The Blue Oval company is rocking the pickup truck lifestyle like never before. It not only has representatives in all segments but also wants to ride the EV hype wave like a champion.
Just recently, Ford announced that its ‘Project T3’ (which has nothing to do with the Terminator franchise, just in case you wondered) is spearheading as the hero of its brand-new BlueOval City, the company’s all-new mega-campus located in West Tennessee that was announced back in 2021 alongside partner SK On. It can be translated into ‘trust the truck,’ according to the company, and represents the placeholder for their next-generation EV pickup truck.
As such, everyone can imagine that it is not going to be the next-generation Ford Maverick or Ranger, and not even the Super Duty. Instead, most likely, it represents the second installment in the Ford F-150 Lightning saga. No worries, it will not take long before we know all the juicy details, as the Detroit automaker promised that Project T3 will be completed and revealed in 2025.
Until then, the carmaker has all the angles covered, especially across the ICE departments of the pickup truck lifestyle. At the top, there is an all-new fifth iteration of the heavy-duty Ford Super Duty series, while in the middle of the pack, an all-new Ranger is coming to fight the impending all-new Tacoma best-seller. As for the ultra-popular F-150, we reckon that a cool facelift is coming sooner, rather than later.
Last but not least, even though it sits at the bottom of the American pickup truck pyramid, is the first-ever Ford Maverick four-door compact crew cab unibody pickup truck built in Hermosillo, Mexico, on the backbones of the FWD and AWD Ford Escape and Bronco Sport. The (initially highly) affordable and electrified pocket-sized vehicle took America by storm and showed – alongside the posher, more car-oriented Hyundai Santa Cruz – that the base sector of pickup trucks was not dead in America, and instead, it only lay dormant.
It is already a best-seller in its own right, so no wonder that everyone wants a piece of the action – including Toyota, which is rumored to bring back the iconic Stout nameplate for a North American brawl. That means Ford needs to be on its toes to keep up the good Maverick work, and thus a next-gen model may be just around the corner instead of a distant horizon. Or at least that is the opinion of the imaginative realm of digital car content creators if we are to trust the opinion of Dimas Ramadhan, the virtual automotive artist behind the Digimods DESIGN channel on YouTube, who has taken up the task of revealing the next Maverick - in fancy CGI.
Only that the pixel master has a quirky way of expressing his vision! We can easily see through the European Ford Explorer EV inspiration, for sure. And we can even relate to the author’s question about the hypothetical apparition of a next-generation 2025 or 2026 Ford Maverick in EV form. But if that is the case, how come the unibody compact pickup truck still has both integrated exhaust outlets as well as traditional downward-facing pipes, just like any other ICE out there?
Aurel has aimed high all his life (literally, at 16 he was flying gliders all by himself) so in 2006 he switched careers and got hired as a writer at his favorite magazine. Since then, his work has been published both by print and online outlets, most recently right here, on autoevolution. Full profile
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