Looking at the big scheme of things across the EV side of the automotive industry, it seems that unless you are from China or named Tesla, there's a visible market slowdown due to the lower adoption rate.
Ford, for example, was quite adamant that it would do great things across the battery-powered realm and launched the Mustang Mach-E plus the F-150 Lightning with great fanfare. A few production hiccups later and mostly due to a cringe policy to raise prices through the roof when demand was still hot for everyone, it seems the EV ship has sailed with Tesla on board.
Thus, the Blue Oval is reducing manufacturing output or cutting prices – the market has become highly competitive, and OEMs have trouble moving their inventory away from dealer lots. There's also a distinct possibility that Ford needs to come back to its roots of offering affordable mass-market vehicles – including in the novel EV sector.
So, the big F-150 Lightning and Mustang Mach-E crossover are not enough, which is why the company recently revealed that a special team acted outside of corporate rules to develop an entirely new EV platform. The endgame is simple - a new modular EV architecture would be the foundation for various models and focus on lowering costs to fight off affordable EVs like Tesla's Model 3 and the upcoming Chinese EV menace.
Naturally, that bodes exceptionally well for the restless rumor mill and its trusty sidekick, the imaginative realm of digital car content creators. As such, some pixel masters immediately came up with solutions for the EV predicament and envisioned a smaller sibling for the Mach-E crossover along with an affordable EV off-roader that would act as the counterpart for the current Bronco Sport. But is that enough to conquer the market? Maybe there's also room for an actual passenger car based on the new EV platform.
This virtual artist, known as Theottle on social media, has recently resorted to CGI slicing and dicing the Mustang Mach-E's styling, too. But he doesn't want another crossover SUV. Instead, he dreams of the potential return of the Escort nameplate, a model offered between 1968 and 2002 in Europe, between 1980 and 2003 in North America, and 2015 to 2023 in China, based on the Focus.
This one is also intended as a replacement for the current fourth-generation Focus, with the successor playing the name for the EV situation as 'Ford E-Scort.' Aside from the name change, it's still a compact hatchback, and it could easily go head-to-head with the upcoming 'Tesla Model 2' affordable EV if priced correctly – complete with a design inspired by the Mustang Mach-E to make it consistent across the board. Do you think it could work?
Aurel has aimed high all his life (literally, at 16 he was flying gliders all by himself) so in 2006 he switched careers and got hired as a writer at his favorite magazine. Since then, his work has been published both by print and online outlets, most recently right here, on autoevolution. Full profile
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