Ford reportedly planning new 'affordable' vehicle for 2022

As of today, it's still possible to hop on Ford's website and configure a Fiesta or Focus, the only two vehicles in the lineup that start at less than $20,000 with destination charges included. That will soon change, however, when Ford's sedans are phased out – and with them, all the company's lowest-cost options. A report from Automotive News suggests a new vehicle to fill the void is coming by 2022.

With Ford's four-door cars out of the picture, buyers will be left with the choice between the EcoSport, which starts at $21,090, and the new Escape, which will likely be priced similarly to the current model's $25,200 starting price. Those aren't budget options.

For reference, in the first quarter of 2019, Ford sold 15,943 Fiestas, 10,349 Focuses, 41,683 Fusions, 12,879 EcoSports, and 60,702 Escapes. The new Escape, which is very car-like in nature, could pull over Fusion customers, but the EcoSport is not quite on par with the fun-minded valuable packages that were the Fiesta and Focus.

According to Automotive News, Ford's vice president of enterprise product line management Jim Baumbick told them a new "affordable" nameplate is on the way to help fill the leftover gaps. Ford partially confirmed this to Autoblog with this comment:

"We are creating an all-new, white space vehicle that will be on sale by 2022. It's an example of how we're moving faster, working together differently and leveraging our five all-new flexible vehicle architectures. We came up with the concept in just twelve weeks using our new product creation process. Previous all-new vehicles could have taken years of research before receiving approval. We'll have more to share later."

The key missing word there is "affordable," but the statement otherwise lines up with the report. There is also no mention of body style, but the natural guess would be some type of crossover. Overall, Ford stated last year that it planned nine all-new nameplates in the next five years to bring its total lineup count to 23 vehicles. We'll let you know as soon as we have more details.