While U.S. consumers can opt for a PHEV version of the Fusion or C-Max, European customers have had to look elsewhere.
This could change soon, however.
Automotive News reports Ford is “actively considering” bringing over a PHEV to go up against offerings from Volkswagen, Mitsubishi, Toyota and Volvo, according to vehicle line director for large cars in Europe, Uli Koesters.
The reason the Blue Oval hadn’t planned on playing the game? Low demand in Europe for PHEVs overall. Koesters could immediately bring a PHEV to market, such as one based upon the Fusion’s European cousin, the Mondeo, but only if the interest is there:
I believe the plug-in take-up in Europe is not quite as ready as some people would like to think, but it is clearly a technology that can do a lot better at significantly reducing fuel consumption and that is why we are actively looking at it.
At the moment, the most popular PHEV is the Mitsubishi Outlander, with 8,953 units sold in H1 2014. Volvo, meanwhile, sold the fewest PHEVs in the same period, moving only 3,233 V60s.
If Europe gets the C-Max Hybrid, I think it’s only fair that we get the C-Max diesel.
Or at least a non-hybrid ecoboost version…with a manual trans.
I’ll accept your compromise.
I’ll only agree to the compromise if the C_Max comes in Coco Brown.
Additional provision that the vehicle must be totally restyled in order to look not-crashed.
Thanks to hefty subsidies, most of these PHEV’s are sold in The Netherlands:
H1 Outlander: 5121 units (95 % of all Outlanders!)
Q1-3: 6554
H1 V60 Plug-in Hybrid: 2084 (58 % of all V60’s sold)
Q1-3: 2524
In several months, the Outlander even managed to become the best selling car here.
Provided that these PHEV’s Fords will be introduced in Europe before the end of 2015, I think Ford will sell quite a few in The Netherlands. However, due to the huge success of these models, subsidies for PHEV’s will be greatly reduced in the coming years, so Ford has to hurry (it is becoming to costly for our government). This will especially hurt Mitsu, since almost 2/3 of Mitsubishis sold are Outlander PHEV’s.