The all-new, gasoline-free Ford Focus Electric is the company’s first-ever all-electric passenger car – a zero-CO2-emissions version of Ford’s popular small car expected to be the first of its kind to achieve the equivalent of a 100 miles per gallon fuel efficiency rating with seating for five. Sherif Marakby, director of Ford’s Electrification Programs and Engineering says it’s very exciting to see the flagship of Ford’s transformed line up, one-third of which will feature a model with 40 mpg or more in 2012, building on the company’s commitment to give fuel-efficiency-minded customers the Power of Choice.
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Cut #1:
“With the Focus Electric we are achieving over a hundred MPGe, that’s equivalent to miles per gallon, using electricity. That just costs a little over two-dollars to charge up your car and drive quite a bit in your daily commute.” :15 sec.
Marakby says this is the real thing… not just an electric powered car, but a car that has all the technology you would expect from a conventional vehicle.
Cut #2:
“Many of the folks that drive the car are shocked at how much of a real car this is… I mean…you drive it… it’s got even more an instant torque because of the electric motor versus gas engines and it just goes and you drive and feels very comfortable, it’s just a fantastic riding vehicle.” :18 sec.
With 20 years of Ford research and innovation behind electrified vehicle software and hardware technology, the company offers proven engineering and design with Focus Electric. Ford holds approximately 500 patents, with several hundred patent-pending applications on technologies used in the new Focus Electric and its other electrified vehicles. According to Marakby, safety is not an issue.
Cut #3:
“We came up with the design where we are enclosing our battery technology in the Focus EV with steal, many of it is high-strength steel, we also built structure around to the battery so that everything is ok, and just did all our stringent testing and really it just performed outstanding in terms of what we expected, and also on safety, we have top pick safety in many of our segments and we want to make sure the vehicle performs the same.” :25 sec.
Ford began taking orders for the 2012 Focus Electric in November through Certified Electric Vehicle Dealers in California and New York/New Jersey markets. In 2012, availability of the Focus Electric will expand to another 15 launch markets as production ramps up.
Cut #4:
“As many of us know the electric vehicle market is still early to tell what the volumes are going to be, and the more important thing is that what we’ve planned here, we’ve planned our electric technology on a base vehicle and it’s not a one off vehicle. And we’re building it on the same production line as our base vehicle, and even some of our hybrids and plug-in’s and what that does it gives us is the ability to satisfy the volume demand, whether it goes up or down very quickly.” :28 sec.
In addition to the Focus Electric, coming in 2012 will be another electrified vehicle, the C-Max Hybrid and the C-MAX Energi both of which are Multi-Activity Vehicles. Marakby says, it’s the right car for the time as it combines the dynamics and quality of a traditional car with… leading fuel efficiency that you cannot even get from Toyota.
Cut #5:
“There is definitely more interest in hybrids and what’s really neat about our C-Max Hybrid here is… it’s the third generation of hybrid vehicles from Ford with all new powertrains. So what we did really is laser focus on efficiency and fuel economy in this technology, so you’ll see that the fuel economy beats the competition, the CMAX Hybrid gets better fuel economy mpg than the Prius v.” :25 sec.
The New C-MAX Energi is expected to achieve better mpg equivalent than Toyota Prius Plug-in hybrid in electric mode and provides an overall driving range of more than 500 miles, better than Chevy Volt.