The last Ford Fiesta rolled off the production line about a week ago, on July 7, 2023. It’s a sad moment considering the model has been in production for 47 years and was popular in many countries. However, Ford isn’t ready to say goodbye to a car that sold some 20 million units and is looking to Volkswagen for help.
Ford’s head of passenger cars for Europe, Martin Sander, has told Automotive News that they have “a very constructive and positive cooperation with Volkswagen, and we are possibly exploring opportunities to take that to the next level.”
The small segment has been the biggest victim of the recent transition to electric cars. Many affordable cars have been discontinued because it’s too expensive to develop new ones in time for the Euro 7 regulations coming in 2025. Some companies, such as Peugeot and Opel, offer small EVs based on their existing supermini platforms.
Volkswagen has set an ambitious goal of having a small, affordable EV in its lineup within the next few years. That car is the ID.2, which has already been previewed by an interesting concept and is said to cost from €25,000 ($28,000).
The preview concept, called ID.2all, is roughly the size of the VW Polo, which was the Ford Fiesta’s main rival. The German prototype promised 226 horsepower from one electric motor, a 0 to 62 mph time of under 7 seconds, and a maximum range of about 280 miles (450 km). What’s interesting is that the ID.2 is front-engined, like a Fiesta and Polo, not rear-engined like an ID.3 or ID.4.
The ID.2 is actually crucial for Volkswagen because there’s a wave of affordable EVs being imported from China. The production version is expected in 2025, but Ford isn’t rushing to develop its own version.
Sander said the Fiesta EV wouldn’t be a top development priority, even if it received the green light. This is because Ford doesn’t have the production scale of VW and doesn’t want to make a car that only sells in Europe. We think this is a mistake because the Fiesta used to be the best-selling car in the UK, so it has a lot of potential.
The 2025 Explorer EV is the perfect example of what Ford actually wants to do. It’s an electric crossover based on VW’s MEB platform and closely related to the ID.4. The factory in Cologne, Germany that made the Fiesta is being converted to produce the Explorer, and there’s a twin model which we believe to be a coupe-SUV called the Capri EV.
