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Ford Focus Electric Revival Potentially Considered

An electric vehicle that entered production one year after the Leaf and one year before the Model S, the Focus Electric was a commercial flop. The compact hatchback offered very little range initially, and the same can be said about the 2017 model that featured a larger battery pack.
Ford Focus Electric 11 photos
Photo: Ford
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The best year for the Focus Electric was 2014, when 1,964 examples were sold by the Ford Motor Company, and the reason the Focus Electric didn’t sell particularly well comes in the guise of pricing. Although the Blue Oval had to cut $4,000 off the starting price that year to keep the nameplate relevant, $35,200 used to be a lot of money for a compact car back then.

Discontinued in 2018 with a whimper instead of a bang, the Focus Electric is expected to return to the lineup in a few years’ time. Speaking to Ford of Europe design chief Murat Gueler, the peeps at Autocar have learned that FoMoCo is “looking at everything. We’re really busy designing all the next-generation cars. There’s a lot of work going on,” said Gueler.

There are two conclusions we can take from the design chief’s words. First things first, Gueler hasn’t confirmed the Focus Electric’s revival. But on the other hand, Ford cannot rely on the MQB platform from Volkswagen for its next-generation EVs. The Dearborn-based automaker has a signed contract for a few hundred thousand EVs with MQB underpinnings, but going forward, an in-house platform has to be developed to streamline production and cut expenses to improve the bottom line by the end of the decade.

If you look at the best-selling electric vehicles right now, Europe is where the subcompact to compact executive segments reign supreme while the United States is the stomping ground of the Tesla Model 3 and Model Y. The Focus Electric would be a right-sized car based on current EV trends, but on the other hand, that nameplate has lost traction in North America.

Originally planned to be shipped from China, the fourth-generation Focus isn’t available in the U.S. because of Trump’s trade war. In the meantime, Ford has discontinued every traditional-bodied car in the U.S. lineup with the notable exception of the Mustang. Given these circumstances, a Europe-only Focus Electric seems like a pretty bad investment for the Blue Oval.
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About the author: Mircea Panait
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After a 1:43 scale model of a Ferrari 250 GTO sparked Mircea's interest for cars when he was a kid, an early internship at Top Gear sealed his career path. He's most interested in muscle cars and American trucks, but he takes a passing interest in quirky kei cars as well.
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