Ford considers in-house EV development

It's not well known here, but Ford is already well down the path to establishing a footing in the EV market in the US and Europe. The company has plans afoot to launch two EVs -- a Transit Connect light commercial scheduled for launch later this year (pictured), with a Focus hatch to follow in 2011.

While it has worked on its own hybrid powertrains, to date the company has outsourced the development work of its all-electrics. The powertrain for the electric Focus was developed by Ontario-based Magna International. For the Transit Connect, Ford started with UK-based Smith Electric Vehicles before Smith quit and Detroit-based Azure Dynamics stepped in.

But with a look at the industry's windsock, Ford's director of electrification programs and engineering, Sherif Marakby, has told US media the time may well come for it to bring battery-electric vehicles (BEV) development in-house. Probably not for a while yet though, given the lifestyle changes all-electrics demand of consumers.  Hybrids cost less to buy and they don't require customers to do things like install home charging stations, Marakby says. So for now at least, hybrids will occupy a larger market share than EVs.

"When you get into BEVs, you have to have a larger battery, which is the driving cost. But the battery evolution and revolution has been moving, and things could change in the future," Marakby told Detroit publication Wards Auto.

To hedge its bets in the face of such movement, Ford has already signed a deal with battery supplier Johnson Controls-Saft, with the latter using US$148 million worth of tax breaks and other state incentives to build a lithium-ion battery factory in Michigan, especially to supply Ford. The batteries it produces will power the Transit Connect and Focus, along with an upcoming plug-in hybrid and next-generation hybrid product, due out in 2012. 

BEVs represent a fairly small segment of the market, for now. "But as things change and evolve and grow, we could easily look at different ways to do business on these," Marakby told Wards.

"From a technology and engineering standpoint, a BEV is simpler to develop than an HEV or PHEV because you only have one energy source," he continued. "With an HEV or a PHEV, you're constantly controlling two different energy sources between the engine and the battery. It's a very complex system."

But what the consumer says goes. Those more complex hybrid technologies have found increasing consumer acceptance over the last decade, largely for the gentleness and simplicity with which they move consumers towards electric power. And as long as that remains the case, Ford remains happy to oblige.

Read the latest Carsales Network news and reviews on your mobile, iPhone or PDA at www.carsales.mobi