Ford's new Explorer could not be any more different from the car it replaces, a vehicle so excessively American in terms of sheer bulk and fuel consumption that it essentially flopped in Europe.
These days it doesn’t even appear on the Ford Ireland price list and I couldn’t even find a second-hand one on Carzone.
This time it could be argued that the new Explorer, an all-electric SUV due here early next year, is so excessively European that it won’t go on sale in the United States, where its Lone Star belt buckle-wearing owners won’t be quite ready for even the concept of an EV.
The Explorer name has gone full cycle, thanks to a strategic partnership with Volkswagen, which means the new Ford is essentially a VW. Except for the styling, that is.
Ford has cleverly taken the platform on which EV cars like the VW ID.4, the Skoda Enyaq and the Audi Q4 E-Tron are built and the batteries that power them too. The result is a car engineered by VW and then tuned in the Ford way. It makes a lot of sense and will save Ford the huge expense of delivering a new EV platform of its own.
In terms of looks though, it doesn’t resemble anything like a VW ID.4. In fact, it looks more like a car that came from the Land Rover/Range Rover design studio with an upright, two-box profile. It has short wheel overhangs that may well account for the rather limited 470 litre boot. It is also about 12 cm shorter than an ID.4.
It’s a five-seater and the interior is dominated by a 15" inch screen that sits in a portrait position, but can be angled and tilted to suit the driver or front seat passenger. It’s a clever variation of the imposing screen we have seen before in the Ford Mach-E and it is one of that car’s best features.
Ford has been coy about the capacity of the batteries it will use in the Explorer but a number of reports from the UK suggest it will come on sale with a choice of 55kW and 82kW units. The same can be expected in Ireland. There are no indicative prices for Ireland either but it will need to be somewhere in the region of VW's €50,000 price for the ID.4 to be competitive.
Based on the claimed VW ranges, the former would provide 350 km’s of range and the latter 539 km’s.
Being primarily an American company, Ford hasn’t been exactly at the forefront in terms of the electric revolution but it now plans for half of all global sales to be electric within seven years.
In Ireland, we will see another all-electric Ford in the shape of a new Puma EV by next year also.
