Ford Motor Co. on Thursday said it's on track to launch the Fathom all-electric midsize truck next year, after converting Louisville Assembly Plant in Kentucky from a gas-vehicle plant into a fully electric facility in under a year.

More equipment installation and quality verification will continue through the end of the year at the former home of the Escape and Lincoln Corsair crossovers as the plant prepares for a first-quarter launch of prototype production of the sub-$30,000 Fathom. It's the first plant to adopt Ford's new Universal Electric Vehicle Production System, which adopts a three-pronged assembly tree over the Henry Ford-invented moving assembly line to ease the manufacturing process.

The highly automated manufacturing process will help Louisville Assembly be able to build vehicles a net 15% faster than its former products and will help Ford catch up to Chinese competitors and Tesla Inc. that have implemented similar structures to produce EVs, often at lower costs. WiFi at the plant also has been upgraded to support software quality checks.

Louisville employees have joined engineering teams at Ford's New Model Product Development Center in Allen Park to prepare for launch of production as well.

Ford announced a $2 billion investment into the Louisville plant in October 2025 to retool the facility for production using the new, streamlined process, which it said would use shorter wiring harnesses, fewer and lighter parts and single-piece aluminum unicastings, among other things, to deliver quicker assembly with more flexibility and profitability.

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