Ford is reportedly planning to launch two electric SUVs by 2023

[Polycount]

In context: Electric vehicles are becoming increasingly mainstream as of late. While vehicles like Tesla's Model X and S are out of reach for the average consumer, EVs (and hybrids) are far more accessible as a whole thanks to cheaper offerings from Ford, Chevy, and other carmakers. However, price alone is not the only factor in a consumer's decision to buy a car. Picking a vehicle that appeals to your specific needs is important, too.

This is something Ford understands, according to a new report from Automotive News. The outlet's sources say that the automotive giant is planning to launch two "mid-size" all-electric crossovers by the 2023 model year.

These vehicles will likely be geared towards families, or simply those who want a larger vehicle than what several other EV makers currently offer (with a few exceptions). Unfortunately, given that these vehicles have not entered full production yet, we don't know a whole lot about them.

However, we do know that they'll include a Lincoln model, and Engadget says their sizes will be "comparable" to the Ford Edge and Lincoln Nautilus.

It's interesting to see traditional ICE carmakers take the EV market a bit more seriously lately -- whether that's due to an innate desire to reduce their carbon footprint or pure business sense is for you to decide. Regardless, diversity in the car market can only be a good thing, and offering those who want to "go green" more options for transit is probably a smart move.

At any rate, the vehicles mentioned above have allegedly had their production shifted from a Mexico facility to Flat Rock -- why Ford made that decision is unclear, but the company isn't too keen to elaborate. When asked to comment, Ford told Automotive News that they do not comment on future vehicle plans as a matter of policy.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/81534-ford-reportedly-planning-launch-two-electric-suvs-2023.html

 

[Plutoisaplanet]

So is one of those going to be released next year like they claimed two and a half years ago? https://www.theverge.com/2017/1/3/14153868/ford-electric-suv-2020-crossover-sport-utility-ev

 

[psycros]

Ford: "The environment is important, we want to go heavily electric."
Also Ford: "We only make trucks now."

 

[p51d007]

Overpriced vehicles that won't have the range, will take WAY too long to recharge. Say you get 300 mile range, but, that range is limited in the winter, or with a full load of passengers/cargo, plus run the lights, AC, heater etc and the range is even more limited. Who the heck wants to use one of these, if you are on say a cross country trip with the family, if you have to stop every hundred or so miles, and wait several hours to recharge?

 

[Footlong]

"It's interesting to see traditional ICE carmakers take the EV market a bit more seriously lately -- whether that's due to an innate desire to reduce their carbon footprint or pure business sense is for you to decide."

They are making a pure business sense move. If they wanted to reduce their carbon footprint they would gear their production to compact cars. The carbon footprint of cars is not just their usage but also their production cost. SUVs simply demand more resources than a Nissan Leaf or a Chevrolet Bolt EV

 

[Theinsanegamer]

"Electric vehicles are becoming increasingly mainstream as of late"

Apparently exotic vehicles are "mainstream". Electric cars still make up a tiny minority of vehicle sales, and only to those with deep pockets. Even base models START at $35K, with some trim options most are pushing $45-50K, outside of the 50 mile range yuppie cars that you only see in a few select cities. This is like claiming Porsche or Mercedes are "mainstream" cars.

And I'm sorry, but Ford has been talking full electric for years now. Why believe them this time?

 

[Fearghast]

After what type of electric and hybrid vehicles Ford made "in the past", I am not really sure we will see anything but a chuckle-worthy attempt.
Their Focus (EV) and Mondeo (hybrid) ... let's say they are not that great or meaningful.

 

[DaveBG]

Ford: "The environment is important, we want to go heavily electric."
Also Ford: "We only make trucks now."

I suspect they are not making EV trucks to preserve the environment or their customer base lungs... they only do it because Tesla is going to steal the cash flow going to them soon if they do not do it.

 

[Uncle Al]

Hmmmmm ..... I think they have already shot themselves in the foot by eliminating most of the car line and I'm curious to know what marketing studies suggested these larger SUV's would be more attractive as an all-electric, ESPECIALLY with the limited range and excessive recharge times. Hybrids might have been far more practical and sellable especially when you consider the $100K truck is on the horizon ......

