The Ford Focus is a monster of a hot hatch. I had the chance to review it back in 2016 and since then Ford have made it even better. Now looking at the future of the nameplate, they’re considering a hybrid option.
According to AutoCar, UK, a senior Ford executive said:
“We are waiting for our engineering team to come up with a solution on the powertrain and that is not easy given the new fleet CO2 regulations.”
I’ve got a solution.. go fully electric! The Focus RS is a car that perfectly walks the line of fun and performance. The future of performance is clear, with electric drivetrains offering supercar level of acceleration.
In a hot hatch, it’s all about bursting off the line in anger, rather than hitting a massive top-speed. To add to the fun, the Focus RS featured a drift mode and right now, there’s very few EVs that offer drift modes.
This could definitely be a nice part of the market for Ford to carve out. Of course use of the drift mode could be restricted to locations where the car knows it’s on the track.
The biggest issue for fans of the RS to wrap their head around would be the change in sound, but judging from what Ford have said about their Mach-E product, they’re already experimenting with EV soundtracks.
Part of Ford’s motivation to move to a hybrid drivetrain is to meet strict, new emission standards in the EU. A fully EV powertrain would be the best way of responding to those standards.
Given the Focus RS features an all-wheel-drive setup, an EV version should offer the same. With the learnings gained from manufacturing the Mach-E dual-motor, AWD edition, Ford should have no worries punching that into the Focus RS.
The Focus Electric never made it’s way to Australia, however Ford engineers have experience with electrification on this platform already.
Whether you think of the Focus RS Electric as a scaled up Focus or a downsized Mach-E, a car like that has the potential to be a cult-smash with crazy power, without a massive price tag and could go a long way to show Ford’s efforts in electrification are serious, right across their product portfolios.
