Ahhh, OK, that makes sense.

CAFE being a factor wouldn't surprise me. From the store levels, I didn't have too many people opting for the 6.8 when the 7.3 was a minimal jump in price on the Super Duty.   I do miss the "all the engines on all the trims" path we used to have. Seriously, what's the harm in offering the V6 on the Big Bend, if that's what the customer wants? And we moved a LOT of V6 Big Bends.   That's what the tech specs sheet reads for the 2026 Bronco family, and the 26 Ranger Raptor shows aluminum as well. Yet when I pull up the 27 specs on Explorer and F-150, the 3.0L shows CGI block. I suspect the Raptor family is getting an aluminum block to save some weight.

Exactly. Plus the burden of hauling a heavy and depleted battery. A Ranger weighs around 4500 lbs. A Shark 6 is around 6000 lbs. That Shark is burdened with the extra weight of 7.5 dudes.

The difference is that a conventional hybrid has the mechanical connection to the wheels, whereas an EREV has the losses associated with converting mechanical energy to electrical and back to mechanical.

The 2.7L uses CGI for the block and the 3.0L is Al, correct?  Could be some cost savings as well.

I want my Mustang Sedan to sound like the Hypercar when it goes from electric to ICE 😛 

Hear me out. Ford's pushing the race to road strategy very hard right now. They're very proud and open about the fact that the le mans hypercar uses a 5.4 V8. We've seen other brands use a tweaked version of their hypercar engines in road cars, Ferrari for one.    What if Ford is planning on releasing a hypercar derived 5.4 for a mustang? Either a new engine for an existing model, or a new performance model within the mustang brand. That would be pretty badass. 

IMO that was forced by CAFE then by customer demand....   Coming from someone who has a 2.7L Big Bend that you can no longer get as an option lol   I'm curious as to if Ford will open the demand up more for the 3.0L on other Bronco products, like the 2 dr.     

How does that make any sense-any Hybrid that uses a regen system will have that issue your talking about.   The issue with conventional hybrids is the vast majority use an eCVT that can't really handle towing anything over 2500lbs using the Maverick as an example (where as a configured towing ICE model can do 4k). Even with the more powerful 2.0L Hybrid/eCVT combo in the Nautilus, its limited to 1750lbs 

I noticed that in the back (which I don't really care about) but the door panels and other things up front don't?