{"id":902,"date":"2010-09-16T19:52:15","date_gmt":"2010-09-17T00:52:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.encoretechresources.com\/insights\/?p=902"},"modified":"2010-09-16T19:54:17","modified_gmt":"2010-09-17T00:54:17","slug":"ford-debuts-an-electric-focus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.encoretechresources.com\/insights\/2010\/09\/16\/ford-debuts-an-electric-focus\/","title":{"rendered":"Ford Debuts An Electric Focus"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This isn&#8217;t an electric car blog, but we&#8217;ve been following developments toward diversified transportation because we truly need to shake up our transportation system. Today Ford announced an electric Focus, a car with special appeal to us, because we own a gasoline-powered model and love it.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.encoretechresources.com\/insights\/wp-content\/uploads\/SS_electric_cars_ford_focus-300x200.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-907\" title=\"SS_electric_cars_ford_focus-300x200\" src=\"http:\/\/www.encoretechresources.com\/insights\/wp-content\/uploads\/SS_electric_cars_ford_focus-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" \/><\/a>The thing is, though, Ford announced the car in partnership with the Texas utility, Oncor. And that immediately illustrated a limitation of all-electric vehicles. Iris Kuo, <a href=\"http:\/\/venturebeat.com\/2010\/09\/16\/ford-teams-with-oncor-in-texas-and-we-test-drive-fords-electric-car\/?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Venturebeat+%28VentureBeat%29\">the GreenBeat reviewer<\/a>, reached to turn on the air conditioning and Ford&#8217;s representative in the car asked her to turn it back off. Reason: the A\/C drains the battery too much. But they couldn&#8217;t figure out how to shut it off \u00a0&#8220;thanks to a confusing control panel.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>So there goes the Texas market, where temperatures are high and distances long. Ah well, it&#8217;s no doubt a lovely car for other, more temperate locales. (It should be available next year.)<\/p>\n<p>Oncor has installed 1.2 million smart meters, which will help consumers decide when rates are lowest for charging electric vehicles. Texas at least has lots of energy reserves.<\/p>\n<p>Buyers of the first all-electric cars are going to be a little like modern-day pioneers, figuring out what the best blend of charging and mileage might be. Sort of like how far horses could pull before they got too hungry and fatigued. There&#8217;s also a need to educate emergency responders about electrics, who could be endangered by the high battery voltage at the scene of an accident.<\/p>\n<p>But this is important stuff, because our transportation system truly needs a broader mix of motive power. \u2013 <em>Doug Bedell<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This isn&#8217;t an electric car blog, but we&#8217;ve been following developments toward diversified transportation because we truly need to shake up our transportation system. Today Ford announced an electric Focus, a car with special appeal to us, because we own a gasoline-powered model and love it. The thing is, though, Ford announced the car in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-technology"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.encoretechresources.com\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/902"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.encoretechresources.com\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.encoretechresources.com\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.encoretechresources.com\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.encoretechresources.com\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=902"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.encoretechresources.com\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/902\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":911,"href":"http:\/\/www.encoretechresources.com\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/902\/revisions\/911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.encoretechresources.com\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.encoretechresources.com\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.encoretechresources.com\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}