Ford’s introduction of the Model T in 1908 ushered in an era of affordable, mass-manufactured vehicles. Now, the automaker wants to do the same thing for electric vehicles.

On Monday, Ford unveiled what its secretive, Silicon Valley-based skunkworks team has been up to for the last three years. It announced plans to launch a new midsize electric truck in 2027, revealed a platform that will underpin a family of next-gen EVs, and detailed what it calls the “Ford Universal EV Production System,” a new manufacturing process that executives compared to Ford’s popularization of the moving assembly line.

The new EV platform, CEO Jim Farley said at an event at the automaker’s Louisville Assembly Plant in Kentucky, “represents the most radical change in how we design and how we build vehicles at Ford since the Model T.”

Trucking along: The first EV on the new platform will be a four-door pickup with a $30,000 target price, Farley said. The project will secure about 2,200 hourly jobs at Louisville Assembly, into which Ford is investing nearly $2 billion.

Ford will share additional details about the truck later, but touted manufacturing efficiencies such as a 4,000-foot reduction in wiring compared to Ford’s current-generation EVs, space and weight savings thanks to the LFP batteries Ford is preparing to produce for its forthcoming EVs, and the truck’s ability to power a house for several days.

Keep reading here.—JG

Solar installation is a lengthy process. In most cases, solar installers travel to customers’ homes or buildings, measure their roofs, go back to their offices, and design optimal solar panels for them—and that’s before any panels are even installed.

Aurora Solar, a solar panel design software company, offers an alternative that CEO Chris Hopper told Tech Brew is much faster.

• The software, which processes publicly available and private data sets using AI, creates models of homes and buildings and then designs customized solar panels for them.
• That data includes local weather info and utility rates, aerial and satellite imagery, and lidar data, or data pulled from lasers mounted on planes that scan the height of buildings.

Aurora AI’s software then “creates a 3D model of your home that takes 15 seconds or so. A lot of the work the designer would otherwise have to do just happens automatically,” Hopper said. “The second step [is] the software can automatically design a system for you.”

The software also calculates how much energy its designed system will be able to generate and how much the system will cost. And according to Hopper, Aurora’s designs are more exact than those made by people.

“It’s actually more accurate, because we can combine [and] bring in all these data sources and remove a lot of the error that also happens from manual measurement,” Hopper said.

Keep reading here.—TC

In May 2024, Canva embarked on a migration from the classroom to the office. Leveraging its reputation as an easy-to-use graphic design platform, the company released its enterprise version, Canva Enterprise, locking down clients like Docusign, FedEx, and Keller Williams.

Bow-tie occasion: Canva’s “bow-tie framework,” according to Rob Giglio, chief customer officer, helps its product and marketing teams stay “functionally super aligned.”

“Our product team is in the same discussions around: Where are customers stuck? How is trial going? What features are getting used?” Giglio said.

For Jessica Chiew, global head of revenue strategy and operations, using this framework was essential while building a GTM team transitioning from product-led growth (PLG) to sales-led growth (SLG).

Through this framework, Canva said it can track when to activate marketing, product, and customer success teams to acquire clients and ensure good customer service. Externally, it helps Canva maintain its branding and shows clients that it can serve corporate as well as consumer needs.

“There’s no big, chunky handoffs, we manage the customer journey together,” Giglio told Revenue Brew. “If you’re really just obsessing on the customer journey, you put technology first to solve problems, people second to solve problems, and you end up with the lightest exposure of expense.”

Keep reading here.—BS