Ford made an electric Ranger 20 YEARS AGO
Ford was forced into making the Ranger electric back in 1998. It didn’t go well.
There’s so much angst over looming Clean Car fines and the lack of electric utes for hard-working, adventure focused New Zealanders who absolutely need a high vehicle with a tray. Which is most of us, if you look at the sales stats.
It’s as if we’ve all forgotten that Ford had a Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV) version of the Ranger way back in 1998.
Ford developed a BEV Ranger for the US using technology from Th!nk Global, a Norwegian EV specialist company that it partnered with and eventually purchased outright in 1999. The compact pickup truck was designed to help Ford meet challenging California zeroemissions mandates announced in 1996 (Ford launched the Th!nk City microcar in 1999).
It’s fair to say there was a lot promise with the Ranger BEV, but the idea was a bit ahead of the technology. Based on a Ranger 4x2 “regular cab”, the BEV used lead-acid batteries at launch but later switched to nickel-metal hydride (like a Toyota Prius). With 26kWh capacity, it only had about 130km of range and was pretty basic, with a simple AM/FM radio and choice of bucket or bench seats.
Nearly all the 1500 Ranger BEVs produced were leased to Government fleets but, in the face of some back-pedalling by California on its EV requirements and challenging quality/ technology issues (including considerable battery degradation after 40,000km), the Ranger BEV was quietly dropped in 2002.
Once the leases had ended, most of the cars were destroyed.
In the same year, Ford also gave up on its Th!nk City project, after only 1000 lease customers had been secured. It put the whole company up for sale in 2002 (it continued until bankruptcy in 2011).
Suffice to say, Ford is pretty interested in BEV cars and trucks again. The 2011 Focus Electric was its first mainstream BEV available to the public, while the Mustang Mach-E and F-150 Lightning are now spearheading a new generation of BEVs in the US.
It seems certain that electric power will be part of the nextgeneration Ranger. Ford has already announced that all its commercial vehicles in Europe will be zero emissions-capable by 2024. Ranger — the same Ranger we have in NZ — is currently the best-selling ute in Europe.
At the “Delivering Ford+” event in May, Ford confirmed that a new BEV platform with RWD/AWD capability would be used for a midsized pickup truck. The Kiwimarket Ranger is already sold in the US in that segment.