Ford teases new electric crossover coming next year to Europe

General Manager of Ford Europe, Martin Sander, just teased the upcoming electric crossover that is planned to replace the outgoing Fiesta early next year. The company is completely refreshing its European portfolio with EVs taking over from its gasoline and diesel powered predecessors.

Until now, Ford kept its first all-electric crossover away from prying eyes but Sander couldn’t help himself and posted a photo of himself next to the car, on Twitter. He confirmed as well that the unveiling is just around the corner and that the car will be manufactured in Cologne, Germany.

It all falls into place now - Fiesta is bowing out after decades of service and the factory where it was made is undergoing a multi-million refit to be able to produce the next generation electric cars. The refit is scheduled to be completed in March which is exactly when the production crossover will be unveiled with production to begin in July that year.

Although only a small part of the car was shown in the photo, we can realize there is a brand new light signature, not too-different from the one on Ford F-150 Lightning. We can fully appreciate the size of the upcoming EV and the general shape of it - we are certainly looking at a smaller Ford Explorer with familiar angles and stance.

Ford wants its new EV to compete with the likes of Nissan Ariya and Toyota bZ4X but the company executives avoided mentioning VW ID 4 - that’s because essentially, the new Ford will be a dressed-up ID 4. That’s maybe too strong of a statement - the two cars will share the MEB (soon to be MEB+) platform and will be competitors in the same way the Skoda Enyaq competes with its siblings from VW.

The design will be completely different and judging from just that one corner, we can safely say Ford will look strong. The hood line is high and the front is chunky with strong wheel arches and big wheels - the car will look ready for adventure and that’s the message Ford wants to send to the potential buyers.

The new design ethos the company is employing for its future European electric cars is called “Adventurous Spirit” and the company claims it is simply channeling the 120 years of Ford’s traditions into the new designs.

Ford is dividing all of its new electric cars into four families - Active Adventure, Wild Performance, Ultimate Outdoors and Urban Escape. The new MEB based crossover falls into the Active Adventure group thanks to its AWD drivetrain and medium size.

Ford plans to use one of its classic names for the upcoming model and apparently there will be a sportier version of it as well. It will be interesting to see if the Ford gets to use the new MEB+ platform with up to 700 km of range or will it be given access to the current MEB only. Still - a 220 kW (299 hp) AWD Ford crossover sounds like a winner even if it's only getting 483 km range like its VW ID 4 GTX sibling.

Via