LONG BEACH, Calif.ā2026 is a strange time for electric vehicles in the US. The current administration has no desire to push for their adoption and has rescinded the federal tax credit on which EV sales have depended for years. Tariffs have made vehicles and their constituent components even more expensive, making switching to an EV for the first time an even harder pill to swallow. Manufacturers like Honda, which had three nearly production-ready EVs on deck, just killed them all unceremoniously.
Itās bleak out there.
Still, Ford has decided to stay in the game with its āUniversal Electric Vehicle,ā which it announced in late 2025. This highly modular platform is designed to underpin all of the Blue Ovalās electric vehicles going forward. The work has been largely conducted at Fordās Electric Vehicle Development Center (EVDC) in sunny Long Beach, California, and Ars Technica was recently invited to tour the facility to see what makes it different from any of Fordās other operations.
