American carmaker Ford is building up suspense in anticipation of what its CEO, Jim Farley, called the company’s upcoming “Model T moment”, referring to August 11th when a new platform for affordable EVs is to be presented.
Ahead of that event, Ford just opened a new EV design campus in the historic buildings of Douglas Park, just next to Long Beach Airport in California, to house its famous ‘skunkworks team’ of elite engineers recruited from some of the top tech and EV companies in the US.
New lineup of affordable EVs
Farley brought in the skunkworks team to develop a low-cost electric vehicle platform that could underpin a series of new electrified models at speed and at scale. The new platform is likely to underpin a smaller, more compact pickup truck to start with.
Now, Ford is set to unveil some of the work the team has accomplished so far at an event scheduled for August 11th in Kentucky. Farley referred to this as just as meaningful as the Ford T, the company’s first mass-produced motor vehicle that made cars affordable to the general public in the early 1900s.
Under $30,000
Farley previously hinted that pricing will be under $30,000 (approximately €25,750) for the most affordable products on the upcoming platform. Ford has some catching up to do when it comes to EVs, as it has lost over $5.5 billion per year on EVs.
Those are the Ford F-150 Lightning pickup, the Mustang Mach-E, the Explorer, the slow-selling Capri, and the Puma Gen-E, which are 75% Volkswagen ID.4 siblings, in Europe.
And there is another historical link to the new home of the skunkworks team. Initially built in 1929–1930 for Ford’s Model A production and later serving military purposes during WW II, it now stands as the company’s primary EV center in California. Ford has modernized it to attract and leverage top-tier engineering and tech talent, especially from start-ups in California.
Recruited from Tesla, Rivan, Apple, and others
Ford’s advanced EV development group is led by former Tesla engineers Alan Clarke and Anil Paryani. Clarke was deeply involved in vehicle systems engineering for twelve years at Tesla, focusing on powertrain development and battery management systems.
Paryani, also a former Tesla engineer and battery expert, is the founder of Auto Motive Power (AMP), which specializes in battery management systems (BMS), power electronics, and thermal management. AMP is now integrated into Ford’s EV team, bringing in over 100 engineers.
Clark and Paryani aren’t the only former Tesla employees on Ford’s skunkworks team; there are over 20 of them, as well as representatives from other pioneers, including 50 from electric pickup specialist Rivian, 10 from Lucid, and 12 from the late modular EV specialist Canoo, which went bankrupt in January 2025.
Other lured in are aerodynamics engineers from Formula 1 teams and eVTOL (vertical take-off and landing) aircraft companies, as well as several from Apple’s famous, but defunct, Project Titan team.
Former Apple Car leadership
Among them is Cameron Rogers, who joined Ford’s EV team as Director of Software. At Apple, he worked on the iPhone and the M1 chip, and also spent two years as part of Apple’s EV development program, known as the ‘Apple Car’.
Although not a rank‑and‑file skunkworks team member, Ford’s leadership also includes Doug Field, who, as a high-profile former Apple executive, led the Project Titan. Field now serves as Chief Advanced Technology and Embedded Systems Officer, overseeing software and connectivity strategy across the company.
What’s the link with the skunk?
But what is that ‘smell’ about the team, referring to the skunk? The term ‘Skunk Works’ was initially coined in the 1940s at Lockheed Aircraft Corporation (now Lockheed Martin). It referred to their Advanced Development Programs (ADP) division, a secretive team responsible for developing cutting-edge aircraft, such as the U-2 spy plane, the SR-71 Blackbird, and the F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighter.
This group operated with minimal bureaucracy, rapid iteration, and extreme secrecy. The name ‘Skunk Works’ was a running joke inspired by a fictional place called the ‘Skonk Works’ from the Li’l Abner comic strip by Al Capp.
In the comic, the Skonk Works was a backwoods still, a small factory where they made a strong, homemade liquor. This brew was notorious for its extremely unpleasant smell, kind of like a skunk’s spray.
Lockheed Martin obtained trademark rights to the name and continues to use it today as a brand name for its top-secret innovation division. Over time, ‘skunkworks’ (lowercase, often one word) became a generic term in business and tech for “A small, loosely structured group within a large company, given high autonomy and tasked with breakthrough innovation.”
