Reply to post: Re: If you build them...

Ford giving electric car investment a jolt to the tune of $11bn

Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward

Re: If you build them...

I guess the way to think of it would be: here is the currently model with a revised engine. Once they have the power plant sorted, weight distribution and stuff in place, its no more and possibly less than development than a conventional car.

That's an approach doomed to failure. The existing ICE cars are designed from the ground up around the needs of the engine and a mechanical drive train. Putting a battery pack and electric drive train into that is going to be more expensive than it needs to be and performance compromised. Take one example: the whole front end of the body shell is designed to support the weight of the engine block, control its torque and vibrations, making it far heavier than it needs to be for an EV. The gear box is a heavy, complicated piece of kit that an EV doesn't need (or not in the ICE format), requiring hydraulic or mechanical clutches - again, weight, torque, mechanical links. The front end aerodynamic design of an ICE has is centred around the need to cool the engine - so very inefficient for an EV, or a lot of design work to change that.

Such an approach can be made to work in technical sense - but it will produce far inferior products compared to starting from scratch with a new model. What can work will be if Ford produce 100% new EVs that occupy the same market niche as a similarly named predecessor, and try and keep the appearance similar to the old model. As for hybrids - waste of time. All the problems of both ICE and EV, double the complexity of either, with the sole benefit being that it addresses range anxiety. That's not the way forward.

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