Ford Killed the Escape. Now It Looks Like the Popular SUV Might Come Back.

Ford has seen its overall sales drop with the discontinuation of the popular Ford Escape and its luxury counterpart the Lincoln Corsair in December. Both competed in the extremely popular compact SUV space. But it looks like their deaths may have been greatly-or at least partially-exaggerated.

Ford announced that the compact SUVs were stopping production after the 2026 model year because it needed the Louisville plant in Kentucky to be retooled to make a family of affordable electric vehicles on the new Universal Electric Vehicle platform. First family member will be the $30,000 2028 Ford Fathom electric midsize pickup truck due late next year.

The UEV platform is intended to support up to eight different vehicles, a mix of sedans, crossovers, SUVs, vans, and trucks. Among the models to come is an electric Escape, expected to go into production in 2029, according to Ford Authority. Big caveat here: Ford says this is pure speculation. The company has not announced that the Escape will return as an EV or that it will be based on the UEV platform.

A lot is being read into the Escape landing page on the Ford website that says, “The Ford Escape SUV may be taking a breather for now.” Instead of saying the model has been discontinued, which Ford has done after past kills like the Ford Edge, the site says the “Ford Escape is tapping the brakes.”

As for the Corsair, Lincoln has said it will return to the U.S. market for the 2027 model year after a one-year hiatus. The 2027 Lincoln Corsair comes to market as a refreshed hybrid with standard all-wheel drive and imported from China. The discontinued 2025 model was offered with a 4-cylinder engine or as a plug-in hybrid.

Fathom Orders Preparing to Open

In discussing Ford’s third-quarter earnings, Ford CEO Jim Farley said Ford will open preorders for the Fathom in early 2027 for sale in the fourth quarter. Starting price is $29,945 including destination charges and offerings will range up to a starting price just under $40,000.

That puts the truck in the heart of the market. Half of all U.S. sales, both new and used, gas-powered, hybrid, and electric, transact below $40,000, said Andrew Frick, president of Ford Blue and Ford e. The Fathom will also have much lower operating costs than even a mainstream hybrid vehicle, he says.

Farley said he says he has driven Fathom prototypes and is impressed with the acceleration, rear-drive feel, and advanced tech in what he calls a “breakthrough product.” The advanced electrical architecture, done in-house, makes it possible to offer advanced technology at a lower cost, including Blue Cruise hands-free driving and a digital suite with embedded Apple Maps for navigation. The truck also has a more affordable approach to bidirectional charging so owners can run tools or power things at home in the event of an outage.

To keep costs down, the plant will use unicasting to reduce the number of parts needed and the truck will use prismatic lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries with what are touted as world-class, Chinese-competitive cells from a plant in Marshall, Michigan.

Launch of Fathom on Track

Chief operating officer Kumar Galhotra says the Fathom launch is progressing well, with 90 percent of validation testing completed and the first production line vehicles being built. Ford has also produced 5,000 large unicastings to prove they can be done at the run rate needed for mass production. Now the team is working with suppliers to make sure they can supply parts at the rate needed.

Working with Chinese partners like Geely showed Ford how the Chinese can develop vehicles faster, even by years, and do so for less cost, Galhatra said. Those learnings are being adopted, starting with the UEV platform. Farley said they knew four years ago that they had to make the platform competitive and to do so, needed a big swing and notable innovation, “because we had to.”

Farley said Ford’s new motors, gearboxes, and inverters are about 30 percent more efficient than ones used by Chinese juggernaut’s BYD. This allows Ford to design a battery that costs less, while efficiency gains will apply to hybrid systems for the rest of the portfolio. Farley said Galhatra’s team is incorporating what it learned from Geely, what it has accomplished with the UEV platform, and AI tools to create a whole new industrial system. It represents a big change for Ford, which plans to migrate the system throughout the company as fast as possible.

Ford Third-Quarter Earnings

Ford reported net income of $2 billion, a 16 percent drop from $2.4 billion a year ago. But adjusted income rose 3 percent to $2.7 billion on revenue that fell 2.3 percent to $49.5 billion. That is not a surprise given that U.S. third-quarter sales declined almost 7 percent to 509,764 in the wake of the phase-out of the Escape and Corsair compact SUVs.

Ford also experienced some F-150 full-size truck production interruptions due to supplier issues. The executives say that after the fire at aluminum supplier Novelis and the latest supplier disruption, stocks of F-150s are rebounding and should return to normal levels by the end of the year. Work also continues on the next F-150, with prototypes currently being tested. Farley warned there will be some plant downtime in 2027 to prepare for the new truck.

Ford Pro and Ford Blue continue to generate strong revenue while Model e, the EV unit, reported a loss of $1.1 billion, a 25 percent improvement from a year ago. Ford says it still expects its EV business to break even by 2029. Earlier this year Ford raised its 2026 full-year guidance to $10 billion to $11 billion in adjusted earnings. It has now raised the low end expectation to $10.5 billion.