Ford just unveiled its $45,000 all-electric Transit van it says will be 40% cheaper to maintain than the gas-powered one
Brittany Chang
- Ford has unveiled its latest electric vehicle, the 2022 E-Transit van for a targeted price of $45,000.
- The E-Transit will be available as cargo, cutaway, or chassis cab versions, and will have three different height and body length options.
- The electrified vans will be built at Ford's Kansas City Assembly Plant in Missouri and will be available late 2021.
Ford has unveiled its first fully electric Ford Transit van: the 2022 E-Transit, which starts at a targeted $45,000.
The new van is a part of the automaker's goal to become carbon neutral by 2050, according to a statement from Ford CEO and president Jim Farley in a news release announcing the E-Transit. However, this announcement is just one of several electric vehicles Ford currently has in its lineup: the automaker's electric Mustang Mach-E will be released later this year, and its electric F-150 will be hitting the roads in 2022.
Read more: The real electric car revolution has already taken shape with extremely capable plug-in hybrids
The new electrified iteration of the van has the same interior cargo measurements and mounting points as the traditional Transit. According to the automaker, this is helpful for upfitting and modification companies, including camper van converters that rely on the popular Ford Transit as the base for tiny homes on wheels.
The new zero-emissions van will be built at Ford's Kansas City Assembly Plant in Missouri, which the automaker recently invested $100 million into. The van will then be available in late 2021, and currently has a $45,000 price tag for the cutaway model specifically. For context, the van will be available in three different versions: cargo, cutaway, or chassis cab.
The E-Transit will also come with three roof height and body length options, and the high roof version will have enough standing room to accommodate someone as tall as six-foot, nine-inches.
According to a statement from Ford North America's general manager of commercial business Ted Cannis, the E-Transit is good for commercial drivers who operate in cities and have consistent driving routes and distances.
To cater to this customer segment, the new vans will have “monitoring softwares” and “connected solutions for fleets.”
Source: Ford
“E-Transit is a data-rich, connected platform that will help our fleet customers unlock greater productivity,” Ford chief product platform operations officer Hau Thai-Tang said in a statement. “The value for our commercial customers grows over time as more connected vehicles join the network.”
Source: Ford
Other fleet-directed features include "charging reports" that could allow drivers to be reimbursed by their managers for at-home charging.
The E-Transit was created with customer telematics information that encompassed 30 million miles, according to its maker. This data led Ford to find that the average commercial van drives about 74 miles daily.
Source: Ford
This in turn helped Ford settle on the E-Transit's 126-mile range for the low-roof cargo model.
The high-roof extended wheelbase's cargo space encompasses 487.3 cubic feet ...
... and the new electric van may have between a 3,800-pound to 4,290-pound maximum payload capacity depending on the model.
It also currently has a predicted 266 horsepower and 317 pound-feet of torque with the help of its 67 kilowatt-hour capable 400-volt lithium-ion battery.
Maintaining an electric Transit will be about 40% less expensive than a traditional gas-powered 2020 Transit, according to its maker.
Like almost all electric vehicles nowadays, E-Transit charging options vary to include at-home chargers, public charging stations, and depot charging for fleets of vans.
The electric van comes with a Ford Mobile Charger that is compatible with a 120-volt and 240-volt outlet for slower and faster charging, respectively. A 240-volt outlet will charge the low-roof cargo van about 10 miles per hour.
Customers can also buy a Ford Connected Charge Station that can charge the van 100% in eight hours at home and about 15 miles in an hour.
Drivers with the low-roof cargo model charging with a 115-kilowatt DC fast charger can hit a 30-mile charge in about 10 minutes, and a 45-mile charge in about 15 minutes.
In terms of extra tech, the E-Transit comes with a 4G LTE modem for more connectivity, which could be convenient for companies operating a fleet of E-Transits.
The van can optionally be delivered with Pro Power Onboard, which has a 2.4-kilowatt power bank that can juice up any extra equipment, such as laptops and power tools.
The E-Transit also has a "pre-conditioning" service that can regulate the interior temperature while the van is charging, therefore increasing the battery's efficiency.
Like other Ford vehicles, the van has several of its maker's proprietary systems, such as SYNC 4 with a 12-inch touch screen, navigation, and voice recognition.
READ MORE ARTICLES ON
Popular Right Now
Popular Keywords
Advertisement