People want to drive gas-guzzling SUVs. The demand for them, along with trucks, is continuing to grow so much that it could even outweigh the carbon-emission benefit gains made by all electric vehicles . That is, unless the car industry builds electric SUVs. That’s what the Ford Motor Company is doing. Today, the company is unveiling an electric SUV called the Mustang Mach-E (though details were leaked earlier this week). Unlike many electric cars, which tend to be smaller sedans that car companies often release to keep regulators happy, this car was designed from the ground up to fit right in with the rest of Ford’s famed Mustang sports cars. Except, of course, that you can’t rev the engine since you don’t need any gas (though the car’s performance version can still go from zero to 60 in about three and a half seconds). [Photo: courtesy of Ford Motor Company] The electric SUV, which will be delivered to customers in late 2020, is the first vehicle that was shepherded from start to finish by Ford CEO Jim Hackett, who took the company’s top job in 2017 and previously helmed the furniture manufacturer Steelcase. While Hackett has announced a renewed emphasis on electric cars and hybrids, with an announcement in 2018 that Ford would release 40 nongas cars by 2022, this is the first tangible evidence of his strategy—and the first evidence of how his emphasis on the Ideo brand of design thinking might pay off for the 116-year-old automaker. The rationale for an electric SUV Hackett says that there were plans for a new Ford electric car already underway when he joined the company, but that he and his team decided to scrap it and start afresh. “I was imbuing this notion that design is going to rule here,” Hackett says. “[My team] said, this doesn’t meet the measure of any of that. So we said, we have to tear it up.” Instead of building yet another “science project,” as Hackett called previous electric cars in our conversation, Ford decided to focus instead on macro trends to find a form factor that might actually be profitable for the company ( like most manufacturers , Ford has never built a profitable electric car). The most important trend? If you take fuel efficiency off the table, people want larger cars. Ford Motor Company CEO Jim Hackett [Photo: courtesy of Ford Motor Company] “People have voiced that when fuel prices are low, they want larger silhouettes,” Hackett says. “That’s what customers are telling us
Originally posted here:
Ford is betting its future on an electric Mustang SUV