Ford has made up its mind, and Jim Farley is making sure everybody knows it. During a recent appearance on Spike’s Car Radio podcast, the automaker’s CEO dropped the line with the confidence of someone who’s already signed the checks. Every Ford vehicle will offer a hybrid option.
That includes the Bronco, a rig that’s spent its entire second life being the poster child for gasoline-fueled trail heroics. First floated back in 2019 by then-CEO Jim Hackett during the annual shareholders meeting, the Bronco Hybrid has been in the rumor mill long enough to grow roots. Now it’s real, or at least as real as a promise from a CEO on a podcast can be.
What kind of hybrid are we talking about? Nobody’s saying yet, and Ford isn’t exactly rushing to hand out engineering specs. The path of least resistance would be adapting the F-150’s 3.5-liter PowerBoost setup, a proven system that integrates a permanent magnet synchronous motor into the 10R automatic transmission, a unit co-developed with General Motors and already doing duty in the electrified F-150 and the Ranger PHEV. On the bigger truck, Ford claims 47 HP and 210 lb-ft of torque from the electric motor alone.
The Ranger PHEV pushes things a little further. Bigger battery, slightly more electric punch, and up to 27 miles of EV range under WLTP testing. A plug-in Bronco isn’t out of the question, either. Ford already sells a Ranger PHEV in select markets, which at least proves the company knows how to wire this stuff together.
An extended-range EV setup for the Bronco, on the other hand, seems like a stretch. Farley himself sees EREV technology as the natural home for heavy-duty towing machines, a category where Ram is already swinging hard with the 1500 REV.
What we do know is that the Bronco is getting a 2027 model year refresh and that at least one of its current three EcoBoost engines will almost certainly carry some form of electrification into the next chapter. The 2.3-liter four-cylinder, still available with a proper manual and low-range transfer case for the purists, may or may not survive the transition untouched.
