Today my newspaper published a review by their auto/Prius-driving guy, Troy Wolverton (twoverton@mercurynews.com). He was not overly impressed with the electric Focus. He liked that it was well built, had a navigation system, a nine-speaker sound system, quick acceleration, and an IPhone app that shows the car's location and nearby charging station locations. He didn't like that it was more expensive than the IC version of the car, it had limited range, a small trunk, an inaccurate range gauge, slow console system, poor voice recognition and no fast-charge capability.
The car has a 92 kW motor, a 23 kWh battery, a claimed 76-mile range, cloth interior and 17-inch wheels. The price before taxes, fees and rebates is $39,200.
Mr. Wolverton said that Ford just stuck batteries wherever they could in the car and that ate up a lot of the IC Focus's luggage and trunk area. It has 9 cubic feet less storage area that the IC Focus. The electric motor has been located under the hood. It takes up as much space there as the car's IC engine and there is no storage area under the hood. He said that the car's range estimator was wildly inaccurate. One time the car said that he had 91 miles left on the battery, but 19 miles later it changed its mind and said he now had 31 miles left in the pack. That ambiguity made for some stressful driving. The car takes 14 hours to recharge from a level 1 outlet and 4 hours from a level 2 source. He said that the Focus is not a bad car, but he is holding out for something better.
