Ford Reveals Its VW-Based EV Crossover for Europe, the Explorer

Ford has revealed a new EV model for Europe called the Explorer.This compact SUV will be built in Germany and is based on Volkswagen’s MEB platform.There is also an Explorer EV slated for the U.S., but it will likely be considerably larger than this one.

Ford has promised that an electric version of the familiar Explorer three-row SUV is coming to the U.S. sometime soon, but this is not that car. Instead, this Ford Explorer is a new, smaller electric crossover built in Germany that’s exclusively for the European market. It uses Volkswagen’s MEB platform as part of a partnership between Ford and VW and is set to go on sale later this year.

Ford hasn’t provided exact dimensions for this Explorer EV, but to us it looks like a compact SUV in the vein of the Escape or Bronco Sport that we get in the U.S. It has a modern-looking grille-less face, a relatively low-slung but still boxy shape, and interesting details including a slatted design element on the C-pillar and chunky wheel patterns. Inside, it has a large 14.6-inch vertical touchscreen and a digital gauge cluster, plus a spacious center console and a lockable compartment behind the screen. It’s a two-row setup with five seats, and Ford claims 17 cubic feet of cargo space behind the rear seat.

We don’t know the powertrain specs on the Explorer yet, either, but we figure it will have similarly sized battery packs as the Volkswagen ID.4, which offers 58.0-kWh and 77.0-kWh battery packs. Ford says it will offer rear- and all-wheel drive versions, so we figure outputs will range from under 200 hp for the base version up to over 300 hp for the top models.

Ford will produce the Explorer in Cologne, Germany, and it’s slated only for Europe at this point. Pricing starts at the equivalent of $48,000 and Ford is taking reservations now. We doubt we’ll see this model come to the U.S., but it could give us an idea of how the Blue Oval’s future electric SUV models will look. A second larger MEB-based Ford electric crossover is set to arrive in Europe next year, and we’ve previously speculated that that one could end up in the U.S.

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Senior Editor

Despite being raised on a steady diet of base-model Hondas and Toyotas—or perhaps because of it—Joey Capparella nonetheless cultivated an obsession for the automotive industry throughout his childhood in Nashville, Tennessee. He found a way to write about cars for the school newspaper during his college years at Rice University, which eventually led him to move to Ann Arbor, Michigan, for his first professional auto-writing gig at Automobile Magazine. He has been part of the Car and Driver team since 2016 and now lives in New York City.