Ford has a new electric car on the way — and it’ll borrow more than a few things from the Volkswagen ID.4 all-electric crossover.
The still-unnamed crossover will arrive in 2023, and is being produced under a manufacturing deal with VW. It's all part of Ford’s plan to electrify its entire European car portfolio by 2030 — although the bad news is that it won't be coming to the U.S. anytime soon.
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The crossover will be the first Ford to be built on VW’s MEB EV platform, and will share a significant portion of its design with the ID.4 as a result. This also means Ford will be able to follow Volkswagen's example and offer several different models of the new crossover; rear and all-wheel drive variants have already been confirmed.
We'd also expect that it will therefore offer a similar level of power and range to the ID.4 — namely, a base model with between 146bhp and 201 bhp, plus a 52 kWh battery with 213 miles of driving range.
However, there are more powerful variants of the ID.4 that come with up to 295 bhp, and can utilize a 77kWh battery to travel 300 miles on a single charge — pretty impressive for a mid-size car.
AutoCar is also reporting that Ford will take inspiration from the Chinese-market Ford Evos crossover for its new EV. The Evos features a 1.1-meter 4K infotainment display that sits across the dash, rather than a single touchscreen panel as seen in the Mustang Mach-E and F-150 Lightning. The new crossover will likely run an Android-based system, which Ford has previously announced will be installed on all its new cars from 2023.
There’s still a lot we don’t know about this EV right now, though its similarities with the ID.4 do give us a good idea of what to expect. Unfortunately, Ford isn’t set to officially unveil the new crossover until early next year, ready for a wider European release in 2023, so we’re probably going to have to wait a while for further news.
It also appears that this car is being specifically built for the European market, and won’t be coming to the U.S. While that may disappoint some people, it is understandable: with various European countries pushing ahead with bans on the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2030, Ford needs something to fill out its line-up.
After all, the newly-announced F-150 Lightning will only be available in the U.S., so Ford needs to pick up the pace if it wants to hit that 100% electric target elsewhere by 2030. In other words, expect to be hearing a lot more about other new Ford EVs, such as the all-electric Explorer and the rumored all-electric Bronco, very soon.
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