CNN reports today that Ford is preparing to sell an electric car developed almost entirely by an outside supplier. While that may cut down on bragging rights – General Motors created the Chevy Volt in-house – Ford says it also cut down on costs and risk.
The electric Ford Focus, due out in early 2011, is largely the product of Canada-based auto parts and assembly supplier Magna International (MGA). Magna developed the car mostly on its own, building it inside a Ford Focus body for demonstration purposes.
Unlike the Volt, Ford’s electric Focus will not be a “range extended car.” In other words, it won’t have an on-board gasoline-powered generator to pump out more electricity for longer drives.
The Focus will not burn gasoline and will go about 100 miles on a charge. Before hitting the road again, drivers will have to wait to recharge.
Meanwhile, the Volt will only go 40 miles before needing to burn gasoline – still farther than most people drive in a typical day, GM says – but it will have a 300 mile total range.
In August, 2008, Magna presented its electric car to Ford engineers and executives.
“We took a look at that execution and said, ‘Hey, together we can really make this a proposition,” said Nancy Gioia, Ford’s Director of Sustainable Mobility.
Five months later, in January, 2009, Ford (F, Fortune 500) announced its intention to produce the car at the Detroit Auto Show.
Ford could have developed an electric car on their own, but Magna’s work allowed the carmaker to bypass a lot of expensive engineering and development work, Pochiluk said.
The electric Focus will go on sale in early 2011 and it will be based on the next-generation Ford Focus small car. By then, it should be Ford’s second electric vehicle. The first will be a small electric work van that’s scheduled to go on sale next year. Ford also partnered with an outside supplier, Britain’s Smith Electric vehicles, to make the van.
Ummm… volt has a 300 mile range?? Don’t you mean Unlimited, what with being able to fill up the Gas Tank and all?
Every car has a range, the maximum distance it can go without refueling/recharging.
this is a real electric and enviromentally friendly, Volt is a fake electric car
Environmentally friendly? Yeah, maybe if you get you power from a hydro, nuke, solar, or wind. Otherwise, these pollute more than IC engines. Remember, for that car to run, it needs to store all that energy in batteries, which are charged usually by fossil fuel power plants. Now, add to that the inefficiencies of the electrical grid and batteries and the power plant will use up more energy than a typical gas tank to charge those batteries, which means more pollution too. At least the Volt can recharge itself, which cuts the inefficiencies associated w/ the grid out.
Bassman97 wrote:
“Now, add to that the inefficiencies of the electrical grid and batteries and the power plant will use up more energy than a typical gas tank to charge those batteries”
Where are you getting your information? The fact is that the Department of Energy and many in academia have studied the total pollution from gas powered vs. electric vehicles and the electric vehicle is superior. Not by a huge margin, but electric IS better even if we assume that all electricity comes from coal. And this takes into account the total enegry of transporting and refining the gasoline, and the ineffieicncies of electrical generation and transmission.
The reason is that the efficiency of an electric motor is far higher than that of an internal combustion engine. A resonably efficient electric car gets the equivalent of over 100 miles per gallon, in terms of energy consumed. In an internal combustion engine the vast majority of the energy is wasted as heat. (About 15 to 20% of the energy goes to moving the car down the road, depending on which study you read.)
Gasoline cars and electric cars both suffer from the fact that they need to be re-fueled, so neither are unlimited. Electric cars are generally recharged at night, when demand on power generation and the grid are at their lowest, so there’s no need to build more power plants to power electric cars until there are hundreds of thousands of them on the road. By this time there will be a lot more wind and solar power.
Please check your “facts” before conmmenting.
NASA and many in academia have said global warming is real but many people (even just your average Joe) have been able to find faults in their evidence. Plus, never take anything at face value because there’s always an agenda.
Let’s look at the inefficiencies. In a perfect world, you would be able to use say 100 hp for a power plant to power your 100 hp electric car. However, the grid is only efficient by around 80% and batteries these days are still not highly efficient. Add that all together and you will need more than 100 hp from a power plant to power your electric car.
Now you bring up fuel transportation for IC engines. This means nothing because you have the same costs for power plants and thus electric cars. Plus, add to it the energy used to make the batteries.
Now, the motor is more efficient than the engine however, the achilles heel is what powers it. While gas engines can be as efficient as 80%, you don’t have inefficiencies with the fuel source like you do w/ batteries. While w/ gasoline, you can fill your car w/ say 100 hp of power and use up to 100 hp in combustion, for batteries, a 100 hp charge will not give up 100 hp to the motor. Plus, you don’t have the added power loss through power transmission like electric cars would. If electric was really this efficient, we would have been using it, especially since electric motors have the perfect torque curve. However, technology isn’t there yet to allow batteries to have the same range as gasoline (and thus the same efficiencies) and the grid still isn’t perfect.
