Ford Motor Company CEO Mark Fields announced yesterday the automaker’s plans to invest as much as $4.5 billion into electrified vehicle research and development by the year 2020. The investments will enable the addition of some 13 new hybrids, plug-in hybrids, and full-electric vehicles by the same year.
“Today, we’re announcing that by 2020, we’re investing an additional 4.5 billion dollars, which is our biggest-ever electric-vehicle investment in a five-year period. And as we do that, we’re going to be adding 13 new electrified vehicles to our product portfolio by 2020,” said Mark Fields. “More than forty percent of our nameplates globally will be electrified by the end of the decade, and that’s up significantly from a very healthy 13 percent today.”
The first product of this invigorated new EV initiative is a revamped Ford Focus Electric, which is headed to production sometime late in 2016. It will offer a projected range in the neighborhood of 100 miles, and will premiere a new DC fast-charge feature, allowing the driver to replenish up to 80 percent of the battery pack’s charge in just half-an-hour.
“Today’s news really builds on our leadership in electrification,” said Mark Fields. “Ford is America’s second-largest electrified-vehicle seller, and we are actually the nation’s top seller of plug-in hybrids.”
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And he is long gone.