The building an electric car from scratch has one major advantage: A clean-sheet design makes it easier to hide a large battery pack. But aside from optimizing the location of the heaviest part of the car, purpose-built electrics haven’t exactly been electrifying to drive. From the General Motors EV1 to the Nissan Leaf, electric cars designed from the jump to be electrics drive like fridges. And not even the cool stainless-steel and glass-doored kind. To make an electric car fun, we advise starting with a great gasoline-powered car and converting it to run on electricity. Tesla did just that with the Lotus Elise, which resulted in its sporty Roadster. Now Ford has taken one of our favorite five-door hatchbacks—the 10Best-winning Focus—and converted it to run on amps instead of gas.
Ford aims this vehicle directly at the purpose-built Leaf. We immediately noticed that the electric Focus acts a lot like any other Focus. You get the regular car’s solid chassis, refined manners, precise steering, and playful character. The Leaf is a lot less involving and gratifying to drive; it’s more simulation than stimulation. Score one for the converted car.
That said, the electric Focus is no stoplight king. A 141-hp AC motor sits between the front wheels and offers 188 pound-feet of torque at all times. The motor works against 3612 pounds of mass through a single-speed transaxle. Acceleration has the slow grace of a Lincoln Town Car. We clocked a 0-to-60-mph time of 10.3 seconds, a few tenths off the less powerful, nearly 235-pound-lighter Leaf. Remember 85-mph speedometers? The electric Focus could barely peg one; top speed is reported to be governed at 84 mph, but we managed 85 with our test vehicle. The Focus Electric covers a quarter-mile in 17.9 seconds, reaching 80 mph at that same time.
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