Ford Scores [An Additional] $10m in Taxpayer Money for EV Fleet
by
John Horner
Published: October 7th, 2008
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There was a time when $10m seemed like a lot of money. It still does to me personally, but on the scales of corporate and government finance it is, well, almost nothing. Lest we forget, Ford’s lining-up for its share of $25b in low-interest loans provided by you [via The Department of Energy] to retool its way out of a sea of red ink (in theory). Meanwhile, the AP dutifully reports that Ford’s receipt of a $10m Department of Energy grant to cover half the cost of a planned 20 vehicle plug-in Escape test fleet. “Ford is working on a three-year project to demonstrate the vehicles and understand how they will interact with utilities around the country, a key step in commercializing cars that can be recharged by plugging into a standard wall outlet.” At one million bucks per test vehicle, they’d better be good!
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It's not much money, after we've experienced the shock and awe of recent days, and I'd rather see it go to Ford than Wagoner/Lutz, but I'd like to see the expected benefit from this. A search for "Ford" at the DOE site yielded nothing. My guess is that the 'interaction with utilities' will consist of the car batteries being recharged; hopefully absent any smoke.
One million per vehicle isn't that much higher than a typical, first-off, prototype car. When every part on the vehicle is made using prototype methods and you have 20,000 parts, it adds up fast.
Hopefully, the "Plug-In" option will drop by $995,000 in a few years.
$10M for a 20 vehicle fleet? A little steep isn't it? I mean Tesla can deliver an EV for $100K, Phoenix Motor Cars can deliver a full EV truck for ~$45K and there are Prius plug-ins for less than that too. Sounds like the money is going to boost Ford overall while being labelled as money for a fleet of test vehicles that I expect Ford won't sell anytime soon. Yeah, I'm a little pissed at how the US money is getting thrown around. That would be 200 $50K EVs. C'mon. Is this money well spent? Buy a few EVs and copy their the drivetrain tech. Put it in existing vehicles.