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Another challenger will soon jump into the EV ring to go up against the 200+ mile Bolt EV and Tesla Model 3.
When asked about their future electric vehicle plans during Ford’s first-quarter earnings conference call, CEO Mark Fields said he wants Ford to be "among the leaders or in a leadership. Clearly, that's something we're developing for."
Nothing more specific was said but, we can assume Ford will be calling the long-range EV the Model E. They fought against and won the rights to use the title from Tesla two year ago, makes sense to use it for the Model 3 challenger.
We don’t know when they plan to release the Model E but, last year Ford announced their plan to add 13 hybrid or electric vehicles to their lineup by 2020 and they will invest $4.5 billion into this endeavor. By the end of 2020, Ford wants to offer an electric version for 40% of their nameplates. If we base the release date on this timeline then we could be seeing the Model E go into production in 2019.
Right now, Ford has a 76-mile range Focus Electric and it’s going to get a battery boost to extend that range to 100 miles but that’s still not enough to compete with the Bolt EV, Model 3 and Nissan’s planned 200 mile redesigned Leaf. Ford needs a new competitive electric vehicle and according to Automotive News, we may see three variations of the Model E similar to the Hyundai Ioniq. There’s the traditional hybrid, plug-in hybrid and pure electric model.
Of course, this is still a few years away so for now Ford fans will have to make do with a 100 mile range Focus Electric.