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May 4, 2012

The Battery-Driven Car Just Got a Lot

More Normal
By BRADLEY BERMAN

BERKELEY, Calif.
CRITICS of electric vehicles say they are too expensive and lack sufficient driving range. But I
wonder if those gripes would disappear if the E.V.s on sale werent so lets not mince words
homely. I adore my all-electric Nissan Leaf, but its wide rear end, bulging headlights and odd
proportions evoke a Japanese gizmo aesthetic that doesnt necessarily appeal to mainstream
American car buyers.
Enter the handsome 2012 Ford Focus Electric, the first all-electric car from an American
automaker in the 21st century. Ford will begin selling the electric version of the new Focus in
the next few weeks in California, New York and New Jersey, followed by 19 additional markets
in the fall.
The Focus Electric looks nearly identical to the gas version, a small Electric badge the only
clue that internal combustion has been supplanted by swift and silent electric propulsion. Sit in
the low-slung, well-conforming seats and you feel oh-so normal. There are no circuit-board
motifs, techno start-up sounds, weird shifter knobs or special Eco modes. The driver chooses
among standard gear selections: park, reverse, neutral, drive and low.
E.V.s are highly regarded for their high torque at zero r.p.m. allowing zippy departures from
red lights. In my week with the Focus Electric in the San Francisco Bay Area the first
multiday test of the car by a journalist the powertrain felt as if it had been tailored for
highway driving, offering rapid bursts of acceleration from 30 to 50 m.p.h., and from 55 to 75,
with oomph left in reserve.
Thats one of many ways Ford engineers aimed this electric auto at drivers accustomed to the
road manners of a gasoline car. We wanted the Focus Electric to be a vehicle first, that just
happened to be electric, said Eric Kuehn, Fords chief engineer for global electrified programs.
Battery-powered cars are intrinsically quiet, the motor sound falling between a whir and a
whisper. But the Focus is deep-space silent, the quietest of the many electric cars Ive driven.
The engineers told me they used extra insulation and sound damping.
The extra benefit of quieting the 107-kilowatt (143 horsepower) motor is a reduction of all road
noise to ultraluxury levels, whether on city streets or while briskly accelerating to the maximum
speed of 85 m.p.h. The single-speed transmission provides direct linear velocity, with no hint of
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cylinders firing or gears waiting to engage. The concomitant high efficiency means that fuel
costs just a third as much as filling up the gas-powered Focus, according to fueleconomy.gov.
These days thats the equivalent of about $1.30 a gallon.
In my week with the Focus, I was E.V.-incognito. Not once did I receive a curious glance from a
pedestrian or fellow roadway denizen. Focus Electric drivers desperately seeking green cred
can find a prominent public charging location to plug in. When I juiced up outside a Walgreens
in Pleasanton, Calif., 40 miles east of San Francisco, strip-mall shoppers gawked at the charging
cord dangling from my Ford.
One woman said, I didnt know electric cars existed. A father told his son: Look. Thats the
wave of the future. If Id wanted, I could have preached E.V. religion all day to potential
acolytes.
Thankfully, I didnt need all day to charge because the Focus Electric uses a 6.6-kilowatt
charger capable of replenishing the batteries at twice the rate of a Leaf. This equates to a full
recharge from empty to full in a little more than four hours when pulling 240 volts adding
about 20 miles of driving range in an hour, instead of 10 miles for each hour with the Leaf.
There were three or four trips during my week when I would have been forced to leave the
Leaf, with its 3.3-kilowatt charger, at home. But I was able to take the Focus Electric because,
for example, an hour-and-a-half charge at the Walgreens allowed me to make the 35-mile
return to my home charger. I had lunch while I waited at a fast-food joint nearby. Charging at
half the rate would have exceeded the limits of my schedule and my patience.
The Environmental Protection Agencys estimated driving range of 76 miles is spot-on. The
farthest I ventured was 83 miles, with the dashboard indicating use of 19 kilowatt-hours from
the 23-kilowatt-hour pack. Batteries always keep a kilowatt or two in reserve, so I probably
could have pushed the range beyond 90 miles with careful driving.
The Focus once again proved the rule-of-thumb on E.V. efficiency: four miles of driving per
kilowatt-hour under favorable conditions, and closer to three when blasting the
air-conditioning, running uphill or driving in cold weather.
In terms of understanding range from behind the wheel, I wish Ford had provided a
conventional-style analog fuel gauge with a big red needle and hash marks. Instead, the car has
a small thermometer-style display of the battery state-of-charge combined with an estimate of
the remaining miles. Leaf owners refer to their cars similar feature as the guess-o-meter, but
the Focuss predictions were even more scattershot.
On one trip, when I really needed to know if a low battery was going to carry me the last five
miles home, the dashboards guess at the remaining range shot up wildly to 85 miles and then
to a ludicrous 139 miles despite showing only an eighth of the charge remaining. Ford said this
was a glitch in my near-production test vehicle that had been fixed in production models.

