Ford Europe is in the midst of a major transformation, one that will see it transition its entire passenger vehicle lineup to EVs by 2030 or sooner, but in the shorter term, the automaker is also focusing on adding crossovers, SUVs, and trucks in that region amid its more “American” approach to marketing. In terms of all-electric models, FoMoCo is aiming to add seven to its European lineup by 2024, each utilizing batteries from a variety of suppliers. That’s precisely why the Ford Focus and Ford Fiesta have both been discontinued – the former will go away in 2025, while the latter is bowing out as the Cologne Assembly plant transitions to EV production. Now, it seems as if neither nameplate will reemerge as an EV in the future either, as Martin Sander, general manager, Ford Model e Europe, and chair of Ford-Werke GmbH Management Board, explained to Quattroruote in a recent interview.
“We don’t have plans for the Fiesta and the Electric Focus,” Sander said. “The first is still going very well, the second we plan to continue producing it until 2025, but we do not have the plan to make electrical versions of these two models. We have other attractive cars to offer customers, but they are different products and concepts.”
As Ford Authority previously reported, The Blue Oval believes that its European Ford Fiesta and Focus customers will instead migrate to the Puma, which has long been a popular offering in that particular part of the world. As such, it has no plans to build another B-segment vehicle at this time, either.
“We are not planning to build another B-segment, which will be the successor to the current Fiesta,” Sander added. “I believe that the Puma is a great product, in the combustion version and in the future BEV version – a very attractive car for consumers. After all, the market is changing and the days of sedans and stations are over – their commercial weight, in fact, has shrunk from year to year. So we made the decision to offer different formats, different designs. In short, you have to make the cars that customers want and not stay anchored to concepts of the past.”
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Comments
That’s okay…there’s always the European and Japanese manufactures to turn to for real cars.
Not for long. Enjoy your obsolete tech if you think ICE typifies real.
Ford is really wrong if they believe that Fiesta or Focus owners will automatically migrate to the Puma. As owner of a Mondeo and a Focus, I will never trade them for any boring, unpractical and involutive SUV or crossover. As a matter of fact and after 20 years buying Ford products, now I´m with other brands. There are a lot of european, asian and even american (like Tesla or Dodge) brands that still produce sedans and coupes (electrical, hybrids & ICE´s).
How is a Puma any more boring then a focus?
Also the fact that the Puma has outsold the Fiesta for a while now kinda proves that people aren’t really into super minis anymore, at least not enough to warrant continued production.
Also just because Tesla and Dodge still make sedans doesn’t mean that it makes sense for Ford to make them. Ford is not Tesla or Dodge
The Puma is based on the seventh-generation Fiesta platform. Puma is a B segment in Europe, Focus C segment in Europe (Focus is upper segment than Puma)
The Focus is a bigger car than the Puma, Focus is C segment with the same platform as the Kuga (Escape in the US).
The Puma has sold more because the Focus and Fiesta factories have been stopped due to lack of chips, and Ford is more interested in selling the Puma (manufactured in Romania) which is more profitable than a Fiesta or Focus made in Germany.
ST sports versions: Focus 2.3 280CV, Puma 1.5 200CV (the same as the Fiesta)
So the Focus is better than the Puma. But the Puma is cheaper to build (it’s just a Fiesta with a raised body).
So Ford promotes the Puma because it is more profitable, but the European customer will buy other brands.
In agreement. But Ford Europe will continue to lose market share with bad strategies.
It’s easy to make a Focus Plug-In Hybrid or HEV, because it uses the same platform as the Kuga (named Escape in the US) with HEV and PHEV versions.
The Focus was the best-selling car in the world for 4 years, and now the Toyota Corolla is the best-selling car in the world. The Asian and European markets need the Focus until 2030, In addition, the electric car will not be the majority in many countries for many years.
Don’t have to have the majority of sales to enjoy an outsized share of profit. This has been proven time and again.
It’s not easy or quick to just convert a powertrain just because another related vehicle has it. That ship sails at least 4 years before a vehicle debuts.
Ford’s not going to waste time or money converting those vehicles to PHEV when they will be replaced by BEV in a couple years.
Your understanding of things and your inferred logic is, well, it’s hogwash.
Therefore, it seems that there has been bad planning.
Discontinuing the Focus from Europe and Asia while the Toyota Corolla is the best-selling car in the world is not a good idea. In addition, Ford of Europe is having financial problems.
Close the German Focus factory, ok, but an alternative is needed, import it to Europe from Taiwan if necessary.
The electric car will not be the majority in Europe or Asia in the coming years. Ford should keep a car like the Focus in its range in Europe and Asia for longer. In many European and Asian countries, a car in this segment will be needed for more years.
Meanwhile, we will see Ford Europe struggling financially, losing market share and closing factories because they don’t sell enough. Unfortunately, it’s a bad decision.
Ford vans are a hit in Europe, but the rest is going badly.
All the best.
Planning is at best a long range forecast in many was being as much constrained by past sunk investment as forward looking projection mixed in with a dash of hope that the future will be like the past.
But as you may have read in the papers, the future is shaping up to not be a lot like the past, and these historical departures are accelerating, and increasing in frequency and amplitude, so forward planning, under such unstable and changing boundary conditions, may not be as accurate as past planning under more stable circumstances, but with this in mind, a reasonable person might see it as both an oversimplification and unfair to describe it as bad.
Oh look it’s the (stock shorting?) sentimental sedan (fetishising imbecilic sock puppet?) chauvinist.
Every comment the same. Sedan good. Ford no Sedan. Ford Bad. No buy Ford.
RWFA- you’ve got that super quality and Ford technology
2020-2022 FORD ESCAPE RECALLED OVER POTENTIAL FIRE RISK
Sign up for, and read, for nearly 2 decades, the Monday list of recalls from NHTSA, and you will see that Ford is not alone in things like this.
That said, Ford’s a much too frequent visitor on these lists, and so there’s a lot of potential for Ford to reduce its appearances in this list.
This should happen as new vehicles are rolled out over the next few years.
PS your drive-by outburst might carry a bit more gravitas if you deployed a modicum of punctuation and your boisterous use of caps didn’t approach infringing the 50% mark.
The reason the Pum has outsold the focus and fiesta is because dealers have been forced to put focus and fiesta customers into pumas as it’s the only car they can get hold of in a reasonable timeframe. Ford just aren’t building them quick enough. If stock levels were the same as pre-pandemic the fiesta & Focus would still be best sellers ahead of the Puma more than likely.
Because a higher center of gravity is always a good idea!