Ford made big waves Monday morning with news that it intends to bring a new $30,000 battery-electric pickup to market as soon as 2027. It was more of a strategic announcement than a formal introduction of a new pickup truck; that bit will have to wait for a while. In the meantime, we’re naturally inclined to speculate as to what exactly Ford intends to build at that price point. Perhaps this patent application gives us a clue.
The application itself is for a deployable roof tent, but as clever as it appears, we’re far more interested in the trucklet they’ve hypothetically installed it on, because, well, just look at it. The built-in latch system leveraged here would be right at home on one of Ford’s compact truck or SUV offerings, but this design looks nothing like the Maverick. Instead, it’s much more… uh… Cyber-trucky?
There are only two angles of the truck among the sketches included, but the blunted nose and raked bed cover are elements not found anywhere in Ford’s truck lineup. Normally we’d say that’s of little consequence when it comes to a patent application, and even in this case it’s mostly true, but this roof tent gizmo requires latch receivers to be pre-installed on the vehicle in order for it to function, as you can see in the final slide below.
Whatever Ford designed this for, it was meant to be a plug-and-play setup for which we’ve yet to see the receptacle. On those grounds alone, it’s a safe bet this was conceived with a future vehicle in mind—a small future small vehicle with a pickup bed designed for outdoorsy types. Sounds an awful lot like the electric equivalent of a Maverick, does it not?
Hmm.
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