all of the company’s global addressable markets.
The company has been talking about producing an electric Transit van for more than a year now. Ford announced in April 2019 plans to sell an all-electric Transit for the European market by 2021. Then this spring, Ford said it would also produce and sell an all-electric version of the cargo van for the North American market starting with the 2022 model year.
The electric Transit cargo van is part of Ford’s more than $11.5 billion investment in electrification through 2022, and more specifically, a strategy to go after commercial customers.
The decision to include commercial vans in its EV strategy is linked to sales in North America and the company’s outlook on future growth. The Transit van and the Ford F-150 are the two most important, highest volume commercial vehicles in our industry, CEO Jim Farley said during an earnings call Wednesday with analysts.
“We own ‘work’ at Ford and these electric vehicles will be true work vehicles, extremely capable and with unique digital services and over-the-air capabilities to improve the productivity and uptime of our important commercial customers,” he said. “We believe the addressable market for a fully electric commercial van and pickup — the two largest addressable profit pools and commercial — are going to be massive and we’re going straight at this opportunity.”
The announcement was tucked inside the company’s third-quarter earnings, which crushed Wall Street expectations. Ford reported Wednesday net income of $2.4 billion on $37.5 billion in revenue. Ford said it expects a positive full year 2020 adjusted earnings before interest and taxes, reversing a dimmer outlook it had previously provided.
