Motiv Power Systems, provider of all-electric medium-duty fleet chassis, announced a commitment form Detroit Custom Chassis LLC to install Motiv’s all-electric EPIC chassis on the base Ford F-59 platform.

The Ford F-59 platform is assembled by its affiliate Detroit Chassis Plant, both owned by Spectra. Assembly of Motiv’s EPIC chassis at the plant enables more efficient and cost effective production and reduced build times to meet growing customer demands for zero emission commercial truck offerings.

As a Ford eQVM certified producer, Motiv worked with Detroit Custom Chassis to optimize production requirements of the EPIC chassis to enable it to slot into the same assembly lines producing internal combustion engine-powered chassis.

“DCP has long served as the production facility for Ford’s F-59 commercial truck chassis. Since a number of our EPIC chassis variants are based on Ford’s F-59, it made perfect sense to implement an OEM build process that closely mirrors the one used by Ford themselves,” said Matt O’Leary, Motiv’s CEO. With the scale we are focused on achieving in order to meet market demand, this represents a significant step forward for Motiv.”

Production is already underway at the plant, which has capacity to build up to 90,000 chassis a year at its 220,000 square/foot assembly plant on 33 acres in Detroit.

“Detroit Chassis has been in high-level strategic discussions with Motiv going back to 2012 and planning for the F-59 rollout accelerated in 2018. We are excited to now finally be able to showcase the Motiv EPIC chassis rolling out of our facility,” said Michael Guthrie, co-chairman and CEO of DCP. “We couldn’t be happier to see Motiv take a leadership position as the first EV commercial chassis produced by our facility. We expect that over time, electric chassis will sell in similar and, eventually, even greater numbers than gasoline and diesel-powered equivalents. It was a natural fit for DCP to be in the forefront of that market shift.”