A Ford with a Cord : Ready to unplug from the gas pump and plug in to the future? The electric Ecostar won't shock you with spectacular performance

By PAUL DEAN

March 18, 1994 12 AM PT

Ford Motor Co., working with hastened technology and a hesitant commitment, is introducing new world electric motoring to the real world--worldwide.

More than 30 Ford Ecostars from an eventual test fleet of 100--the infant electric vehicle industry’s largest assembly of rolling laboratories--have already been delivered from Canada to Spain, from UPS in Sacramento to Commonwealth Edison in Chicago.

By July, most of these electric buzzers--based on two-seat, British-built mini-panel trucks--will be reassigned by utilities leasing them to delivery services and a few suburban families. Ford suggests, even insists, that test drivers use the vehicles as they would a gasoline-powered car. With only a 1-800 hot line as a safety net should a driver’s eyebrows start arcing during a rainstorm.

“That won’t happen,” says Ford spokesman John Clinard as he delivers a blue Ecostar, a 30-minute briefing, one field service electrician, several operating manuals and an additional piece of damp-driving advice: “Feel free to take Ecostar through a car wash.

“The vehicle also has a range of 100 miles, will run at freeway speeds up to 70 miles per hour, and you certainly will not have to stop at any service stations.”

Throughout seven days with Sparky, we stopped for nothing except daily destinations. The little van not only ran at freeway speeds, but actually passed many among the snorting, polluting, environmentally incorrect.

It accelerated almost as well as the breeziest subcompacts and regularly chirped its tires--experimental rubber inflated to 50 psi for reduced rolling resistance--on ribald starts. And it held that crisp performance whether the battery was 100% charged or dribbling flat.

Sparky survived night trips, with headlights burning and the radio explaining why we were locked in the four-lane metal ingot that is the San Diego Freeway these days. The 1-800 hot line was not called; gasoline-powered vehicles parked in reserve at both ends of the day’s business were not needed; fuses remained unblown and circuits unbroken in the vehicle and at home.

At the end of 600 miles--and recalling EVs driven since ecologists, futurists and governments began sentencing modern motoring to the electric chair--one conclusion is clear: Although short on performance extremes and expensive to purchase, Ford’s Ecostar fits the crowded, sluggish mainstream of everyday commuting as well as any gasoline-powered counterpart.

Will it impress Porsche purists and souls that surge to engine noise, hot energy and the challenge of fast, precise passage?

Nah .

Can Ford bring it to market by the end of the century for under $50,000?

Unlikely .

But could Ecostar succeed as a local runabout where short-haul delivery capability, not spiritual self-indulgence, is the issue?

Absolutely.

Throughout our no-quarter wring-out, each turn of Ecostar’s wheels and every spin of its 300-volt motor were recorded by on-board black boxes.

So it is with the international test fleet.

At the end of the 30-month evaluation, the 100 cars will be collected, data collated and Ford will be that much wiser in meeting The Mandate--a 1990 order by the California Air Resources Board dictating that 2% of all new vehicles sold in the state in 1998 will be emission-free, i.e. electric vehicles. Or manufacturers will lose their certification to sell in California.

Detroit’s Big Three--pleading high costs, low performance, weak public interest in electric vehicles and retarded battery technology--want the deadline rolled back. The ruling will be reviewed in May; so far, the California board hasn’t budged.

“We have a mandate to sell electric vehicles,” says Pam Kueber, an environmental communications manager for Ford. “Unfortunately, there is no mandate to buy.”

Meanwhile, domestic car builders have maintained reluctant electrical progress--Chrysler with some experimental vans; GM with its Impact, a two-place commuter car that will be shipped out for public testing later this year, and the Ecostar.

Ford’s brighter idea cost $100 million. That makes each test vehicle worth $1 million, a smug satisfaction when pulling alongside a Rolls-Royce on the Santa Ana Freeway.

About $5 million was spent custom-developing a unique sodium-sulfur battery, hermetically sealed in a stainless steel thermos. It produces five times the driving range of a more conventional lead-acid battery weighing the same 770 pounds.

Full resuscitation takes seven hours when plugged into a 220-volt system via a charging station no bigger than a one-suiter on wheels. Or 27 hours if hooked to a 110-volt household outlet. Partial recharging takes less time.

