Ford CEO Mullaly expects "major portion" of Fords will be electric within a decade
Click above for high-res gallery of the Ford Focus EV "mule"
Ford may have been relatively quiet on the electric vehicle front while General Motors got all the attention for its Chevy Volt series hybrid, but the Blue Oval has come roaring back in recent months. It was revealed in its viability plan submitted to Congress back in December that an electric commercial van would be launched just one year from now followed by an electric car the next year. According to CEO Alan Mulally, that's just the start. At a conference in California this week, Mulally declared, "In 10 years, 12 years, you are going to see a major portion of our portfolio move to electric vehicles." Mulally told the conference that internal combustion efficiency will also improve dramatically over the next decade, and more hybrids will join the lineup including a plug-in hybrid that will debut in 2012.
Ford is shifting a significant proportion of its truck building capacity to cars over the next two years and the company doesn't expect truck sales to recover to their previous record heights. While fuel prices are low now, they are expected to climb again as the economy recovers. The shifts to cars and more hybrid and electric vehicles will be necessary to meet both market demands created by those expected higher fuel prices and government mandates for higher fuel efficiency.
Gallery: ABG Quick Drive: Ford Focus EV mule
Photos Copyright ©2009 Sam Abuelsamid / Weblogs, Inc.
[Source: Automotive News, sub. req'd]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Driver X 4:39PM (3/05/2009)
They should have used the stimulus package to create a new power grid for all of these electric cars. Next we'll have to bail out the utilitiy companies. People will be complaining about their power bill next.
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montoym 4:41PM (3/05/2009)
and the cap and trade rules will hasten those increased power bills as well.
Luis 4:42PM (3/05/2009)
They did:
"The U.S. Department of Energy has 60 days to set up a competitive process to award an estimated $4.3 billion for projects that will upgrade the nation's electric grid. That's one of the top clean technology provisions of the $787 billion economic stimulus package President Barack Obama signed into law Tuesday (Feb.. 17). "
http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=214400150
Obama knows what he is doing.
Jared 4:47PM (3/05/2009)
Most electric cars will be recharged at night, when power usage is low anyways. So chances are the impact on the grid will be minimal until and unless there are huge numbers of electric cars. That's not going to happen very quickly.
DKB_SATX 5:42PM (3/05/2009)
Actually they should re-regulate electrical power generation in most of the markets in which it was "deregulated" because almost all the deregulation cons were designed by Enron or patterned after what Enron was doing... it was a game of 3-card Monte designed to fleece the rate-payers and enrich the corporations that bought the generation capacity for cents on the dollar and then designed "markets" to drive up rates.
tankd0g 7:14PM (3/05/2009)
"Most electric cars will be recharged at night, when power usage is low anyways."
I get a good laugh every time I read this. Which is just about every god damn day on ABG. If every other person was driving an electric car, residential energy usage at night would be more than double what they currently are in the day.
I'll be damned if I'm going to pay 25 cents/kWh so a bunch of hippies can haul around a 1200 lb. battery pack and call it green.
Nick 8:29PM (3/05/2009)
As far as I know, a portion of the bill is for the new power grid.
jeff 3:27AM (3/06/2009)
@ tankdog, have you even tried running through some quick numbers to support your claim?? My last electricity bill was 2560 kWh over 64 days, or 40 kWh per day. 10kWh of charging will easily get you over 40 miles of driving. I know the Chevy Volt has a 16kWh pack, but that's cause they only use half the capacity, from 80% to 30%, such that they can guarantee a 10 year life-time on the pack. Reva G-Wiz for example, yeah it's a smaller car, but it gets 40 miles on a 6kWh pack, plus 2 or 3 kWh for charging inefficiency in lead-acid batteries. Li-ion charge much more efficiently though, so I stick by 10kWh from the wall=40 miles.
Either way, your claim is way off the mark. I'm paying $0.08/kWh. If I drive electric, 40 miles/day, even if I don't get cheaper rates at night, I'm paying 2 cents a mile, and I've increased my electricity consumption by 25%. Than YOU for the good laugh.
jake 3:51AM (3/06/2009)
@tankd0g
For EVs to reach half of the car driving population, it'll take more than twenty years, to reach half of the total population, it'll take even longer. The next ten years is going to just be getting EVs into the market. Then it'll take a long while for adoption. There'll be plenty of capacity until then, especially overnight, when offices, malls, factories, etc are all offline. I imagine the power companies will want people to have smart chargers so the power companies can control the load as long as the car is charged before a time set by the user.
