The 'Eluminator' Is Ford's Incoming Electric Crate Motor

Ford‘s crate engine line-up is huge. From a 2.3-litre Ecoboost inline-four up to the mightily 7.3-litre ‘Godzilla’ V8, there’s something in the range to suit almost every project car builder. Unless that is, you want to go electric, but that being the case, you won’t need to wait much longer.

Giving a whole new meaning to the term ‘crate motor’, Ford is working on the ‘Eluminator’, an off-the-shelf electric motor available to punters from this autumn.

Ford has promised to reveal more at the 2021 SEMA show which runs from 2 - 5 November, but that’s about all we know for now. The only other detail is a measurement on the CAD drawings included on Ford Performance’s tweet, which shows a length of 570mm.

That makes the motor 90mm shorter (or narrower, if you’re thinking of transverse applications) than the Ecoboost 2.3. With such compact dimensions, the Eluminator should be plenty versatile.

Ford has been beaten to the punch by its arch crate engine rivals Chevrolet, which revealed the ‘eCrate’ motor last year. This isn’t available to the public just yet as far as we can see, although there is a small British firm called Swind currently offering an £8,850, 107bhp turnkey motor for classic Mini restomods.

The eCrate motor and its battery pack share 90 per cent of their parts with the Chevrolet Bolt’s powertrain. Ford may choose to go a similar route and share elements of the BorgWarner-developed Mach-E drive unit with the Iluminator, and it’s surely only a matter of time before a crate battery option is revealed to go with the new motor. Who knows - in time maybe Ford will go the whole hog and offer skateboard platforms.