You have no idea what you are talking about. It is much easier to control polution at a stationary site than millions of portable sites. Electric cars are the future and they will happen. With losses, every power generation/transmission system – either auto or grid is a percentage inefficient. Electric is much more efficient because of regen braking. Gas cars to not hve this – except hybrids, and that is what makes them work better. You can’t say 100hp in tank 100hp on wheels….it doesn’t work that way. Economies of scale say is is more efficient to make 100hp more on a big machine than a small one. BTW hp is not a measurement of efficency, I’m just talking down to you so you will understand the concept.
Guys, if you are in the mood to flame each other, take it elsewhere like the Garage section.
Ford’s building a electric car? -shrug-
Good idea I guess, but I’d rather just by the 4 cylinder with a 5 speed stick and get good MPG and not worry about when the battery pack craps out and I’d be shafted into spending $$$ to replace the “battery”.
Then again, about the only way I’ll by a focus is if it’s a first gen, that way I can slide in a 351 and a top loader.
I’m sorry I angered you, but no need to be childish about it.
No where did I mention that 100 hp=100 hp to the ground. I said 100 hp= 100 hp in combustion, which doesn’t mean 100 hp to the crank because of the losses associated w/ heat transfer.
Regenerative braking only makes up for some of the inefficiencies. However, it still doesn’t create that much because again, the batteries’ inefficiencies kill it. That’s why many auto reporters report that in city driving, diesels still get better mileage than hybrids.
Also, economy of scale only applies to costs, not amounts of efficiency or pollution. Remember, because of the inefficiencies associated w/ power transfer, combine that w/ the high efficiency of the IC engine, it would be more efficient for every homeowner to purchase their own generator. However, this is not practical because of noise pollution, cost of fuel (bulk is cheaper and gas is more expensive than the fuels that power plants normally use), and wasted power when all the generators power isn’t used. These three reasons are why we get our power from centralized sources.
As for pollution, it is easier to control it on numerous of smaller items. While a gas engine requires just a cat, boilers require massive pollution control items, such as scrubbers, which injects an acid into the exhaust to clean it up.
Also, I agree that electric is a viable solution in the future. However, we need efficient batteries first that can store a great deal amount of charge while also keeping the weight down. Plus, safety is a nice thing to keep in mind since Li-ion batteries used in most electric vehicles are very dangerous and batteries in generally give Hazmat teams at accidents a nightmare job.
Lastly, what way do you propose to measure efficiencies? The most logical to me would be to use units of energy or energy per unit of time, which are kW-h and kW or hp, respectively. It seems that the standard of kW-h and kW used in the power production industry should be good enough for this comparison as well.
In my opinion, there are numerous impediments to the general public creating a demand for a purely electric car. Namely:
-Range/refueling time, Range is not realy a big issue if you can quickly refuel.
-Cost, these cars are typically expensive when compared to IC powered cars and future repair costs (battery replacement) are bound to be high.
-Style, kudos to Ford for not making this some weird little car with “futuristic” syling. Previous models have been funny looking of not down right ugly.
-Safety, besides the aforementioned HazMat and hazardous energy issues of batteries leaking or arcing in an accident, consider a car that quickly dies on the road and cannot be fixed by a hike to the local gas station.
In the end, these types of cars are typically identified as for “city people”. At the risk of stereotyping and oversimplifying, I believe most people that live in the city fall into 3 buckets: 1)those that don’t own a car and rely on public transportation (apartment dwellers), 2)those that own very nice cars and would only consider an electric car as a toy or “green” status symbol (expensive condo dwellers), 3)those that live on the edge of the city and need a car that can head for hours away from the city (house dwellers).
If nothing else, how can Ford look at what has already been tried in the market and believe a purely electric car can be an economic success? Count the number of Prius you see today and consider what you would build if it were your company.
Get over the coal deal. Its here to stay for a long time. We have alot of it and its cheap. We need to build at least 50 nuke plants RIGHT NOW. Think they arnt safe? Ask the US Navy about safe clean nuke power.
Good to see Ford not afraid to go all out and try anything and everything. Get that little turbo diesel option from europe over here too.
If you have a problem understanding electric cars, or are running out of “made-up facts”, than don’t buy one. Electric cars are coming, like it or not. Lithium batteries are NOT toxic. Do a little research. (Goggle Lithium Batteries). Lithium Batteries have advanced to where they can last the life of the car, (250,000 miles). Can go over 200 miles, (Tesla). Can recharge in 10 minutes, (Phoenix Motor Cars). And even at 100 mile range, it suits the needs of 90% of the people. Want to stay addicted to foreign oil? Buy a Hummer.
why dont they just convert existing cars to hybrids ?