mustang_sallad

Interesting debate about the powertrain, but as long as the batteries that power this thing are better integrated into the vehicle than in the Fusion and C-Max Energi, I'll be happy!

I remember hoping that Tesla would come to their senses about these door handles in the tradition from show car to production. There have been times where I thought maybe they were right, maybe they pulled them off, and the wow factor was worth all of the effort, but here we are years later and it continues to bite them in the ass. I can't help but feel like the falcon doors on the Model X are going to be a similar issue, but even worse. Doors like that might help with the general hype machine approach to marketing, and maybe this company needs all that hype to survive, but I think we've already heard Elon Musk say that he would have made the car less complicated if he could do it over again. They can't afford to pull any more nonsense like this on the Model 3.

The Crown Vic would likely have been better on the highway due to small frontal area for aerodynamics.

The people I'm thinking of are the large portion of the 5 million or so people who buy Honda's, Toyota's and Nissans every year, and who don't even put american automakers on their shortlist. You haven't met these people?? Toyota earned their reputation for fuel efficiency over a decade and a half of prius sales. I'm trying to suggest something that would cause a bit of a splash and catch people's attention!

Capping EV incentives based on income or vehicle price is trivial and already happening - that's not a reason to shutdown the idea of electrified halo cars. I guess what you're saying is that an electrified Ford GT would have cost more than the existing Ford GT program. What I'm arguing is that, if they're going to go through the effort of developing a halo car, the extra cost of an electrified powertrain would be worth the rewards in terms of technology and reputation. What is Ford going to learn from that twin-turbo V6 that will benefit their mainstream products? I'm not saying they won't learn anything, but it's probably small compared to what they would learn from an advanced PHEV powertrain. And what about that halo effect - the existing Ford GT will catch the attention of kids reading Motor Trend, and an enthusiast crowd that is likely already open to the idea of owning a Ford. An electrified Ford GT would catch the attention of people who aren't auto enthusiasts and who wouldn't ever consider buying a Ford because they still hold onto this outdated image of Ford only building gas guzzlers.

Yeah, that'd be pretty cool, especially given that LMP1 has been pretty much all hybrids for a few years now.

Yeah, i'm still not clear on this either - I thought it was a different tune originally, but more recently read something about the OBD output. Either way, there must be a big reason for VW to have cheated like this, and if it's not fuel economy, then it's probably going to be reliability. It definitely explains a few things, biggest of all - why the internet clamours for diesels and nobody seems to bring them over other than VW.

I've heard two messages from Ford engineers: - PHEVs are the way forward - Pure EVs might work, as long as we can get charging working at rates even higher than what Tesla is doing I'd be happy with either approach. But it's interesting to see that Porsche is thinking along the same lines as Ford for pure EVs - Tesla can't charge much faster than what they've currently got, which basically works out to "Drive 3 hours, charge 30 minutes". For a given battery voltage (all production EVs are around 300-400V) the only way to charge faster is with more current, and that means bigger charge cables (or liquid cooling the cables, if you're Tesla and you're thinking outside the box). While it's just a concept, the Mission E shows that Porsche is at least considering making a jump up to 800V, which would double charging rates for the same cable sizes - so "Drive 3 hours, charge 15 minutes". Combine that with the fact that 90% of the time, your EV will just charge at home while you're sleeping, that starts to look like something that can achieve mainstream adoption.

http://www.caranddriver.com/news/porsche-mission-e-concept-60-full-info-news Porsche makes an exclusive car that pushes the boundaries of electric propulsion. Ford makes exclusive car that crams a bunch of power out of a V6 with forced induction. (That said - powertrain isn't everything, the light weighting in the GT is important, although less exciting for the headlines) Halo cars don't really need a business case, other than building a reputation for your brand and maybe some R&D for technologies that will trickle down to your mainstream products. I think Ford missed a huge opportunity on that front by not making the Ford GT a half-price 918 PHEV supercar. Put a 400hp V6 on the rear, 200hp electric motor on the front, nab all sorts of headlines in the mainstream news, and then plop that 200hp electric motor into electric and PHEV sedans, hatchbacks, CUVs and pickups till the cows come home. Even with gas prices as low as we've seen in a decade, and with major models due for significant updates this year (Volt, Leaf, Prius PHEV), PEV sales are holding steady this year at just under 1% of the market, while sales are increasing double digits in Europe. Electrified powertrains are obviously the future, and so far, we have little indication that Ford has anything the least bit exciting in their pocket. Note that I am often the first to point out to EV enthusiasts that Ford is often the top seller of PEVs for any given month with their current offerings. But everybody else has exciting things coming down the pipeline that stand to push the envelope, all with dedicated platforms and properly integrated batteries (that don't render the trunk all but useless!)

