Agreed, I think mid to upper 200s is the absolute lowest range it can have for the standard battery. Farley claims it'll have "incredible" range which makes me believe it's at least in the upper 200s or even low 300s.    As for the styling, I believe this could be it with this patent. We've seen other parents with cab forward styling, but the actual design itself had a very half-assed, basic placeholder to it. This looks like a design that's actually stylized and flushed out.    As far as cab forward squared off truck design is gonna go, that's about as good looking as you can make it. I don't love it, but I don't hate it. I can see inherently how practical it's gonna be with things like the bed pass thru, or how good visibility is gonna be with that short hood and those windows that drop down on the sides.    I also really like that cab pass thru, and hope that makes it to production. You'd have a maverick-ranger sized truck with like 7-8 ft of bed storage with the pass thru fully opened up, and 4 door passenger capacity when needed, the best of both worlds.

If they go with low range like that, these things are dead on arrival.  Whether "necessary" or not, I think a lot of people have 300 miles engrained in their head as a starting point.   I feel it'll be more akin to the aero '97 F-150 styling wise.     Not sure I'd agree with that - there are plenty of unhappy Edge customers, and soon Escape customers that won't have a Ford option for at least a few years at best.

I personally believe affordable, well executed EVs will sell just fine. Lots of consumers, especially younger consumers find EVs really appealing. The model y and 3 sell incredibly well, and it sounds like this EV platform will undercut those on pricing. 

Selling in volume helps amortize development costs and fixed overhead but not so much variable costs until you hit hundreds of thousands or a million units.  And having so many different tophats each with relatively low volume increases fixed costs.     All is not rosy with Ultium either.   https://insideevs.com/features/709703/gm-ultium-problems-software-batteries/

EV demand isn't suspect.  Lower prices always bring more volume.  They're starting with the truck because it's the cheapest to build and sell.  They're planning multiple top hats which could include a sedan if needed.     The important thing is they still have the platforms to build cars if the market supports it.  They're not burning bridges.

The majority of the costs of EVs are in the batteries, inverters, motors. Etc. or everything in the image below, makes up 50-70% of the costs of the EV.     GM ultium platform is shared by 17 vehicles 8 are higher price/premium nameplates including Hummer, Cadillac, and large pickup trucks. GMs strategy was focused on cost reduction through platform volume, Ford couldn't do that with the Mach-E and F series, because they don't share enough to build an ecosystem of shared high value components. While not profitable today GMs strategy can lead to profits sooner and far fewer losses going forward. In the near term ford has no plan to expand their EV lineup or introduce refreshed models     With the introduction of the affordable new BOLT GM is well positioned tor growth.

Up next: Paccar brings out a compact car as the Class 8 market softens.

Every pound of battery is a pound of payload you don’t get, and lots of F-150s max out on payload before they hit the towing limit. If you use it as a car, weight doesn’t matter, but if you bought it to use as a truck, it really does. 

Though I don’t have a problem with pursuing the development of CE1/UEP, as I think it’s an appropriate endeavor to start with entry level models, but my question is will there be a sufficient number of buyers?  The demand for EVs is already suspect, so is it a better play to slow roll that development while perfecting it and add elements learned from it to existing or new ICE and hybrid products that are more desirable at this time?  I also question the choice of starting with a truck when you have now effectively eliminated almost all of your affordable passenger vehicles.  I’m concerned about Ford becoming one dimensional.  

It depends, it may be better to write down as much as possible now because better battery tech and lower prices may be longer coming than expected. GM could probably repurpose Ultium batteries to HEV and PHEV as a way of getting a return on that production…   there’s always a way to recover costs after the press has their headlines.