Ford has used enforced half-year delay to upgrade new EV, which now goes 374 miles
FELIX PAGE
The new Ford Explorer EV has finally gone on sale in Europe, more than a year after its unveiling, priced from less than £40,000 and with a range of up to 374 miles.
The SUV is around half a year late due to the onset of a new UN battery certification, in light of which Ford chose to source a new power pack and re-engineer the car to accommodate it.
As a result, the firm’s factory in Cologne, Germany – where the Explorer will be built – has been dormant since the Fiesta ended production there in July.
Martin Sander, who leads Ford’s Model E electrification division in Europe, said the delay has allowed the company to further refine the Explorer and ultimately bring to market a more competitive car.
The Explorer “is a better vehicle now than we would have launched half a year ago”, he told Autocar. “We’ve used the additional time we had to get everything nailed down, to make sure that we’re delivering a perfect vehicle to our customers.”
The Explorer’s new battery, as well as being compliant with the new regulations, offers a significantly longer maximum range of 374 miles – well past the 311 miles that Ford was originally targeting from the longest-legged variant.
Sander said that figure is “outstanding in this segment” and a testament to how Ford has used the extra half a year of development time “very, very effectively to keep working on the vehicle and making the vehicle better”.
That headline range figure is achieved by the rear-driven Extended Range model, priced from £45,875 and fitted with a 77kWh battery – matching the capacity of the Volkswagen ID 4 and Skoda Enyaq with which it shares its Volkswagen Group MEB platform and single 282bhp ‘AP550’ motor.
The four-wheel-drive Extended Range model, which uses the 335bhp dual-motor powertrain from Volkswagen’s GTX-badged sporting EVs, uses a slightly larger, 79kWh battery (which has recently been made available on the Volkswagen ID 3 and Cupra Born) to crack 329 miles.
Maximum charging rates are 135kW and 185kW respectively, the latter giving a theoretical 10-80% top-up time of just 26 minutes.
Ford puts the rear-driven Explorer’s 0-62mph time at 6.4sec and the more potent, four-wheel-drive variant’s at just 5.3sec – quicker, it highlights, than the petrol-engined Ford Focus ST.
The range-topper can also tow loads o
