2012 Ford Focus - Review

John Voelcker

Senior Editor BIO

John is Senior Editor for High Gear Media. In addition to news coverage and new car reviews, John creates and oversees all editorial for High Gear's... More

LATEST ARTICLE
100,000th Plug-In Electric Car In U.S. Sold Today (More Or Less)
Sometime yesterday or today, the 100,000th modern plug-in electric car was delivered to a buyer... Read More

#3LEADERBOARD RANK
2897ARTICLES CONTRIBUTED
1945COMMENTS POSTED

2 20,359 views April 21, 2009

Ford Focus EV

Enlarge Photo

Plug-in electric cars are the next frontier for green car buyers. Hybrids like the 2010 Toyota Prius and 2010 Honda Insight will duke it out this year, but you can't charge them up from wall current.

GM has been promoting its plans for the 2011 Chevrolet Volt, a plug-in car with an auxiliary engine, for more than two years. In January, Ford startled the Detroit Auto Show by saying it would offer a fully electric Focus in 2011.

Now we've had a chance to drive a development version of that car, which is engineered by supplier Magna, which will also build several thousand copies of the car to be sold at Ford dealers.

We were particularly impressed with the refinement and lack of noise. Most development vehicles haven't been tweaked by noise-vibration-harshness (NVH) engineers, so they squeak, roar, whine, clunk, or howl. The Focus EV may be the most exemplary mule we've driven.

Ford Focus EV - the power electronics sit above the electric motor

Enlarge Photo

Electric cars generate their highest torque from 0 rpm, and the Focus's motor was able to spin the inside front wheel when accelerating hard around a corner. The brakes were nicely integrated, with no noticeable transition between regenerative braking and the friction brakes.

The Bottom Line:

For a development 'mule', this thing feels like it could have rolled off a production line. We couldn't take the car out on freeways, but the car felt showroom-ready in low-speed testing around the roads and parking lots of DisneyWorld (top speed: 30 mph).