Here’s one they made with electric power
You can have your Transit people move as a PHEV, too, writes
When is a PHEV not strictly a PHEV? When it’s a Ford Transit. The plug-in Transit has a 13.6kWh plug-in battery and electric motor that’s good for 53km of pure-leccy driving. When that runs out, there’s a 1.0-litre three-cylinder engine that fires up and charges the battery. And that’s the difference from your average PHEV, because the Transit petrol engine never drives the wheels; it just makes electricity.
Ford offers the PHEV powertrain in the Transit Custom van for $89,990 (not the Sport sadly), but our test vehicle is the Tourneo Titanium, with eight seats, carpet and nicer trim for $99,990.
The PHEV is $30k more expensive than the dieselpowered Tourneo, although the premium is somewhat masked by the plug-in’s Titanium specification level, which is theoretically a big step up from the diesel Trend. In reality it’s down to upholstery, trim and a few detail touches. The Trend actually has one more seat: it’s a true nine-seat “bus”.
If you haven’t driven a vehicle like this before, it might feel a bit weird. It’s all good in pure electric mode, which the Tourneo sticks to even when you plant the right foot. Quite perky off the line, but the electric motor runs out of puff as you approach motorway speeds.
It’s easy to switch between modes. There’s a single button that cycles through Automatic, EV Now (electric priority), EV Later (hold the current charge) or Charge (fill the battery with the petrol generator) operation. It can sound a little crazy with the petrol engine running because of course the revs have little to do with road speed; the engine’s just spinning to charge the battery.
Actual fuel economy depends entirely on how often you can plug the vehicle in (every night, presumably) and how far you drive it every day. On domestic rates it costs about $2 to “fill” the battery, or about $4 per 100km.
But if you’re doing bigger kays (like, more petrol running than electric per day), the diesel (6.7l/100km) probably still makes
more sense.
It’s hard to get your head around, but this is a technology that we’ll see more of.
It’s hard to justify the extra capital cost of the PHEV/REX/ EREV technology, but then that’s true of so many plug-in vehicles. It’s arguably less of an issue in a commercial vehicle like this, where the purchasing decision might be as much about sending the right message to clientele as it is about the ownership cost.