Car Tech: Take a ride in the 2012 Ford Focus Electric
Car Tech: Take a ride in the 2012 Ford Focus Electric
2012-04-17
lords about to do battle with the Nissan
Leaf and Chevy Volt joining the ranks of
mainstream car makers that have an Eevee
but they're not gonna do it with a new
model they're putting batteries and an
electric motor in the existing focus
let's drive it and check the tech we've
got a separate video that looks at the
underlying technology in this electric
focus but in a nutshell it's got a 75
mile range about the same as a leaf like
all Eevee is that will vary by terrain
weather accessory use and your
lead-footed 'no sting is the advanced
charger Ford's installed that they say
can do a full charge on the battery in
three hours or so when plugged into a
240 volt or a level 2 charging station
either in public or the one Ford is
selling for about 1,500 bucks installed
for your home that's about half the
charging time for a Nissan Leaf or other
similar EVs and can make for really
useful top ups as well but none of that
matters if it doesn't drive well ok I
have not driven a Ford Focus Electric
prior to this very moment so you're
gonna get my unfiltered impressions and
we're here in a downtown San Francisco
location so I'm gonna start off giving
you some urban stop-and-go impressions
now Ford's thrown out the Nissan Leaf as
the benchmark for this car and as you
may recall I thought the Nissan Leaf
drove like a very nice car a very mid
class car nicer than you would think an
econo box should the focus so far has a
very similar bolted down feel to it
we've gone over some crappy pavement
here and it doesn't feel like any parts
are falling off and so far that nasty
gear line that I hate is not showing up
anywhere either on acceleration
deceleration or regen braking that's
good this car does feel heavier just
intuitively you can tell it's got a big
ol belly a heavy batteries so yes it's
gonna have a little more planted thing I
feel a little bit of a spring in the
ride but I can't tell if I don't do them
head to head there are a couple of
different gauges on this car you won't
find in any other Ford there's one where
you can add butterflies which is kind of
like growing leaves and another Ford -
we've seen it's a way of telling you you
are neither accelerating too hard nor
braking too hard gentle acceleration is
as
important as gentle breaking that's the
way to drive a car if you want to really
get the most mileage out of it any kind
of car inside the cabin s4 dimensions
they don't sell these things as stripped
vehicles they've all got the high
quality audio system the Sony branding
right here you see this car has got the
recycled water bottle interior that's
where this fabrics made from you can
also get a leather I would I would go
for this stuff it's got a nice feel to
it
the other gauge I mentioned is this sort
of a scoring thing that also really gets
into the dynamics of accelerating and
braking gently that's a new concept for
most drivers and this is one of the few
cars I've seen that has a display to
coach you into doing that now I just
turned on the HVAC system which wasn't
gone before all those little things can
take away from an electric vehicles
range you've got to bear that in mind
when you're running the heater in this
car it's not powered by hot coolant off
the engine because there isn't any
you've got to run that with some battery
power just about every subsystem does so
in some I want to wait for a final
production car to judge the driving
quality and also how the battery holds a
charge in my real-world use and then
I'll want to see how the public warms to
Annie V based on an existing model will
they view that as comforting or just
some sort of odd hack
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