Ford’s NZ boss favoured VW-based compact electric but the price and fit-out wasn’t right.

NECESSITY to site the entry edition of the Mustang Mach-E at a Clean Car rebate-winning $79,990 effectively kyboshed getting Kiwis into another battery breakthrough - Explorer, an electric Ford that blends Volkswagen technology with Blue Oval design.

Probability of Ford Europe’s car having to cop a poor price positioning – and, while no exact sticker was worked out, everything pointed to it being $90,000-plus – was aggravated by the car only being availed with a larger battery Ford New Zealand believed would have passed muster here.

Like all the platform-sharing VW Group cars here – the ID.4 and ID.5, Skoda Enyaq, Audi Q4 and Cupra Born – it has a 77kWh type battery, basically the same capacity as the Mac-E’s, but VW also creates a 58kWh battery. That’s the one Ford NZ appears to have preferred.

These factors, and the Explorer being in the same five-seater sports utility format as Mach-E, but physically smaller, all fuelled the Auckland office deciding, nine months ago, the model couldn’t chart a path here.

That doesn’t mean it – and a rumoured coupe spin-off, expected to be called Capri – might still not be considered in the future, says Ford NZ boss Simon Rutherford in explaining the circumstances.

“Things might change, we might yet find opportunity. But, at the moment, that opportunity does not exist.”

Additional background to how close Explorer came to realising local market potential came in Auckland at a media introduction to Mach-E, where Rutherford outlined the Ford’s electrified game plan for the next two years.

The final element of that programme was announced days ago. The E-Tourneo Courier introducing in 2025 is a passenger edition of an electric commercial van coming next year.

The passenger-set van, and a late 2024-due wholly battery-dedicated edition of the current Puma small crossover already selling here in mild hybrid form, will bolster Mustang Mach-E in the fully electric passenger car corner.

In the meantime, the Mexico-sourced latter will hold as the only Ford electric passenger car.

There will also be electrified plug-in and mild hybrid Escape as well and a hybrid Focus. In the commercial sector, the traditional Transit in hybrid has now been joined by a fully electric, with 350 kilometres’ range.

Rutherford makes clear the decision not to take Explorer wasn’t down to a question of availability.

“We do have access to the car … when we looked at it, we considered the price we could bring it in and the volume. It’s a great car, but I think it is better targeted at Europe.

“We have better options in our forward cycle plan that would be better suited.

“It’s a balance of complexity, accessibility and volume. It wasn’t a case of us not being able to get it, it was a case of us choosing that it wasn’t the right thing.”

He admits that his previous comment, made over the past two years, hinting on a VW-based car being in line for introduction was based on expectation it would meet parameters that simply changed.

“I was optimistic. But a lot can change in two years and a lot has changed.”

Deciding Mach-E (above) had to price, in base format, to win the rebate meant Explorer had to tailor to a price point that made it appealing in its own right.

It became obvious that was too big an ask. Even if it had also sited at rebate price – as the VW and Cupra have managed – it would still be going head-to-head with Mach-E, a bigger car with similar performance.

While final pricing exercises were never undertaken, based on Europe market pricing the Explorer seemed set to unavoidably position as Enyaq has done – a high-end proposition that, in Skoda’s case, costs $94,000.

That wasn’t a goer, particularly with internal assessment that the small SUV space in which these cars compete is already crowded and seems set to become even moreso.

“Our thought is that there will be a lot of competition … it will be a very crowded space and very price competitive. We think that there are further opportunities elsewhere.”

Though NZ is probably at the back of the queue now for the MEB choice, it is still there. It could be reconsidered, in time, but that’s not a priority.

Even so, electric is foremost in the Ford NZ mindset.

Government’s decision to increase Clean Car penalties and reduce payouts, from July 1, makes Ford NZ’s need to meet Clean Car expectation all the more pressing.

The majority of its business is being delivered by the Ranger utility, which is a high CO2 culprit firmly on the dark side of the Government’s emissions’ reduction plan.

Rutherford expects Ranger to stay as Ford’s top seller this year and next, but doubts it will continue last year’s performance, when it accounted for 75 percent of overall Ford sales in 2022.

He is also confident Ford can avoid C02 penalties from another aspect of Clean Car legislation aimed specifically at the industry, the Standard, but agrees that outcome will require it to accelerate the electrified/electric products’ penetration. Maybe to around 40 percent of total volume.

A challenge there is that the clearly crucial Mach-E is not easily availed this year. Output from the factory was slowed due to a production line rework and there are huge shipping headaches.

Ford thinks the 198kW/430Nm rebate-winner will be the primary choice to start with, but in the longer term the mid-level $109,990 Mach-E AWD will become the consumr favourite. The $124,990 Mach-E GT, also with a 98.7kWh battery, but more grunt still – from 258kW and 560Nm in AWD to 358kW/860Nm will also find a firm following.

The local arm has not shared volume expectations or how many Mach-Es will land this year, but acknowledges fewer than 200 hundred will be here by July 1.

“We have missed the boat on that,” says Rutherford, saying that whereas with Clean Car’s initial format, enacted on April 1 last year, the industry had plenty of time get in plenty of stock for ‘beat the tax’ sales activity, this time there was no such forewarning.

Though he doesn’t disagree with sentiment that one-tonne utes are now clearly a top target, the recent Clean Car amendments were not what he had expected. He declined to offer comment on whether Ford believes Government has simply double-downed on trying to contain ute buy-up or that Ranger consistently siting as the top-selling new product, month after month, has goaded the Beehive.

No Ranger escapes CO2 penalty and those penalties will soon be more severe.

A new Wildtrak X, through being the first Ranger to equip with a version of its biturbo 2.0-litre designed to meet the Euro 6 standard, comes closer than any other to meeting the baseline, but even it is not close and just 300 are being brought in.

There’s still no talk about if and when Ranger will electrify. As is, Rutherford expects the standard biturbo four-cylinder Ranger to increasingly achieve greater share of the ute’s sales performance from now on.

He says it is possible a decision about the V6s – a 3.0-litre single turbo diesel and the Raptor-only twin turbo petrol that are slammed by an almost $7000 Clean Car penalty from July 1 – will have to one day be made. That might not mean dropping those, but restricting volume.

Rutherford is confident Pume electric and E-Tourneo (above) will be popular here.

Sitting on the same B2E platform as the Puma, the latter also produces in petrol form as an indirect replacement for two now defunct products, Fiesta small hatch and the EcoSport crossover.

While the petrol-powered version is set to become the cheapest Ford offered in Europe, the electric wagon has been developed as a “fun EV” and has been described by Ford president Jim Farley as the “future of Ford in Europe”.

Driven by a 100kW/290Nm single electric motor that drives the front wheels, the EV wagon is said to have a top speed of 145kmh and can be charged at up to 100kW.

At that rate, a 10-80 per cent top-up is claimed to take less than 35 minutes, with around 87km added in 10 minutes.

It’s thought the total range will be around 370km, but Ford says it will release full details, including its battery capacity, closer to its 2024 debut.

The same battery-electric powertrain will be used on the Puma EV.