Gadgetory

well here it is the Ford Focus Electric the latest salvo being fired in what is an auto industry war to make electrified cars let's take it apart on its surface where we dig into the specs it's a standard focus in terms of the sheet metal the proportions all of that Ford says that's one of their trump cards is that it's not a weird car like a leaf it's a nameplate and style that folks are used to and is rather popular in showrooms you will find one difference though they've grafted on the certain Aston Martin s cooking grill that we're also seeing coming up in the new fusion later this year it's a good-looking front end and there's also some special wheels on here inside you're going to find a lot of the materials are made of recycled stuff Ford's been doing this for a while soybean cushions and recycled bottles for the fabric it's all part of the green message but not critical to making this car sell what is is the powertrain now if there's a secret sauce to the Ford Focus Electric this is the sauce dispenser the charger this charging coupler can go to a level two charger that has a six point six kilowatt capacity a lot of numbers here's what that means that's a very powerful charger if you will and it matches a component in the Ford Focus Electric that allows it to RAM more volts into that battery faster a short charge of three to four hours is what they're promising from zero to full capacity of around seventy-five miles range over night charges are easy there's plenty of time to charge a car while you sleep it's those opportunistic ones you go to the mall you go see a movie for a couple hours and change if you can plug in then to an advanced charger that uses the advanced charger in the car as well coupled with it six point six kilowatt level stuff you're going to get a meaningful charge in two or three hours a complete top-up let's say that's where this becomes more livable not the overnight story this specific charger was developed by Leviton you may know them for some of the light switches in your house it'll be sold and installed by Best Buy Geek Squad guys $14.99 includes installation so just under 1,500 bucks you can get those same quick charge benefits from any public charging station that has a level 2 outlet free this charge was made to get those benefits from your it basically connects to the dryer circuit the myford mobile app is also part of the economy using a database powered by Microsoft it micro manages your home charging based on local rate schedules and the tariff plan you're enrolled under and that can bring your cost of power they say down as low as a dollar 20 for a full 70 for my large versus two dollars and seventy six a full charge if you were to kind of indiscriminately plug in and get the national average rate Ford's also partnering with a company called Sun power to offer a 10 thousand dollar photovoltaic panel kit you put this at your house and they say can provide up to 12,000 miles of driving charge each year the system costs 10,000 bucks installed that same number of miles a year would only cost you between 195 and 450 bucks a year charging off the grid so you'd only do this if you're really green or plan to drive your focus more than 23 years this car will do battle directly with the Nissan Leaf and indirectly due to different technology and resulting behavior with the Chevy Volt but the key is that there will soon be three major car makers with mainstream v's in showrooms okay pricing on this guy it's gonna make some folks swallow hard it's a $40,000 Focus but that's before you apply a current $7,500 federal tax incentives check with your tax guy about how all that works and then go look for state incentives as well most of the states where they're gonna release that thing and it's not all 50 at once also have incentives it'll bring the price down even further so you can see this car being perhaps 30 or so and as they mentioned the Focus Electric is not offered in a stripped edition it's well equipped throughout availability of spring of 2012