Those looking forward to Ford's upcoming electric vehicle, based on the next-gen global Focus platform, should be writing thank-yous to Magna International. It turns out that the prototype mule that's been running around the streets of Detroit  was actually built by engineers at the Canadian auto parts supplier to show Ford that it could be done and that Magna was the company to do it.  Ford was suitably impressed, so much so that the Blue Oval announced that a production vehicle based on the design would make it to market by ~2011 after a second prototype was built using similar technology. Range from the lithium-ion battery pack will be limited to around 100 miles, depending on how and where the car is driven.

Based on the Escape Hybrid that Ford has been selling since 2004, the plug-in connects to a standard wall socket and can go up to 40 mph before its gas engine kicks in. The test vehicles are getting 120 mpg in city driving tests and 70 mpg on the highway under optimum conditions. The advantage of a plug-in hybrid, Frenette said, is that it combines the effectively unlimited range of a gasoline motor with the fuel savings of an electric vehicle. But having two motors also adds a lot of cost and complexity to the vehicle. That is why Ford decided to pursue a pure battery-powered electric vehicle in tandem with the plug-in hybrid it was developing. The production vehicle being developed with Magna will be based on the new global Focus platform, due out in 2010. The electric version will have no gasoline motor, but will be limited to a range of 100 miles on a single charge -- enough, Ford says, because most motorists in America average less than 40 miles a day.