Photo: KDesign AG/Behance
Ford and Volkswagen recently united their destinies to better grasp the commercial vehicle market, but now their partnership is fused beyond that sector. As such, they came up with a thing called the all-electric Ford Explorer, which is actually a sibling of VW AG MEB-based Volkswagen ID. models!
Luckily, long gone are the days when automakers just switched badges and reshuffled the monikers but kept the donor vehicle about 99% the same. Oh, yeah, someone did not get that memo to Mitsubishi for its Renault Captur-based ASX! But other carmakers are more respectful of their customers – note Stellantis’ dealings with the Alfa Romeo Tonale and the Dodge Hornet or this fresh EV crossover SUV from Ford-Volkswagen.
Indeed, the all-new, first-ever all-electric Ford Explorer has nothing to do with the sixth generation of the American SUV and does not even relate to the Explorer PHEV that is currently on sale across select European markets. But it also does not give away its MEB lineage and, instead, just like Kia tries with the EV9 and Concept EV5, spearheads a new era of design for electric crossovers. And we have to say that the preliminary figures are great, especially the 10 to 80% SoC (state-of-charge) recharging in 25 minutes along with the promised quotation of under €45k (around $48k).
Naturally, that attracted a lot of attention, both in the real world as well as across the imaginative realm of digital car content creators. Speaking of the latter, Kleber Silva, the Brazil-based virtual artist known as KDesign AG on social media, has recently decided to have a CGI go at imagining the Explorer EV as a pickup truck! That is not so wacky, frankly, since others made it a proper off-road SUV or an undercover sporty CUV, already.
This unofficial design proposal for an “unlikely” pickup truck version keeps the unibody coordinates, though, as the pixel master based his CGI modifications on the beloved Ford Maverick unibody compact model and then just sprinkled Explorer EV styling on top of everything. Hey, since we are dealing with the hypothetical, we feel that this idea is spot-on about what could be done with the Explorer EV nameplate if Ford ever wanted to expand it into a family.
After all, sooner or later, the mid-size pickup trucks will follow suit after their full-size counterparts, at least in America. So, if ever real, this Explorer EV pickup truck could have two lines of action. Either Ford keeps the VW partnership and adapts the MEB platform to suit the needs of both companies – with this model acting as a zero-emissions alternative for the latest Ford Ranger as well as the Volkswagen Amarok. Or the Blue Oval company could just trickle down the F-150 Lightning EV architecture into the smaller sibling!
Indeed, the all-new, first-ever all-electric Ford Explorer has nothing to do with the sixth generation of the American SUV and does not even relate to the Explorer PHEV that is currently on sale across select European markets. But it also does not give away its MEB lineage and, instead, just like Kia tries with the EV9 and Concept EV5, spearheads a new era of design for electric crossovers. And we have to say that the preliminary figures are great, especially the 10 to 80% SoC (state-of-charge) recharging in 25 minutes along with the promised quotation of under €45k (around $48k).
Naturally, that attracted a lot of attention, both in the real world as well as across the imaginative realm of digital car content creators. Speaking of the latter, Kleber Silva, the Brazil-based virtual artist known as KDesign AG on social media, has recently decided to have a CGI go at imagining the Explorer EV as a pickup truck! That is not so wacky, frankly, since others made it a proper off-road SUV or an undercover sporty CUV, already.
This unofficial design proposal for an “unlikely” pickup truck version keeps the unibody coordinates, though, as the pixel master based his CGI modifications on the beloved Ford Maverick unibody compact model and then just sprinkled Explorer EV styling on top of everything. Hey, since we are dealing with the hypothetical, we feel that this idea is spot-on about what could be done with the Explorer EV nameplate if Ford ever wanted to expand it into a family.
After all, sooner or later, the mid-size pickup trucks will follow suit after their full-size counterparts, at least in America. So, if ever real, this Explorer EV pickup truck could have two lines of action. Either Ford keeps the VW partnership and adapts the MEB platform to suit the needs of both companies – with this model acting as a zero-emissions alternative for the latest Ford Ranger as well as the Volkswagen Amarok. Or the Blue Oval company could just trickle down the F-150 Lightning EV architecture into the smaller sibling!
Google News