[mechman600]

Today my boss brought a new Ford Focus Electric demo to work for everyone (mainly me) to check out. Wow what a car. But wow what a price.

Under the hood is the typical plastic "engine" cover. All it took was a pair of pliers to remove it. Underneath was lots of goodies that made me want one. The battery pack behind the rear seat and takes up most of the trunk. Any utilitarian qualities of a hatchback are completely eliminated with the giant battery box in the way.

A couple things I noticed.
-It has a normal Focus radiator and a cooling system that cools the AC motor controller and heats the cabin.
-There is an electric coolant heater for cabin heat, not a heat pump like the Toyotas.

After in depth inspection, my boss chucked me the key fob and I took for a quick 15 minute burn. Wow…what a thrill. So quiet. So smooth. It basically makes my eBooger feel like a piece of crap, which is to be expected since the Focus costs 17 times as much.

I love the graphical readouts for energy use, regenerative braking, range, etc. After each time you use the brakes and lift off the brake pedal, the readout gives you a percentage score or how much braking was done by regen. Even on fairly hard stops my score stayed above 90%.

Power wise, it actually goes like snot. For real. I spun a tire when I booted it making a turn onto a road. It's weird hearing a spinning tire with no accompanying engine roar.

I am amazed how little interior noise there is. Ford has really done an amazing job of making sure their electric car is QUIET inside.

My boss told me to rely on the heated seats for warmth for maximum range. But after a while it started fogging up inside, so I turned the defroster on. My remaining range indicator quickly dropped from 107 km to 69 km. Once the windows were clear I turned it back off and the range jumped back up.

Once I returned back to work and turned the car off, the display screen gave me a run down of my score - total braking score (I got 96%), average kwh/km, etc. Pretty neat.

All in all, it is a very impressive car. Would I buy one? Yes.