News: 2012 Ford Focus Electric

Paul_The_Aussie

Paul_The_Aussie

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Ford has released a teaser image of the 2012 Ford Focus Electric ahead of its global unveiling in Las Vegas on Friday.
Determined not to get lost in the crowd at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit later in the month, Ford has chosen to reveal the zero-emissions small car at the Consumer Electronics Show, which runs from January 6-9.
The image shows an electric charging port above the front left wheel arch illuminated by a blue ring of light. Also revealed for the first time is the ?electric? badge the vehicle will wear, which joins together a green leaf and a dark stretch of road.
The Focus Electric will use lithium-polymer batteries sourced from LG Chem ? the same company that supplies batteries to General Motors for the Chevrolet Volt. It is understood the Focus Electric will have a range of around 160km.
The vehicle will be built alongside the standard Focus and will initially go on sale in 19 selected markets in the US towards the end of 2011.
More details of the Blue Oval?s new green machine will be revealed at its unveiling on Friday.
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http://www.caradvice.com.au/96698/2012-ford-focus-electric-image-teased/
 
MadCat360 said:
Holy fuckin fuck, dude, jeez. That's like, not really much.
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I think thats about the same as the Nissan Leaf. This, it seems, is Ford jumping on the electric car bandwagon. Yay, more of the same!

I predict many people in the Bay Area will own these. And I can see a few of these on the side of the freeway because their owner didn't charge it up. I'm surprised I haven't seen a Nissan Leaf yet.. running or otherwise.
 
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^ Electric cars are always going to be the same as long as the tech doesn't advance. There simply just isn't a feasible way to make them better at the moment, yet there is still a market for them.
 
Sure but if your commute is 80 miles a day then fine, it's not like anyone's buying it to make road-trips in. I'd be more likely to buy a Focus electric than an anything else electric as everyone else is intent on making a unique new model instead of just doing an electric version of a tried and tested, proven and well liked car.
 
SpitfireMK461 said:
^ Electric cars are always going to be the same as long as the tech doesn't advance. There simply just isn't a feasible way to make them better at the moment, yet there is still a market for them.
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That is one tiny ass market...
Sure but if your commute is 80 miles a day then fine
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Not even, here is an example for you from last night. Last night at about 18:38 I decided that I need another HDD, as I was supposed to receive a new 4 port JBOD USB enclosure and my current 1TB drive had 20gigs left. At 18:40 I bought a drive from Microcenter (store), which is about 30 miles away from me, using the in-store pick up option. The store closes at 20:00 and its anywhere between 40-60 mins to get there depending on traffic. Also since we had some weird weather, with a blizzard a few days ago and warm days + cold nights road conditions could have been less than ideal. I had about an 1/8th of a tank, which in my car with my driving style is really not a whole lot but rather than waste time fueling I figured I will drive a bit more conservatively and just fill up somewhere in the area of the store. I was successful in my mission and did acquire the drive but still needed fuel, so I found a gas station and filled up, which took maybe 3 minutes (the actual fueling).

Even assuming that there is infrastructure for an electric car, which there isn't, the fastest charging stations take around 30-40 minutes, it's just not feasible for me to wait for as long as it takes me to get home for the car to get a charge.

Another thing to keep in mind is storage, if I leave my laptop 100% off for about a week it will lose something like 10% of battery (been a while since I've done that). Same thing will happen to a car, so any time you go away for a vacation you can presumably come back to either a partially or even fully discharged vehicle. Wouldn't happen with a gasoline fueled car.

Honestly I think that electric car has the same issue as the Smart in the US. The target market for them is the market that is not very likely to buy them. What I mean is that people who live in larger cities like NYC, LA, SF, Chicago and so on would be the ones who would benefit most from such cars but those are also the same people who don't need a car at all since all those cities have pretty good public transport systems. So any cars are generally bought for status/enjoyment/convenience not necessity. For instance a 3 series and A4 are almost as common in NYC as Camry is. Go outside of NYC and people mostly drive econoboxes because they need the car for transportation. By the same token when it comes to electric cars the main customers would be those who own their own houses since they can just charge the cars overnight and most people who live in the inner cities live in buildings in many cases with no parking lots.
 
