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Bill Ford Jr. says company’s EVs will be green but focus on performance

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It’s no secret that

Ford

is working on a Mustang-inspired

electric crossover

, possibly

to be called the “Mach E” or maybe “Mach-E

,” that will have a range of more than 300 miles, and it reportedly

showed it to top dealers

during the Blue Oval’s annual confab last fall in Las Vegas.

But a comment Monday from

Ford

Chairman

Bill Ford Jr

. highlights a shift in how the company views

EVs

going forward, and suggests that a performance-oriented

crossover

EV may be closer to the norm than an outlier.

“When we first started talking about electrification, there was this thought that there had to be a tradeoff: It was either going to be green and boring and no fun, or really exciting but burn a lot of fossil fuels,”

Automotive News quoted

Ford as saying during a luncheon event. “Electrification has come to the point that you can do both.”

That represents a significant evolution in the automaker’s thinking from its first go-round on

electric vehicles

, represented by the likes of the

Focus Electric

and the

C-Max plug-in hybrid

. Both focused more on maximizing

fuel economy

than horsepower, and both are now discontinued. That’s left Ford relatively bereft of electrified options — though the

Fusion Energi

PHEV lives on, for now — at a time when it’s ramping up efforts around EVs via its new Team Edison unit and is feeling pressured by Wall Street to demonstrate that it has a solid vision for electrification, among other things.

Beyond the battery-electric

crossover

, which arrives in 2020, we know that Ford is already

planning a hybrid Mustang for 2020

and is mulling the idea of an all-electric variant of the venerable pony car. It’s also working on an

all-electric version of its best-selling F-150

.

Pairing electrification with the kind of muscle traditionally reserved for big, thirsty combustion engines is hardly a novel strategy these days. It’s practically

Rivian

‘s raison d’être, and it has echoes in EVs like the next-generation

Tesla Roadster

and the upcoming

Porsche Taycan

. It just might be a smart bet by Ford, and it could also be one reason that its partnership talks with

Volkswagen

, while reportedly nearing fruit on developing self-driving vehicles, are

struggling to find common ground for teaming on EVs

.

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