Alternate fuelled vehicles have a tough choice in today’s fossil-fuelled automotive landscape. Though things have been improving in recent years, it still isn’t a mainstream idea to choose a battery-powered car. There’s simply too many compromises to be made. Higher purchase price, greater maintenance costs, weight penalties, dodgy styling and lots more. Unless you’re careful with your purchase and get something like the Ford Focus Electric, you’re simply waging a losing battle.
When you get a Ford car, you immediately declare to the world that you’ve got a driver’s car. You love cars with excellent driving dynamics, lively engines and great fuel economy all wrapped up in one bombshell of a package. Well, we may have gotten carried away a bit here, but you get the drift. The Fusion, the Figo and the many generations of the Fiesta – they were all acclaimed for their driving dynamics and being robust cars.
The Ford Focus Electric car is the company’s first ever full-electric model. It made its debut some four years ago. The car has been on a targeted-sales strategy since day one and isn’t as widely sold as some of the other cars in the segment. The front grille on the variant is different from the rest of the regular fuelled line-up. It also gets 17-inch alloys that further enhance the stance of the car. The door handles get come factory painted to match the body colour and the charge port is of the illuminated type.
The Environment Protection Agency (EPA) in the United States has rated the Ford car fourth in terms of fuel-efficiency amongst all the compact cars sold in the market there. When compared to equivalent vehicles running on conventional fuels, the Ford Focus Electric is rated for a fuel efficiency of over 45 km/l.
The Ford electric car is built on the company’s acclaimed C-Car platform. A pure-electric powered vehicle, it gets its juice from a 100 kilowatt rated electric motor and a lithium-ion battery pack with a 23 kilowatt hour rating. Combined together, the car generates about 120 bhp and 245 Nm torque. The longevity and range per charge of the battery pack has been optimized by means of liquid cooling technology and thermal management protocols that help regulate the temperature within.
The company has sold about 6000 plus units till date and is using it as a test-bed for future products.
