Ford’s CEO Alan Mullaly recently spoke reporters at an economic conference saying that “in 10 years, 12 years, you are going to see a major portion of our portfolio move to electric vehicles.”
Ford has already revealed plans for an electric commercial van, the Ford Transit Connect (pictured above) to be sold next year 2010, an electric sedan by 2011 and a hybrid SUV for 2012. Mullaly went on to explain that he believes that although in ten years internal combustion engines will have seen vast improvements, the main focus of the entire auto industry will be all-electric cars instead as opposed to hybrids.
He also stated, that low oil prices are only temporary and that prices will continue to go up over time.
Even if this does turn out to be all just hot air, it does seem to be a sign of the times when a company like Ford predicts electric cars to be produced almost exclusively within 10 years.
March 9th, 2009 at 6:14 pm
And last Wednesday (4 March), Arnie arrived unannounced at the Geneva motor show where someone took this photo of him viewing the Tourneo car, developed in all-electric form by Smith Electric Vehicles. It seats 5-8 people (there are swb and lwb versions) and could quickly be brought into production (say Ford, and Smith) if public interest is sufficient. The Tourneo is merely the mid-european name for the Transit Connect.
http://www.daylife.com/photo/0gk0aBLdAF6nr
In the past few days, Smith EV have launched a new US website for marketing their vehicles over there. See http://www.sev-us.com