 

[Lounds]

Overpriced vehicles that won't have the range, will take WAY too long to recharge. Say you get 300 mile range, but, that range is limited in the winter, or with a full load of passengers/cargo, plus run the lights, AC, heater etc and the range is even more limited. Who the heck wants to use one of these, if you are on say a cross country trip with the family, if you have to stop every hundred or so miles, and wait several hours to recharge?

What a load of bollocks.

A lot of the new EV's can charge at 100+KW an hour the high battery packs can charge at 150KW, so if you're driving for 4 hours and do 200+ miles and stop to have a toilet break and eat some food, in that time your car would be 80% charged and have another 200+ miles to go again.

Most people's journey's are no more than a 40 mile round commute to work. So for the average person and EV absolutely fills a spot. What the car industry needs is a massive tax break to get people to switch to EV's and actually start cleaning our airways again.

In the last 5 years the Nissan Leaf has gone from a real world range of 80 miles to 200, so give it another 5 and we'll see affordable cars with 300+ mile range. Higher end cars will have 500+ and faster performance motors.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

Overpriced vehicles that won't have the range, will take WAY too long to recharge. Say you get 300 mile range, but, that range is limited in the winter, or with a full load of passengers/cargo, plus run the lights, AC, heater etc and the range is even more limited. Who the heck wants to use one of these, if you are on say a cross country trip with the family, if you have to stop every hundred or so miles, and wait several hours to recharge?

What a load of bollocks.

A lot of the new EV's can charge at 100+KW an hour the high battery packs can charge at 150KW, so if you're driving for 4 hours and do 200+ miles and stop to have a toilet break and eat some food, in that time your car would be 80% charged and have another 200+ miles to go again.

Most people's journey's are no more than a 40 mile round commute to work. So for the average person and EV absolutely fills a spot. What the car industry needs is a massive tax break to get people to switch to EV's and actually start cleaning our airways again.

In the last 5 years the Nissan Leaf has gone from a real world range of 80 miles to 200, so give it another 5 and we'll see affordable cars with 300+ mile range. Higher end cars will have 500+ and faster performance motors.

You are missing a LOT of points here. An electric car has to fill ALL roles, not just one. When you are talking about $40K+ cars, many families cant afford 2 or 3.

LOL at tax breaks. Just what multi-million dollar car companies need, MORE help from the government. You know what would help push EV adoption? Infrastructure, you know, they thing you are going to need to build WAY more of to service that many EVs? That has to come from the government. Until they upgrade infrastructure, EVs will remain niche, because nobody wants a vehicle they cant refuel outside of their own city.

The leaf only gets 200+ in the + trim, which starts at $36K before delivery or taxes. And the leafs have a track record for batteries that rapidly diminish in range, to the tune of 10-20% per year. You know what doesnt do that? Gas cars.

It's always 5 years out. We were at the end of that first "in 5 years EVs will be affordable" last year, and guess what? The only affordable models are poorly built with poor reliability. You sacrifice a lot to get to that price with EVs. When you get EVs with 500+ mile ranges for $20k, MAYBE then EVs will become mainstream. Until then, most people are going to stick with tried and true ICE vehicles, especially in the 90% of the country that isnt a major metropolis where charging ports are far and few between, and you need a vehicle to serve more then just "drive to work" duty.

 

[IAMTHESTIG]

Realistically EV's that the majority of people actually want and can afford to buy is probably 15-20 years ago. It is getting better, slowly... but there are a lot of challenges. Hopefully Ford can make some decent priced SUV's since that is what everyone is buying.

And EV's still aren't all that green, there is still a lot of CO2 emissions to obtain and manufacture the materials needed make the batteries and then more to make the vehicle. Including all the employees driving their ICE vehicles to the factory every day. Then the battery pack will have to be replaced eventually. And don't forget a good portion of the electricity produced to charge these batteries in the US is from coal burning plants. So who REALLY knows how long it takes to make up for the equivalent use of CO2 produced to make the vehicle versus just driving around an ICE vehicle. It could be just a few months, or maybe a year or so, maybe three years... five years, more? Likely we will never know the true answer because everyone pushing EV's doesn't want you to know. Hell, it could be worse for the environment in the long run than our efficient production and running of ICE vehicles.

 

[Lew Zealand]

Realistically EV's that the majority of people actually want and can afford to buy is probably 15-20 years ago. It is getting better, slowly... but there are a lot of challenges. Hopefully Ford can make some decent priced SUV's since that is what everyone is buying.