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Ford makes matters worse with other confusing E.V.-related dashboard displays and
nomenclature not sufficiently explaining terms like battery surplus and budget. And
rather than show the level of regenerative braking with bars or a meter, long features of hybrids
and E.V.s, the Focus flashes an inscrutable braking score each time you come to a stop.
Worst of all, blue butterflies appear and flutter when you drive in an eco-friendly manner, a
cutesy affectation that made me want to snuff out the flying bugs by pushing the limits of the
E.V.s acceleration.
One innovation where Ford fares better is the blue light circling the fueling door on the left
side, where you plug in the car. It shows charging progress at a glance from a distance by
illuminating successive sections of what serves as glowing state-of-charge pie chart.
The interface shortcomings and twitchy brakes that took a day to get used to are forgotten
when you mash the accelerator: the aggressive throttle settings tended to provoke a chirp of the
low-rolling-resistance tires.
Above 10 m.p.h., the Focus becomes well-planted and controlled by taut steering. Without a gas
engine up front, the Focus Electrics weight distribution is close to ideal at 49 percent in front,
51 percent in the rear. (The gasoline car is nose-heavy at 61/39.)
Because of its 650-pound battery pack, the car is relatively heavy, at 3,642 pounds, but the
engineers did a good job of adjusting springs and shocks to handle the extra weight in the rear.
The car has a substantial but not ponderous feel.
Whats less forgivable is the packaging of the batteries. Some are placed where the regular
Focuss gas tank would be, but the main pack is under the liftgate, reducing cargo space by 39
percent, to just 14.5 cubic feet. There is room for a few bags of groceries but nothing more. And
back seat legroom is tight, as it is in the gas version.
Building an E.V. from the ground up would have allowed designers to put the battery under the
cabin, presenting new possibilities for passenger comfort and cargo space. But Ford decided to
reduce the risk and cost of making an electric car by building the Electric on the same assembly
line as the gasoline Focus; workers install either electric motors or gas engines, and they bolt in
either lithium-ion battery packs or gasoline tanks. That gives the company the option of
expanding or reducing E.V. volume based on demand.
Nissan, BMW and Tesla would argue that giving up the ability to optimize the vehicle platform
and integrate all the systems for electric-car efficiency is too high a price for the relative
ease of development and production in Fords approach.
In the end, the Focus Electric solves the nerdy-E.V. problem, but it may underscore the biggest
current challenge to widespread adoption of electric cars: their cost. The availability of gas and
electric versions of the Focus, side by side in showrooms, will invite apples-to-apples
cost-benefit comparisons.

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The Ford Focus Electric has a base price of $39,995 minus a $7,500 federal tax credit and a
$2,500 rebate in California. That puts its tab at $30,000, some $7,000 above the upscale Focus
Titanium. I can hear the electric naysayers exclaiming Aha! You wont make back the savings
at the pumps. Thats despite $4 gasoline, and the Focus Electrics 110 m.p.g. equivalent rating.
But when buying any new car, especially an innovative model of any kind, emotions, aesthetics
and externalities eclipse economics. Most owners will recoup at least a few thousand dollars of
the premium from much lower fuel and maintenance costs.
Beyond that, what do you get for the extra money? A faster, quieter Focus one that eliminates
gas station visits, tailpipe emissions or any personal connection to OPEC. Also, one of the
sharpest looking American cars on the road.

INSIDE TRACK: An electric car as gentle on the eyes as on the environment.

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