Ford's Mulally sounds skeptical about Ford Focus Electric

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klaus

Well-known member
Joined
Feb 9, 2011
Messages
103
... and electric vehicles in general.

For three years, as an Obama has been praising electric vehicles and hasn't. He said that 1 million log in and hybrid vehicles will be on the road by 2015.

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Ford's chief executive officer Alan Mulally recently told Newsweek that "the infrastructure is just not there yet."

This is shortly after Ford unveiled its own plug-in electric vehicle before focused electric. "It's a very tough economic case… These are very expensive vehicles because the batteries and electronics are expensive."

The weight of the battery, cost of battery, and minimum four hour charge time, limited range, and cost of the car are all going against the electric vehicle market however, despite all of these things, there seems to be a large number of customers interested in electric vehicles.

Ford expects electric buyers choose hybrids that run on gasoline as well as electricity.

"The ones that make the most economic sense are the hybrids, like the Ford Escape and Fusion hybrid, have no limitation on range. It isn’t going to get in the way of your lifestyle." says Mulally.

Interestingly enough, Ford is obviously still pursuing the Ford Focus Electric as it's set to come out sometime in the next few months. It is yet to be seen how well the Ford Focus Electric will sell and how long and how well Ford will market the Focus Electric, especially since Mulally seems to sound a little bit defeated about it even before it's available! Ford is expecting to produce about 100 thousand vehicles with electric power by 2013, with the vast majority of those being hybrid electric. The Ford Focus Electric could make up less than 1 percent of Ford's total vehicle sales.
 
I love that people on this forum can have such different opinions and still be interested in electric vehicles! I know that isn't necessarily your opnion Kluas, just something that you read in an article.

Here's some of my comments/rebuttles:

1. Weight of the battery in the Ford Focus Electric
The weight of batteries is coming down as they are developing higher capacity batteries for electric vehicles

2. Cost of the Ford Focus Electric's battery
Coming down approx 5% per year - while gas has been increasing

3. 3-4 hours to charge
So about the same as my cellphone, laptop, ipod etc. Hasn't stopped anyone from using any of those.

4. Cost of the Ford Focus Electric (plug-ins can cost twice as much as a comparable gas-powered model)
Cost of the car is higher mainly because of the cost of the batteries, which was already mentioned. It can't be a second argument when it's the same reason!

5. Limited range of the Ford Focus Electric is less than 100 miles
Which is enough for my daily commute to work and the commutes of approximately 80% of Americans according to statistics
 
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