Holy smokes this forum is ridiculous. the guy made a perfectly valid contribution to what was otherwise a very boring and unsurprising slice of internet - Ford fans ripping on an ugly Toyota. I didn't think it was that bad when I saw the spy shots, but yeah, they went way overboard. But look at the Prius vs Civic Hybrid - maybe the Prius was just a better car, but most would agree that a lot of Prius buyers like to stand out. I see a little bit of 2nd gen NA Ford Focus in this thing - also a great example of BlackHorse's point about ugly Fords.

really interesting to look back at these threads.

These forums will get a lot more interesting to me once Ford FINALLY makes some kind of announcement around future PHEVs and EVs... (i have a one-track mind) I drive a '12 focus with a stick, but I'll be damned if my next car doesn't have at least 80hp of electric only power.

First, just to be clear - 30 amps at 220V is 6.6 kW, not kW/hour. Saying kW per hour is like saying horsepower per hour, doesn't really make sense. 6kW of power would mean delivering 6kWh of energy per hour. I'm on a personal mission to make sure people stop getting confused about kWh (although I remember when I first learned about the unit and thought it was ridiculous to use it instead of joules!) There are no major issues for charging at home. First off, 6.6kW is plenty fast enough for home, and even 3.3kW would probably be enough. 6.6kW gives you 80 miles of range in 4 hours, or 160 miles in 8 hours (once we start seeing the next gen of pure EVs with that kind of range). If you're driving more than 160 miles between sleeps on a regular basis, and you're not happy to stop by a public DCFC station, a pure EV probably isn't a good call. On-board chargers might step up to 10kW or even 20kW as batteries get bigger, and yes that does get difficult to support on a household electrical panel, as many Tesla owners are starting to learn (Tesla gets 10kW standard, 20kW optional). 6kW may be an issue for older homes, but there are also some emerging options to allow your vehicle to charge in sync with available capacity, either in your home or on the grid in general - it's called "smart charging". Some people are doing energy storage to do exactly what you're saying with fast charge stations. I think that would be overkill for charging at home, but that is essentially what Tesla is offering with their PowerWall. The PowerWall's intended application is more for backup power or supporting solar, but it would be totally doable for Tesla to switch from high energy cells to high power cells and support that kind of slow refill/fast charge dump approach, but I just don't think there will be a market for it. Your car likely spends something like 10-12 hours parked at home every night, plenty of time to refill typical daily driving distances, and public DC fast chargers will be there to support the exceptional days. And battery swapping is dead. Maybe for things like Formula E, or fleet vehicles that are all the same model. But getting automakers to standardize around the charge connector was hard enough, imagine something as big as a battery, you can't standardize that. And breaking it into individual cassettes would be a nightmare - who would want to deal with exchanging 400lbs of batteries, 20lbs at a time?? Tesla tried, they said screw everybody else, we'll just setup swapping for our own car, no need for standardization, and they started offering it on a limited basis, but found that there wasn't much demand. Fast charging is already pretty damn fast, and getting faster. People get all up in arms about how a 20 minute charge is a lot longer than a 5 minute refuelling, but who in this day and age can't kill 20 minutes in the blink of an eye with a smart phone or at a grocery store running errands? It's not like you have to stand and hold the charge connector the whole time!

You couldn't hit $1000 even if you had cars charging one after another, 24-7! But yeah, i get your point. Many dealers do have a policy around who can charge, and some of them only allow people who bought a car there. But if I were in their shoes, i'd take a hit on the $0.50 of electricity (not many people would need a full charge or would want to stick around for 4 hours) if it meant I had somebody in my store with a reason to stick around and listen to my sales people.

