Ford’s future product roadmap has gotten messy as the company has killed or delayed a number of upcoming models. Most of these have been fully electric as the automaker axed their three-row EVs and recently halted F-150 Lightning production – at least temporarily.

Amid this chaos, Ford isn’t throwing in the towel on EVs. Quite the opposite as the company is working on a mid-size truck that will be launched in 2027 and ride on the all-new Universal EV Platform. The latter will eventually underpin a “family of affordable vehicles.”

More: Ford Gives Taurus And Mondeo A Mustang Glow-Up For 2026

That family could include a rear-wheel drive, high-performance sedan that would be affordable. Ford CEO Jim Farley hinted at the car in a recently posted video, which was taken a few months ago at Monterey Car Week.

Return of the Sedan?

The executive didn’t say much about it, but implied the mysterious model has a clean silhouette as well as a “cool closure” system in the back, which enables it to carry a lot of stuff. This suggests the car could be a liftback sedan, which would broaden its appeal in the crossover era.

Little else is known about the vehicle, but Ford has been hinting at a Mustang sedan since 2022. The company also reportedly showed dealers a rendering in 2024 and this could presumably be what Farley is talking about.

Also: This Is An Official Ford Mustang Sedan Sketch And We Love It

While that remains unclear, the executive said “There’s definitely a market for sedans, a huge market.” However, he said their previous generations of sedans failed in America because they were built on European platforms to European standards. This resulted in expensive cars, which cost the company a lot of money.

Fusion Died So Bronco and Maverick Could Live

Farley went on to point out that the Bronco and Maverick never would have happened if they continued making the Fusion. As he explained, they took the money from cars to invest it elsewhere. This has proven to be a wise move and Ford has focused on the “sweet zone” with Broncos, Mustangs, and Raptors.

Elsewhere in the interview, Farley shared praise for the Xiaomi SU7. He also talked about his dream of doing an off-road supercar. 

We’ve covered the latter before, but in this interview he described it as a WRC [World Rally Championship] car for four people as well as something like a Raptor R without a pickup bed. He went on to say the model would be partially electric and have 1,000 hp (746 kW / 1,014 PS).

Of course, it’s all just a lot of talk at this point and Ford has been having problems executing their vision. Besides botched EV plans in America, the company’s European turnaround has stumbled with rebadged VWs. This is on top of 138 recalls and counting.

Xiaomi’s YU7 has quickly found its stride in China. Only a few months into its launch, the electric SUV has seen a sharp rise in sales and, in October, even edged past the Tesla Model Y. For now, though, buyers outside China are still waiting for Xiaomi to take its EVs beyond the domestic market.

Last month, Xiaomi sold an impressive 48,654 vehicles across China. Of these, 33,662 were YU7s, meaning it is now comfortably outselling the SU7 sedan. By comparison, Tesla shipped approximately 61,500 Model Ys in October, but 35,400 of these were sent to overseas markets, meaning Chinese buyers snapped up roughly 26,100 units.

Read: A 60-Week Waitlist Just Made Xiaomi’s SUV A Flippers Goldmine

Since customer deliveries of the YU7 began in July, Xiaomi is believed to have shipped around 70,000 units in total. That’s a rapid rise for a newcomer, suggesting the SUV has struck a chord with Chinese buyers.

New Customization Options

On the back of continued SUV sales success, Xiaomi announced its new Customization Service at the Guangzhou Auto Show, presenting a YU7 Max painted in Crystal Purple to mark the occasion.

The new service is effectively Xiaomi’s take on Porsche’s Paint to Sample program, with plans to roll out more than 100 new paint colors over the next three years. It’s a striking contrast to Tesla’s strategy, which restricts buyers to just a few standard colors and trims in the name of production efficiency and fatter profit margins.

The full list of paint colors has yet to be announced, but Xiaomi did say that the special finishes will be priced from 11,000 yuan ($1,500). Through the Customization Service, shoppers will also be able to choose from a selection of alloy wheels and colored Brembo brake calipers.

For buyers with a taste for extravagance, Xiaomi will also offer 24-karat gold badges or black-and-white emblems, along with gold carbon fiber versions.

Powering single motor versions of the YU7 is a rear-mounted unit delivering 315 hp (235 kW) and 389 lb-ft (528 Nm) of torque, fed by a 96.3 kWh battery pack. Xiaomi also offers dual-motor versions with 489 hp (365 kW) and 681 hp (508 kW), respectively.

An even more potent version of the YU7 is on the cards, but it’s too early to say if it will reach the same heights as the SU7 Ultra.

Like many long-established carmakers, Ford has found itself under growing pressure from Tesla at home and an increasingly assertive wave of Chinese manufacturers abroad.

These newer players seem more adaptable, often leading in electric-vehicle design and software integration, areas where legacy automakers like Ford have struggled to keep pace. Chief executive Jim Farley doesn’t shy away from acknowledging the scale of that challenge.

Read: Ford CEO Warns China Could Put Every American Carmaker Out Of Business

Not long after Ford’s boss remarked that the threat from Chinese automakers now exceeds what Japanese carmakers posed in the 1980s, Jim Farley described the “shocking” moment that spurred him to rethink the company’s direction.

He said Ford’s engineers were taken aback when they began tearing down both the Tesla Model 3 and several Chinese-built electric cars, realizing just how far ahead those manufacturers had moved in terms of cost, efficiency, and software integration.

“I was very humbled when we took apart the first Model 3 Tesla and started to take apart the Chinese vehicles,” he told former Wall Street Journal reporter Monica Langley on the Office Hours: Business Edition podcast. “When we took them apart, it was shocking what we found.”

What Ford Found Inside

Ford’s engineers quickly learned that the Mustang Mach-E carried an extra mile of electrical wiring compared with the Model 3, adding unnecessary weight and complexity. That revelation, and others like it, convinced Farley to separate the company’s electric operations into a dedicated arm, the Model E division, in 2022.

“EVs are exploding in China,” Farley said, noting that the Chinese government had “put its foot on the economic scale” in support of battery-powered vehicles.

“We can’t walk away from EVs, not just for the US, but if we want to be a global company, I’m not going to just cede that to the Chinese,” he added.

Financially, Ford’s move to establish the Model E division has yet to bear fruit, losing more than $5 billion last year. However, Farley isn’t prepared to throw in the towel.

“I knew it was going to be brutal business-wise,” he said. “My ethos is, take on the hardest problems as fast as you can and do it sometimes in public because you’ll solve them quicker that way.”

If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Join ‘Em

Last year, Farley revealed that he had been driving a Xiaomi SU7 daily and praised the electric sedan. Evidently, he understands not only the importance of answering the threat posed by the Chinese but also just how quickly Ford needs to respond.

One of the company’s most crucial upcoming projects is a mid-size electric pickup priced around $30,000. Built on a new architecture designed to underpin several future models, it represents the next test of whether Ford can match the speed and efficiency of the competition