2012 Ford Focus all-electric car offers a faint glimmer of hope for an oil independent future
Latest news, World news Saturday, April 2nd, 2011Introducing Ford’s new 100% gas-free 2012 Ford Focus Electric. Has Ford entered the race to free the World of oil dependency by building an all-electric car? The 2012 Ford Focus Electric all-electric car appears to offer a glimmer of hope for an oil independent future.
Did you know that electric cars came BEFORE gas-powered cars? The United States joined the electric car club around the turn of the twentieth century, when New York City got a fleet of electrically-powered taxis. People preferred electrics to gasmobiles hands down in those days. They liked electrics so much because they were quiet, quick, and didn’t spew choking smoke. There were three hundred companies making electric cars in the early 1900’s, and more than 30,000 electric vehicles on roads. Electric cars looked like they were here to stay. So what happened?
When electric cars first went into mass production, they were primarily made for, and marketed to, WOMEN. Electric cars were popular in the late-19th century and early 20th century, until Henry Ford (the founder of the Ford Motor Company) started tinkering around with a gas-powered, internal combustion engine. Ford was trying to become one of the Big Three.
Advances in internal combustion engine technology including greater range of gasoline cars, quicker refueling times, and growing petroleum infrastructure, along with the mass production of gasoline vehicles by companies such as the Ford Motor Company, which reduced prices of gasoline cars to less than half that of equivalent electric cars, led to a decline in the use of electric propulsion, effectively removing it from important markets such as the United States by the 1930s.
Global concerns over the environmental impact of gasoline cars, along with reduced consumer ability to pay for fuel for gasoline cars, and the prospect of peak oil, has brought about renewed interest in electric cars. Electric cars are perceived to be more environmentally friendly and cheaper to maintain and run, despite high initial purchase costs.
However, just like in the 1930s, the Ford Motors Company is mass producing only gasoline vehicles. They are producing a limited quantities of the Ford Focus Electric cars. The retail price for the Ford Focus Electric will be double the ticket price of their Ford Focus gasoline cars. Why introduce a electric vehicle at all if you still intend on selling them for double the cost of your equivalent gasoline car? Ford knows that you and I, the consumer, will always chose the cheapest of the 2. If Ford’s gasoline cars are cheaper than their electric cars the gasoline car will always be driven off their new car lots first. It is Ford’s newest marketing scheme – dangling a carrot. The Ford Focus Electric carrot is being dangled there as bait.
Ford is displaying the Ford Focus Electric (the carrot) in their new car showrooms in order to get you into their showrooms. Newspaper and billboard ads have been lavishly and craftily created using a carrot to draw you to their showrooms. After we take the bait and are drawn into their showrooms and marvel over all the wonderful things it can do the salesperson then hits us with the price tag. They know only people who are ready to buy a car will take the time out of their very busy life to actually go into a showroom. They know that by putting an electric car (a carrot) in with their cheaper gasoline vehicles you and I will be more receptive to buying their cheaper gasoline vehicle. Instead of driving away in a new environmentally friendly electric car that uses no gasoline and emits zero CO2 emissions you will be driving away in a war causing (Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Libya), global warming causing and disease causing (cancer, heart disease, asthma,, etc.,) gasoline powered vehicle. Ford is banking on you and I buying what we can a-ford.
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