Giving away charging at 240V is no big deal - a full charge is maybe a buck or two for a Focus EV. It's when you start talking about $50k fast charging stations, ones that dish out 200kW and ding you with a $500/month demand charge - that's when you need to make sure people are paying a fair price for that premium service. Dealers should offer fast charge stations - it gives them a captive audience, and the drivers get free coffee and washroom access.

I saw a Ford engineer give a presentation that showed a Focus EV with a fast charge port - they're looking at higher power fast charging than what's currently out there (typically 50kW for Leaf, i3, eGolf, etc, ~120kW for Tesla). As Tinskey discussed in this interview, it looks like they think the whole "30 minutes to 80%" thing isn't gonna cut it! % State of charge isn't really the best metric here though - really it's best to look at minutes of charging required for a given distance. I think Tesla targeted 30 minutes of charging for 3 hours of driving when they launched supercharging, and that's being fairly generous, probably assuming a 50mph average speed which would be ideal for range. Either way, it looks like Ford is looking to do better than Tesla, which would mean they have their eye on EVs with bigger batteries and charging infrastructure that's more robust than what even Tesla has deployed. If you haven't seen Tesla's network, by the way, you should really see what they've accomplished in about 2 years. 444 charging stations across the globe, averaging between 6 and 7 stalls per station, each with up to 135kW (although some stalls share power). 195 stations in the US. Ford is looking at this and saying "not enough" so it'll be interesting to see if they start supporting DCFC infrastructure deployment once they have a product that can use it. http://supercharge.info

Profit is important, but both Ford's and Toyota's PHEV offerings leave a lot to be desired (almost terrible EV mode performance with the Prius, compromised practicality with the Fusion). Tesla has built a very good product, and I'm happy to see it's driving the rest of the industry to catch up. I look forward to seeing Ford's next generation of plug-in products.

Fair enough, that may very well happen. But people fixate on the fact that they're losing money without giving much credit to how well they're spending everything (and then some) that they're earning. They bought NUMMI for pete's sake, and have managed to ramp up production from a mom and pop shop to considerably larger volume and better quality than Jaguar, all while building out the world's most comprehensive and future-proofed charging infrastructure and the world's largest battery factory. And as much as it seems to frustrate you, they established amazing brand recognition that will pay huge dividends if they manage to put out a half-price car. You brought up old Elon Musk quotes - i remember him stating back in 2007 that he did not expect to be profitable until Model 3 came out. Slipping timelines aside, everything seems to be panning out as he had planned.

What is your advice as to how Tesla should be doing things differently? Or do you think they simply shouldn't do things at all?

No, but this is the only sign i've seen from Ford to suggest that they are indeed working on a next generation of plug-in products. They've been extremely tight lipped, but this discussion with Tinskey really suggests that they are fully aware of what everyone else is preparing in the next few years and that they don't have any intention of being left behind. Can't wait to actually see something concrete though!

Really interesting interview with Mike Tinskey from the Verge: http://www.theverge.com/2015/4/24/8489881/ford-mike-tinskey-electric-vehicles-infrastructure-interview As a Ford fan who want his next car to have a plug, this interview is encouraging. He doesn't actually give away any plans, but the way he talks about other automakers' plans for 150+ mile range EVs, and 150kW DC fast charging - well I don't think he'd talk about these things unless Ford had some plans up their sleeves. Can't wait to see something concrete one of these days!

with 18kwh and something over 30 miles EPA range, this thing will leapfrog the many PHEVs coming from audi, bmw, mercedes, porsche that all seem to be targeting around 20 miles max.

A PHEV powertrain with an 18kWh battery is pretty bulky, so a big car makes sense from that perspective, although I agree that in terms of demographics, there's probably more of a market for an advanced powertrain in an ATS-sized car than in this class. It may not end up selling in huge numbers, but I'm pretty happy it will exist nonetheless.

They would have one mid-size hybrid sedan competing with two other equivalent models that compete for about 4000 sales total per month and that hardly anybody really hears about. Instead, they have a vehicle that's sold on the order of 1500/month and that's established itself as one of the two top-selling plug-in vehicles in north america, a market that is growing at about 25% year over year.

Agreed. On paper at least, Via's got a very compelling product, aside from the price. Ford could do a better job if they did it in house and leveraged their existing plug-in products.