It’s no secret that
Ford is working on a Mustang-inspired
electric
crossover, possibly
to be called the “Mach E” or maybe “Mach-E,” that will have a range of more than 300 miles, and it reportedly
showed it to top dealers during the Blue Oval’s annual confab last fall in Las Vegas.
But a comment Monday from Ford Chairman
Bill Ford Jr. highlights a shift in how the company views EVs going forward, and suggests that a performance-oriented
crossover EV may be closer to the norm than an outlier.
“When we first started talking about electrification, there was this thought that there had to be a tradeoff: It was either going to be green and boring and no fun, or really exciting but burn a lot of fossil fuels,”
Automotive News
quoted Ford as saying during a luncheon event. “Electrification has come to the point that you can do both.”
That represents a significant evolution in the automaker’s thinking from its first go-round on electric vehicles, represented by the likes of the
Focus Electric and the
C-Max
plug-in hybrid. Both focused more on maximizing fuel economy than horsepower, and both are now discontinued. That’s left Ford relatively bereft of electrified options — though the
Fusion Energi PHEV lives on, for now — at a time when it’s ramping up efforts around EVs via its new Team Edison unit and is feeling pressured by Wall Street to demonstrate that it has a solid vision for electrification, among other things.
Beyond the battery-electric crossover, which arrives in 2020, we know that Ford is already
planning a hybrid Mustang for 2020 and is mulling the idea of an all-electric variant of the venerable pony car. It’s also working on an
all-electric version of its best-selling F-150.
Pairing electrification with the kind of muscle traditionally reserved for big, thirsty combustion engines is hardly a novel strategy these days. It’s practically
Rivian‘s raison d’être, and it has echoes in EVs like the next-generation
Tesla Roadster and the upcoming
Porsche Taycan. It just might be a smart bet by Ford, and it could also be one reason that its partnership talks with Volkswagen, while reportedly nearing fruit on developing self-driving vehicles, are
struggling to find common ground for teaming on EVs.
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