Ford Focus Electric Certified at 105 MPGe Combined

The EPA has bestowed upon the Ford Focus Electric a 105-MPGe combined economy rating, earning the car, in the words of Ford, the title of “most fuel-efficient five-passenger vehicle” sold in America. The Blue Oval, as champions are sometimes wont to do, has commenced trash-talking the Nissan Leaf. (More on MPGe here.)



Ford points out that the Focus’s combined figure beats that of Nissan’s EV by 6 MPGe, and that it also takes the highway-mileage crown by 7 MPGe, returning 99 MPGe. We’ll go ahead and add that the Ford also beats the Leaf in the city, 110 MPGe to 106. The Focus also received an official range rating of 76 miles on a single charge. The Leaf trails in that metric, too, with an EPA-approved range of 73 miles, although we averaged just 58 miles per charge during our long-term test of the Nissan. We’d expect Focus Electric range to similarly suffer in real-world conditions.

As for charge time, Ford says the Focus’s 23-kWh battery pack can be rejuvenated in about four hours on 240-volt juice, or three fewer than the seven hours required to charge the Leaf’s 24-kWh battery pack using the same hookup. The Focus Electric gets 123 hp and 181 lb-ft from its electric motor; the Leaf’s pumps out 107 hp and 207 lb-ft.

The Focus Electric will be available in California, New York, and New Jersey by this summer, and Ford will add 16 additional markets by the end of the year. One detail that Ford fails to mention is that, at $39,995 before tax credits, its hatchback EV starts $3000 dearer than the Leaf.

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LeMons Southern Discomfort Day One : Saab 9-3 Leads, Silver Errors 190E 2.3-16 in Second

With the Midwest tornadoes putting the concept of “bad weather” into perspective, the Southern Discomfort LeMons racers took a rainy green flag at Carolina Motorsports Park with nary a complaint. The downpours, however, did encourage a healthy amount of spinnin,’ slidin,’ and drivin’ full speed into ta’dirt in your Monte Carlo. Of course, this event marked the first time the LeMons has run the longer, trickier, and much faster full-length CMP configuration. With the soggy weather and higher-speed layout, even the best-handling cars struggled to keep all the wheels pointing the right way. (Monte Carlos didn’t stand a chance.)

As is often the case, however, such conditions don’t seem to affect the frontrunners nearly as much as the lower ranks–by the time the checkered flag fell on Saturday’s session, the top spots were filled with familiar faces.



With once-proud Saab quickly slipping into oblivion, the race-leading 9-3 sedan of rbankracing.com is providing a pinpoint of light for the vegetative automaker. Or it’s possible that this Saab-centric team’s consistently excellent LeMons performances pushed the Swedish brand off the cliff more quickly. In any case, the 9-3′s turbocharged speed and clean-driving pilots will be difficult to beat on Sunday.



The Ziegel Scheißhaus Racing squad—competing this time under the Silver Errors banner—managed to score a genuine Mercedes-Benz 190E 2.3-16 for LeMons money. Before you cry foul, remember this: Any Gordon Gekko wannabe worth his Rolex Submariner would have dumped his 2.3-16 at the first signs of trouble—which likely happened for every example right around the same time as the fall of the Berlin Wall. A ragtag bunch of careless owners likely followed, culminating in a lien sale from a 17-year-old owner who got sent to juvie after going DTM down Maple Street. That’s just one possibility, of course, but one thing is clear: Not all 2.3-16s are classics. The ZSR LeMons entry certainly isn’t a museum piece, but it’s DTM impression is halfway decent: Second place overall is a good result regardless of pedigree.



Holding down the third spot is one of the most successful LeMons teams of all time, Hong Norrth. In fact, the team’s trusty Mazda MX3 has won the last five races it’s entered, so it’s way too early to count them out.



NSF Racing is rolling proof that LeMons is highly unpredictable. After this very blog predicted an early demise for the team’s factory-turbo Cordia, this example of a seldom-seen Mitsubishi soldiered (slowly) through day one with no terminal issues. Through the first half of the day, NSF held a lead over a handful of other teams with which they had friendly pre-race wagers. The cars in on the bet? The Cordia, a Ford LTD, a ’67 Galaxie, and the first-ever LeMons AMC Pacer.



But after spending the second half of day one battling a self-lowering redline, the Cordia crew finally had to break out the wrenches. The culprit—which we’ll charitably call “fuel contamination”—was eventually identified and remedied. The Cordia rejoined the track as the session was near its end, promptly setting NSF Racing’s (still glacially slow) fastest lap of the race.



With the Cordia taking a short vacation on pit road, the hulking Ford LTD of the LeMons-veteran Tunachuckers team surged ahead in the aforementioned unofficial race-within-a race. With the big Ford clicking off consistently quicker lap times than the Cordia, the Mitsubishi team will need an LTD problem on Sunday to retake the lead. Just by taking a quick glance at this rolling oil derrick, we’d say a problem is pretty likely.

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