Back in November, we reported that Ford was planning on starting deliveries of its 2012 Ford Focus Electric to customers in New York and California before the end of 2011, with sales in other areas due to follow some time this year. 

In reality, while Ford technically did get all-electric Focuses to customers during 2011, it only managed to deliver 8. 

During January, deliveries weren’t much higher, and now the Detroit automaker is being rather tight-lipped about its future rollout plans after Mike Tinskey -- associate director of Ford’s Global Electric Vehicle Infrastructure -- hinted that Ford wouldn’t be delivering 2012 Ford Focus Electric cars outside of New York and California until September

Speaking two weeks ago, Tinskey told Mlive.com that Ford would continue to slowly roll out the vehicle to customers in New York and California, with other key market areas like Detroit having to wait until September to get a chance to buy the car. 

2012 Ford Focus Electric

2012 Ford Focus Electric

That’s quite different to what we’d initially understood Ford’s plans to be, so we reached out to Ford to make sure we’d understood things correctly. 

Specifically, we asked Ford to give us details on its initial sales numbers, comment on Tinskey’s comments about availability, as well as details of when pre-orders were expected to open outside of new York and California. 

“We are still on track to ramp up Focus Electric retail production and availability in the first half of this year followed by 16 additional markets later this year,” said Ford spokesman Wesley Sherwood in an email last week. “We are not providing specific sales projections but continue to believe all-electric vehicles will be a small portion of the electrified vehicle mix for some time. Our initial orders are in line with this projection.”

What does this tell us? Very little, other than suggest that Ford isn’t keen to talk about its Focus Electric rollout plans at the moment. 

And that leaves us to draw one sad conclusion: For most customers, the wait for a new 2012 Ford Focus Electric might be a little longer than they’d initially hoped. 

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