Ford E-Transit gets 186-mile option starting May 11, vanlifers rejoice

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https://electrek.co/2023/05/02/excl...ile-option-starting-may-11-vanlifers-rejoice/

Exclusive: Ford E-Transit gets 186-mile option starting May 11, vanlifers rejoice
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Jameson Dow| May 2 2023 - 10:54 am PT

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Credit: Ford Motor Co.
Ford will announce a larger extended-range battery option for their market-leading E-Transit electric van on May 11. The new battery will have an estimated 186 miles of range.

We’re at ACT Expo this week, the industry’s largest advanced truck expo, where we met with Ted Cannis, CEO of Ford Pro, Ford’s commercial vehicle arm. Cannis gave us some insight into how Ford’s commercial vehicle programs are going.

But more importantly, he also gave us an exclusive tip that Ford will release an extended range E-Transit option on May 11, with a 186-mile range, up from the current E-Transit’s 126 miles. The current 126-mile option will remain available as a base model for fleets who don’t want to pay for more than what they need.

Ford may be using the same or similar battery pack from the F-150 Lightning base model for this. The Lightning has a 98kWh battery, which would be about the size we would expect from the E-Transit extended range battery, given their relative ranges (about 50% more range, about 50% more battery). We’ll get more specific information on the battery on May 11.

The new E-Transit will include a faster AC charger at 19.2kW, enabling faster charging from Ford’s 80-amp Charge Station Pro or any other charger capable of delivering enough juice. With about 100kWh of battery, this means it will take about five hours to charge from 0%-100%.

Cannis told us that in speaking with commercial customers, Ford has found that charging is one of the main points of concern for fleets. Some fleets have it easy, with vehicles with light-duty cycles that return to a depot every night.

But Ford offers the E-Transit in several different configurations to be used by all sorts of fleets and businesses, and some of them don’t have as reliable charging access as others. For example, some fleet vehicles get taken home by workers, and some of those workers might live in apartments or places that don’t have convenient charging.

So with faster AC charging and a bigger battery, this should help enable more fleets to make use of the E-Transit. Cannis mentioned that these improvements could be of particular interest to some construction fleets, who sometimes have to move long distances from site to site, or any fleet that has a niche situation that only allows more occasional charging.

We’ve seen a lot of companies building interesting solutions on the E-Transit, from school buses to RVs. To step away from fleet solutions for a moment, bigger batteries could definitely be of interest to the latter group, to overlanders who will move a long distance in one day and then park for a while at their next stop.

Winnebago used the E-Transit to build its first electric RV, and our own Scooter Doll got a chance to try it out.
Ford currently has approximately half the electric van market in the US and Europe, making it the market leader by a significant margin. The next-biggest producer of electric vans is Rivian, but it serves only one customer at the moment – Amazon.

In its first year, the E-Transit has already helped save 745,000 gallons of gas over 12 million miles, and Ford says it can help reduce lifetime fleet CO2 by 57%.

Order banks will open later this quarter, but we’ll learn more information about that, and about the new extended-range E-Transit, on May 11.
 
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ChasingCoral

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and in related news:
https://electrek.co/2023/05/01/ford...ransit-electric-school-bus-orders-open-today/

Ford and Collins share specs for E-transit electric school bus, orders open today
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Jameson Dow| May 1 2023 - 4:45 pm PT
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The E-Transit Type A school bus, which Ford showcased back in March, is now available for orderfrom Collins Bus Corporation, one of the leading US school bus manufacturers.

The E-Transit is currently the leader of the US electric van market, with about 60% of last year’s EV van sales. But the E-Transit isn’t just a cargo van; you can also buy it as a cutaway chassis which can then be upfitted with various containers on the back, depending on what niche you want the vehicle to fill.

Collins is a bus manufacturer that Ford has worked with to fill that niche with a traditional yellow American school bus on Ford’s all-electric chassis.

The bus is a “Type A,” which is the smallest type of school bus, typically built on a cutaway van chassis – like that of the E-transit. “Type C” is the stereotypical purpose-built long, yellow bus that most often comes to mind when thinking of school buses.

The E-Transit school bus will be able to hold a dozen seated passengers or eight seated passengers and two wheelchairs in an alternate floor plan.

It maintains the 68 kWh capacity of the E-Transit van, which is good for about 100 miles of range after upfitting the vehicle through Collins. The plain cargo E-Transit gets 126 miles of range, according to Ford, but 100 should be more than enough for most school buses and their short daily routes.

Collins is not the only manufacturer who will use Ford’s school bus package, but Ford wanted to highlight Collins since the two had worked together on the original demo vehicle shown back in March.

Ford also shared some additional specs of its School Bus Prep Package with us:
Ford’s Type A School Bus Prep Package is offered on E-Transit T-350 low roof extended 178” single-rear-wheel cutaway and includes these features to adhere with school bus chassis compliance requirements:
  • Safety Glass (65B)
  • Right Hand Door Delete (60X)
  • Dual AGM Batteries (63E)
  • Separate Stop Turn Tail Lamp – LED Enabled (43Q)
  • Auxiliary Fuse Panel with High Spec Interface Connector (87E)
  • Dual-note Horn (85D)
  • Modified Vehicle Wiring System (53K)
Other specs unique to this offering include:
  • Pro Power Onboard
  • Twin-I-Beam front suspension
  • Tilt Steering
  • TorqShift® five-speed automatic overdrive transmission
  • Front stabilizer bar with HD front and rear shock
Notably, the bus has Ford’s Pro Power Onboard, which is the company’s branding for its bidirectional charging feature. This isn’t a full vehicle-to-grid feature, but rather vehicle-to-load, which means the bus can be used to charge devices but not to send power back to the grid (like we just saw a Canadian town doing with Lion Electric’s LionC).

And the E-Transit’s dual AGM batteries will help power auxiliary climate controls in cold or hot weather.

Pricing is based on the cost of a Ford E-Transit cutaway plus additional upfit costs from the distributor. The cutaway itself starts at $49,575, which is about $9k more than the gas version. But that’s before various EV school bus incentives and the Clean School Bus program, which can make these incredibly cheap for districts.

This is a big difference from other electric school buses, which can cost three times as much as their gas counterparts.

The bus is available for order now, and you can contact your local Collins bus dealer for more information including pricing. First deliveries are expected in October 2023.

Update: A previous version of this article incorrectly identified Pro Power Onboard as a V2G feature, rather than V2L. The text has been updated to be more accurate.

Electrek’s Take
We love seeing the electrification of government vehicles like this – buses, garbage trucks, mail delivery vehicles, etc.

Oftentimes, the duty cycle for these vehicles is perfect for electrification. They do short, predefined routes every day. They stop and start a lot. They drive through residential communities where noise and air pollution are even less desirable than everywhere else. And they need to be reliable. Electrification is a perfect solution.

For school buses, it’s even more important because young kids ride in them, and having better air quality is extra important to young lungs. Air pollution from vehicles is a major contributor to childhood asthma, so getting our kids away from dirty diesel buses is of paramount importance.
People seem to really love electric school buses, which is why they’ve been taking off around the US. In just the last six months, the number of committed electric school bus purchases in the US has almost doubled. And that number will probably go even higher after California’s new electric truck rule, which was implemented last week.

We’ll get a chance to look at Ford’s electric school bus this week at ACT Expo, the industry’s largest advanced truck expo, going on from May 1-4 in Anaheim.
 

JamieGeek

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LOL Well I don't think Van Lifers will rejoice that much. 186 miles isn't a whole lot...

Sure its about double the old range of the Transit but nothing like what they expect.
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