Can You Fathom It?

Ford has just revealed its latest attempt to sell what it has been unable to make money selling so far. It is the Fathom – which is a strange name for a pick-up truck since it is a measure of how deep under the water you are. Well, maybe it’s just the right name, since Ford is already about $20 billion deep in the abyss trying to sell battery-powered vehicles such as the recently cancelled F-150 Lightning and the Mach e “Mustang.” (If a five-door EV crossover can be called a Mustang then anything can be a “Mustang.” Tthe name no longer has any meaning. Just usage.)

Ford is of course hoping the Fathom will sell.

More specifically, that it won’t lose Ford more money. This of course all hinges on enough people ponying up enough money for Ford to recoup what it spent to bring the Fathom into production – plus a profit. This means selling a lot of Fathoms; at the very least in numbers on par with the number of Maverick hybrids Ford sells. Last year (2025) Ford sold about 155,051 Mavericks. That’s the kind of volume needed to make money on a vehicle that has a low profit margin, which is what a lower-cost vehicle usually is.

Ford makes a lot of money selling Lincoln Navigators, even though it only sold 22,185 of them last year. The reason why is that the profit made on each sale. Navigators are high-profit-margin vehicles; so also the Ford Expedition that the Navigator’s based on as well as the F-150 pickup (not the Lightning) that both the Expedition and Navigator are based on).

It’s doubtful there’s a lot of margin for profit built into the Fathom’s touted base price of $28,350 – which is the price Ford says it will ask right now, but this EV won’t actually go on sale until late 2027 or about a year from now. Minimally, the ongoing destruction of the buying power of the dollar – that thing blandly referred to as “inflation” – will effectively force Ford to ask for more dollars, in order to avoid losing them. The actual retail price – say it like Bob Barker used to – is certain to be closer to $30,000. Even if not, the Fathom’s promised price is already slightly higher than the actual price of the 2026 Maverick pickup, which lists for $28,145 right now.

For that, you get a hybrid pickup that has a standard range – to use EV terminology – of 579 miles in city driving and 483 miles on the highway. Split the difference and you get a rough average of about 500 miles of driving range. How much range do you get for $28,350? Ford hasn’t said yet, but the inside baseball is somewhere around 200 miles. This is where catch meets 22. In order to keep the Fathom’s base price low – for an EV – battery costs (the most expensive component in an EV) have to be reduced. Thus, the Fathom’s standard-range battery can only store so much electricity, which means the Fathom with this battery doesn’t go very far before it has to be charged up and that means having to wait. Yes, you can wait at home. You’re still waiting. And there’s no getting around the having to stop and wait when you’re not at home if you want to drive farther than the standard battery’s charge will take you.

Everyone’s hip to this flaw now – and it’s probably the main reason why EV sales have stalled. Instant torque and silent drive aside, not many people are willing to wait even ten minutes (to get a little charge) when they can get a full tank in less than five.

There is also another flaw – when it comes to electric trucks. The range will plummet if you use the thing as a truck; i.e., to haul or pull a load. The recently retired F-150 Lightning touted immense towing capability. People found out that if you actually wanted to use it, the driving range declined by 50 percent. I personally tested a Lightning and found that with a relatively modest trailer hooked up, the thing had a realistic driving range of about 100 miles. Forget about it, my as my friends in the mob like to say.

The Fathom will, like most EVs, offer what’s called a “long-range” option. That is, a more powerful battery that can store more electricity. It would be more accurate to call it longer-range, since in most case you still don’ t get range comparable to the standard range you’d get with a gas-engined vehicle; viz the Maverick hybrid. “Long” implies just that.

But it’s not – in the case of most EVs.

The longer-ranges option will increase the Fathom’s driving range to about 300 miles, according to the insider baseball whisperers. That would increase the Fathom’s practicality by decreasing the amount of waiting – though you’d still be dealing with that if you wanted to take a trip that approaches the longer-range version’s maximum driving range, which still isn’t very far and which also assumes it’s not too hot and not too cold out, so you don’t lose charge running the AC or the heat, etc.

But – catch comes to give 22 a big wet kiss – the Fathom with the practical (sort of) longer-range battery isn’t going to cost $28,350. It is typically the case with EVs that the optional longer-range battery adds thousands to the vehicle’s MSRP. For example, the 2026 Tesla Model 3 with the standard-range battery lists for $36,990. If you want the longer-range version, the price climbs to $42,990. The 2026 Nissan Leaf with the standard-range battery lists for $29,990. If you want the longer-range option, the price climbs to $34,230. It’s likely to be something similar with the Fathom, in which case the more-practical version (with the longer-range battery) is probably going to list for around $35k by the time it becomes available about a year from now.

This is probably going to sink the Fathom.

Would you pay a $6k premium to drive a Fathom that – even with the longer-range battery – still only goes about half as far as Maverick? Keeping in mind that the Maverick also does not force you to wait for more than a few minutes – about as long as it takes to take a pee break – to recover all 500-plus miles of its driving range.

According to an article published by Yahoo News – which interestingly omits any mention of the standard-range’s driving range and fails to mention that the longer-range version will almost certainly cost thousands more than the ballyhoo’d price of $28,350 –  the Fathom will be “both high-tech and fun to drive.” Really? How so? The “high-tech” includes Ford’s “hands free driving assistant.” How is it fun to drive when you aren’t driving? It will have a “large, high-resolution LCD touchscreen.” Ok, so does literally every other new vehicle. And?

Well, there’ll be a frunk. The F-150 Lightning had one of those also. So does just about every other EV.

Yawn.

Some might say it’d be a lot more fun if Ford were to build a 2011 Ranger again. You got a standard range of about 400 miles – with no more than a pee break’s wait to recover it – and a five speed manual transmission, which made it fun to drive – for a base price of $18,160.

All of a sudden I’m thinking about how the chocolate ration has just been increased.

. . .

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