The character and performance won’t come to light until the car arrives next year. But the Mach-E’s journey from nonexistence to Sunday’s stage (with “brand ambassador” Idris Elba in tow), in just over two years, is an impressive start.

Minus a brief foray into fully electric propulsion in the first half of this decade with the Focus Electric, Ford has put its energy into hybrids.

Meanwhile, Tesla, Nissan, Jaguar, BMW, General Motors, Porsche, Audi, Hyundai, and others built up the battery-powered market, rolling out zero-emission products in earnest. So it went until 2017, when the Ford higher-ups decided that EV tech, consumer interest, and regulatory reality had reached the point where it was time to do away with gasoline.

They launched an internal effort called Team Edison, charged with producing the company’s first ground-up battery-electric vehicle.

Ford had already committed to dropping sedans from its lineup, so making an SUV—specifically the kind of crossover that flies off Ford lots—was a natural choice.

Figuring out who would buy such a thing was trickier.

“We decided to focus on the technology and how it has really changed their world,” says Jason Castriota, Ford’s brand director for battery EVs. From his (perhaps rosy) point of view, “it's either removing friction from your life or it's amplifying something you really like.”

“We’d pop in sketches on a Monday, choose the one we wanted on Tuesday, build the CAD model on Wednesday, mill it on Thursday, then present it on Friday.”

So Ford focused on catering to the kind of driver who expects new tech to deliver more of what they like and less of what they don’t.

That came down to things like effortless access to charging stations: Ford has partnered with Electrify America and other suppliers to offer single-account access to all chargers, enabling up to 47 miles of range after just 10 minutes on a 150-kW charger.

The Mach-E will allow over-the-air updates like those common to Tesla cars. The new infotainment system includes a card-style presentation of options that can be shuffled around and accessed by a large physical dial integrated into the 15-inch central screen.

When it came to designing the thing, Team Edison gravitated to the Mustang, seeing in its enthusiast fan base parallels to the EV crowd: People who want something exciting and different.

After an internal “reality check” with market and customer research, they decided to brand the car as something inspired by the Mustang, giving it the Mach-E designation.

So, while it’s not an official Mustang, the SUV shares some of the pony car’s looks, including the low “shark” nose, longer dash-to-front-axle distance, big haunches, tri-bar tail lights, and the galloping pony logo.