And EV's still aren't all that green, there is still a lot of CO2 emissions to obtain and manufacture the materials needed make the batteries and then more to make the vehicle. Including all the employees driving their ICE vehicles to the factory every day. Then the battery pack will have to be replaced eventually. And don't forget a good portion of the electricity produced to charge these batteries in the US is from coal burning plants. So who REALLY knows how long it takes to make up for the equivalent use of CO2 produced to make the vehicle versus just driving around an ICE vehicle. It could be just a few months, or maybe a year or so, maybe three years... five years, more? Likely we will never know the true answer because everyone pushing EV's doesn't want you to know. Hell, it could be worse for the environment in the long run than our efficient production and running of ICE vehicles.

tl;dr: Electric vehicles are much more efficient over their lifetime, including their manufacture, than ICE vehicles:

https://blog.ucsusa.org/dave-reichmuth/new-data-show-electric-vehicles-continue-to-get-cleaner
https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/defaul...ner-Cars-from-Cradle-to-Grave-full-report.pdf

 

[Lounds]

So who REALLY knows how long it takes to make up for the equivalent use of CO2 produced to make the vehicle versus just driving around an ICE vehicle. It could be just a few months, or maybe a year or so, maybe three years... five years, more? Likely we will never know the true answer because everyone pushing EV's doesn't want you to know. Hell, it could be worse for the environment in the long run than our efficient production and running of ICE vehicles.

Please do some research...

 

[Lounds]

You are missing a LOT of points here. An electric car has to fill ALL roles, not just one. When you are talking about $40K+ cars, many families cant afford 2 or 3.

LOL at tax breaks. Just what multi-million dollar car companies need, MORE help from the government. You know what would help push EV adoption? Infrastructure, you know, they thing you are going to need to build WAY more of to service that many EVs? That has to come from the government. Until they upgrade infrastructure, EVs will remain niche, because nobody wants a vehicle they cant refuel outside of their own city.

The leaf only gets 200+ in the + trim, which starts at $36K before delivery or taxes. And the leafs have a track record for batteries that rapidly diminish in range, to the tune of 10-20% per year. You know what doesnt do that? Gas cars.

It's always 5 years out. We were at the end of that first "in 5 years EVs will be affordable" last year, and guess what? The only affordable models are poorly built with poor reliability. You sacrifice a lot to get to that price with EVs. When you get EVs with 500+ mile ranges for $20k, MAYBE then EVs will become mainstream. Until then, most people are going to stick with tried and true ICE vehicles, especially in the 90% of the country that isnt a major metropolis where charging ports are far and few between, and you need a vehicle to serve more then just "drive to work" duty.

Ok so Diesel cars within Europe got massive tax breaks during the early 2000s and became 50-60% of the car market for nearly 15 years, now if they did that the majority of those diesel drivers would switch to EV.

The Argument about infrastructure. Are you joking? It's electric, there's electricity everywhere! Charging over night at 7KWh will fully charge most cars at home alone! The fast chargers will be for motorway service stations and petrol stations.

In terms of Grid capacity most countries are increasing their capacity with renewables, Nuclear and storage. That's also not including the early stages of Vehicle to Grid, so the Grid can be offset by all the batteries.

Maybe the US is a different but in the UK it'll definitely be a reality in 10 years to be fully mainstream with the right government policies and tax incentives.

ICE cars will be a luxury/hobby and only those that want to pay a premium for fuel will pay for it.

Meanwhile the airways will be cleaner and the roads will have less noise.

 

[IAMTHESTIG]

Please do some research...

Do you believe everything you see on the internet? I actually like this guy who does the EE videos, but he didn't cover everything and you can't prove every detail in the end. All I'm getting at is there are some things we haven't considered and that EV's may not be as good as we think they are.

 

[Lounds]

Do you believe everything you see on the internet? I actually like this guy who does the EE videos, but he didn't cover everything and you can't prove every detail in the end. All I'm getting at is there are some things we haven't considered and that EV's may not be as good as we think they are.

Agreed it's still early technology and I wouldn't buy new anyways so I'm at least 10+ years from ever buying an EV.

 

[Markoni35]

Wait until I patent my nuclear-fusion battery. THEN electric cars will become mainstream.

And so will Terminators...