The average US household uses up 12,000kWh a year, or 32.9kWh a day. Fully charging a 100-150 mile EV will take 16kWh-30kWh, which is most likely the range & capacity of the Focus EV. That's roughly half or the same as the daily consumption of energy, not double. And most likely people don't travel 100-150 miles every day, so it'll be lower.
Given those figures it appears our grid is ready to handle quite a lot of BEVs even now and even more smaller capacity PHEVs.
Luis 4:41PM (3/05/2009)
I think the shift to smaller cars and high-efficiency is a great move by Ford. I think Mullaly is correct: gas prices will rise as soon as the economy recovers. Last summer was a taste of what is to be the norm once the recession is over. The automakers who heed that wisdom will do well.
Climate change and peak oil deniers can rant all they want, but the artificially low prices now are low because demand is down. There is not miraculous supply to be found 'in them thar hills', and if we don't plan now, in the next boom prices will easily break records. China and India want to use more energy and this summer was just the start. Populations are growing across the globe and as people become more affluent, they use more energy, yet carbon-based energy is finite in the human time-scale.
This makes me optimistic for Ford.
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Sea Urchin 4:44PM (3/05/2009)
I think this just shows that Mullaly while overpaid (20+ Mill) is qualified and recognizes that in future will be green.
Mazda FTW! 4:54PM (3/05/2009)
I'm gonna buy a couple of ICE engined sports cars and put them in storage for the 2020s and 2030s because there is NO way I'm driving a electric car.
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Luis 5:12PM (3/05/2009)
You'll be 'cool', but may have a hard time finding a gas station. :)
I can't wait for the day.
Jake B 5:33PM (3/05/2009)
He could just sell one of them to afford the gas for the other one.
doug 5:07PM (3/05/2009)
This could turn out to be a win-win for Ford - and even GM. As both reduce truck capacity and retool for cars, the economy improves, gas goes up, and demand for trucks and cars rebound simultaneously. The countries auto fleet is at the oldest age average ever, people will need new wheels sooner or later..
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Matt 5:14PM (3/05/2009)
Meh...he also said Volvo and Mazda were NOT for sale too.
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AngeloD 5:31PM (3/05/2009)
It looks like Bill Ford was five years ahead of his time. He wanted Ford to drastically increase investment in hybrids and cut back on large SUVs several years before bringing Mullaly on board.
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Sektor 5:33PM (3/05/2009)
And that just shows that even though Ford isn't in very good shape, it is way better than GM and Chrysler.
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Mike 6:17PM (3/05/2009)
I think it's a bit naive for people to thing we'll be able to survive on electric cars alone.
Sure, people who go to work and come home to a house with a garage and have no outside life can live most days without ICEs as long as they are disciplined enough to remember to plug in every night. But what about the housewife who's too airheaded to remember to plug in? What about the 20 something year old that lives in an apartment and has a busy life outside of work? What about the salesman who does 100+ miles a day? What about the guy who's been relocated and travels frequently to visit his friends and family from where he's from? What about the couple or family that likes to take road trips on the weekends? What about the city dwellers that have street only parking where they never park in the same place twice?
Electric cars will probably become a necessity as the greenies grab more power and the price of oil goes up but the reality of it is that the electric vehicle will either supplement our current ICE based fleet as a daily driver- with an ICE car as a backup or we will switch to plug in hybrids like the Volt that have the ability to recharge as their driving. This country's way too big for everyone to be able to go 40-60 miles a day, then have to wait to charge overnight or even in a few hours.
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Sektor 6:28PM (3/05/2009)
The range of all electrics goes beyond Volt's horrible 40-60 all electric range.
If I can recall, BYD is launching an all-electric MPV this year (the e6) and it has a 250 mile range per full charge.
I agree though that they are ready to be mainstream, but as soon they improve the range and fast-charging stations appear across the country, they will be. And that shouldn't take more than 10-15 years.