To be fair though, I think most manufacturers would admit, if pressed, that the electric models are less about actual market potential than they are about image.

The majority of buyers will not buy an electric, it wouldn't be feasible. However, some buyers, while unwilling or unable to own an electric, will see one at their dealer and say "Oh, Ford/Nissan/GM is a lovely eco-friendly company!" when buying their regular car. Companies or people desperate to present a green image will buy one, and people will see the Ford/Nissan/GM badges and get a lovely feeling that this company cares. Even if every single electric is sold to a fleet, it will do its job, which is to give the company that builds them a warm and fuzzy look to environmentalists. That's why the Leaf looks so weird, and this has the glowing plugin. They need to get attention more than they need to actually sell.
 
It's not max torque at 0 rpm like an electric, but if you want torque, you can pick up all sorts of V8 cars/trucks for cheap and not have the limitations of an electric car.
 
sonza68 said:
It's not max torque at 0 rpm like an electric, but if you want torque, you can pick up all sorts of V8 cars/trucks for cheap and not have the limitations of an electric car.
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It's not so much the max torque at 0 RPM its more along the lines of the way the torque curve is. ICEs are generally peaky in their torque/HP.
 
prizrak said:
I had about an 1/8th of a tank, which in my car with my driving style is really not a whole lot but rather than waste time fueling I figured I will drive a bit more conservatively and just fill up somewhere in the area of the store. I was successful in my mission and did acquire the drive but still needed fuel, so I found a gas station and filled up, which took maybe 3 minutes (the actual fueling).

Even assuming that there is infrastructure for an electric car, which there isn't, the fastest charging stations take around 30-40 minutes, it's just not feasible for me to wait for as long as it takes me to get home for the car to get a charge.

Another thing to keep in mind is storage, if I leave my laptop 100% off for about a week it will lose something like 10% of battery (been a while since I've done that). Same thing will happen to a car, so any time you go away for a vacation you can presumably come back to either a partially or even fully discharged vehicle. Wouldn't happen with a gasoline fueled car.
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I think the idea is that you'd just plug the car in whenever you got home, so that it always has a 100% charge whenever you need to go out somewhere. There are plenty of people who don't need to drive more than 50 miles a day, for whom an electric car with a 100 mile (70-80 realistically) long range would be fine. Heck, I don't drive more than 160 km in a week, let alone a day!
 
I wish people would stop this electric car nonsense. Unless the electricity generated is clean - it will not be - and the environmental damage caused by the manufacture of the batteries is sorted, the whole sodding exercise is pointless - buy a diesel with stop start technology plus particulate filter.
 
Cobol74 said:
I wish people would stop this electric car nonsense. Unless the electricity generated is clean - it will not be - and the environmental damage caused by the manufacture of the batteries is sorted, the whole sodding exercise is pointless - buy a diesel with stop start technology plus particulate filter.
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I could not agree more.
 
chaos386 said:
I think the idea is that you'd just plug the car in whenever you got home, so that it always has a 100% charge whenever you need to go out somewhere. There are plenty of people who don't need to drive more than 50 miles a day, for whom an electric car with a 100 mile (70-80 realistically) long range would be fine. Heck, I don't drive more than 160 km in a week, let alone a day!
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See that's the thing. People who live where you (well where you vacation) and I live would be the best target market for these cars. However people who live in those areas also generally have access to ubiquitous mass transit system and have to park on the street with no chargers around. This is why I don't really see much of a market for these, inner city home owners are a fairly small population and one that is shrinking fairly quickly. In my area I could only really see EV's being somewhat feasible for those who work in the city but live in the area served by either the LIRR or the Metro North railroad (CT, Westcher County) possibly some of NJ as they generally drive to the train stations and leave cars there.
I'm rollin' on a plateau of torque
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I'm assuming you got one of the turbo motors in your car then. Unless you have an upgraded turbo and a good tune I'm reasonably sure you are making most of your torque in the low-midrange but very little up top. This is just from my experience with my own car, but for the most part stock turbos are too small to give you any top end.
 
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