There’s 12 feet of on-board charging cord that reels through a small trap door in the grille and into a housing beneath the hood where the engine used to be. The engine bay is now filled by the electronics center--battery charging systems, inverters and a converter to charge a 12-volt battery for auxiliary accessories.

Fuel costs, according to Ford’s calculations, with all variables considered, should be about 2 cents a mile. That compares favorably to 6 cents a mile for an average gasoline-powered vehicle.

Ford claims that the battery cannot leak, is virtually indestructible and no more volatile than 1.5 gallons of unleaded. The impact to release that energy, of course, would make guacamole out of car and all who rode in it.

Temperament and cost are downsides.

To achieve maximum life and efficiency, the battery--flat and invisible beneath the rear floor of the van--maintains an optimum operating temperature of about 600 degrees Fahrenheit by eating its own power. Parked unplugged for 12 hours, the battery chills below critical levels and might not respond to recharge.

And a replacement battery, even with the car in production, could cost about $15,000. Under normal circumstances, says program manager Robert Kiessel, the life of an Ecostar battery would be “guessing . . . at three to five years. It is almost entirely recyclable.

“We have done a terrific job of moving EV technology forward, yet we are criticized for a lack of commitment. We’re not opposing the mandate because of knee-jerk negativism. We are concerned that rushing this technology into the marketplace is not going to produce happy Ford customers.”

Ecostar is front-driven by a three-phase, 75-horsepower, AC electric motor coupled to a single-speed transaxle. It’s likely the only vehicle where freeway stops actually become something of a blessing--because braking converts the motor into a generator. Regenerative braking restores as much as 15% of the battery power.

Despite broad use of magnesium, aluminum and composite materials for wheels, transaxle casing, rear springs, load floor and bulkheads, the Ecostar weighs in at 3,100 pounds--heavier than a Saturn and about equal to a Ford Taurus.

Carrying capacity is less than a half-ton, which is pretty good for an EV but rather sparse for other forms of wheeled delivery.

Piloting an Ecostar requires few changes from internal-combustion techniques. It’s odd to key-start an engine that bursts into life in total silence. There is air conditioning aboard, but only a diesel heater. Do not expect the options list to include power steering, power brakes, power windows or other high-energy accessories that could drain travels to around seven blocks.

And no fuel gauges. Just one dial reporting miles remaining to full discharge and another telling the percentage of power left in the battery.

Ecostar runs hills as effortlessly and speedily as it travels freeway flats. We used a 110-volt charge at home and a 220-volt jolt at the office.

Yet daily commuting from Woodland Hills to Downtown--with side trips for pastrami at Canter’s and to visit a sick buddy at Cedars-Sinai--never saw available energy fall below 50% at day’s end. The real surprise is realizing how few days one actually travels more than 100 miles.

Ecostar blends perfectly with traffic and draws no curious stares because it doesn’t have the golf cart look and doesn’t limp along like a transportation experiment. One motorist, in fact, presumed Sparky’s door decals to be a promotion and the car a gasoline-powered wolf in EV clothing.

Sadly, Ecostar failed its ultimate test.

We teased and taunted and stretched Sparky’s mettle on several freeways beneath the Ray-Bans of motoring’s ultimate arbitrators.

Nobody seemed hungry for a place in the Guinness Book of World Records as the first police officer to give a speeding ticket to an electric vehicle.

Paul Dean’s Behind the Wheel column is published every other Friday.

1994 Ford Ecostar EV

Cost

* Base, and as tested: $1 million (includes manual steering, crank windows, horn, diesel-oil heater, sodium sulfur battery producing 330 volts, but no air bags.)

Engine

* Three-phase AC electric motor developing 75 horsepower.

Type

* Two-seat delivery van and an electric vehicle experiment with a $7,000 paint job.

Performance

* 0-60 m.p.h., as tested, 13.8 seconds.

* Top speed, as tested, 74 m.p.h.

* 100-mile range on seven-hour charge from 220-volt system.

Curb Weight

* 3,100 pounds.

The Good

* Zero emissions vehicle with petrol-powered potential.