Ford Had A Working Electric Van More Than 25 Years Ago

General Motors gets a lot of blame for killing the electric car in 1999 after it abandoned and then destroyed most copies of its groundbreaking GM EV1 electric car. Celebrities like Danny DeVito and, especially, Ed Begley, Jr. got upset that they had to return their vehicles and made a big public spectacle of GM’s cancellation of its EV plans. Ford has historically skated even though Ford also killed an advanced and potentially promising electric vehicle in the 1990s. This is why you never lease a car to Ed Begley, Jr!

Fortunately for Ford, the general public wasn’t exactly the target market for its Ford Ecostar electric van and, because Danny DeVito didn’t own an electric utility company, few people outside of a handful of journalists ever got to drive one.

What’s amazing, in retrospect, is that Ford had a reasonably modern-sounding concept on its hand that isn’t so remote from some of the ideas being pushed today. So what happened? The right idea was, unfortunately, married to one bad piece of technology.

Ford’s Early EV History

Ford was uniquely positioned to be one of the first automakers to build an electric vehicle. Back in the 1960s, some Ford chemists invented the Sodium-Sulfur battery as a possible energy source for future electric cars. Gas was plentiful and cheap in the ’60s so the technology didn’t go much further. In the 1970s, the fuel crisis happened, and the DOE reached out to Ford to conduct a study focused on turning those batteries into a commercially viable electric vehicle.

Perhaps seeing far into the future, Ford decided its best bet would be a two-seat version of the Ford Fiesta– a car that had quickly been brought over to the United States to deal with the oil crisis and increasingly difficult-to-reach fuel economy requirements. The goal was to make a vehicle that could travel a range of 100 miles and still perform like a normal car. Ford’s engineers suggested using “cylindrical cells” of sodium and sulfur which, to work, have to be heated to high temperatures of between 400-600F and can’t be cooled for too long or they’ll seize up.

As far as I can tell, the report is where the program stopped and the company instead went on to look at ways to make combustion more efficient, including transmissions with overdrive and variable displacement motors.

[Editor’s Note: Just for the record, Ford has an EV history that goes back way, way earlier. Henry Ford and Thomas Edison had been friends a long time, and had discussed the possibilities of electric propulsion and chemical battery storage for some time. They collaborated on some EV prototypes around 1913-1914, with modified Model T chassis and Edison nickel-iron batteries, which weren’t really all that suitable for the application, and eventually the product was shelved.

But, I thought you should still know about this. – JT]

Ford Tries An Electric Van

Even before Al Gore ascended to the Vice Presidency, there was already a sense that Americans should probably do something about electric vehicles. What, exactly, was up in the air, so the Center for Automotive Research and the Department of Energy (DOE) got together and formed the United States Advanced Battery Consortium in 1991 “to develop electrochemical energy storage technologies that advance commercialization of next generation electrified vehicle applications.”

This is where the Ford Ecostar comes into existence. Ford decided to dust off its old plans and, instead of a Fiesta, the company would use the European Ford Escort Van, albeit one jazzed up with body-color bumpers and an off-set grille similar to what was used on the American Ford Escort GT.

The resulting van was surprisingly close in design to more modern electric vehicles. The Sodium Sulfur (NaS) battery pack was stored below the rear cargo floor and fed a drive motor/transaxle combination powering the front wheels. Power from the single AC induction motor was a respectable 75 horsepower and 143 lb-ft of torque. This was enough to get the van to 50 mph in 12 seconds with a total range of 100 miles. The van also featured regenerative braking.

Also mentioned in a brochure for the Ecostar is an “internal combustion engine that drives a generator which will increase the vehicle’s usable range. This “range extender” should help increase acceptability of vehicles with customers whose drive cycles may occasionally exceed the normal range capabilities of the batteries alone.”

Yup, Ford had a range extender system like you’d find on something like the BMW i3! Or other cars like it! I’m not sure Ford ever built a production version of the range-extended model, however. One of the other little editions to the Ecostar was a leaf-and-road logo which, overall, was the one part of this project that would endure into the future.

People Who Used The Ecostar Seemed To Like Them

The initial users of the Ford Ecostar were basically all electrical utilities or public agencies like the California Air Resource Board which, at the time, was trying to force automakers to switch some of their models to electric cars. The goal was to accrue as many miles as possible and get feedback on how the battery was operating.

This didn’t stop journalists from taking a turn and they seemed to like it.

My favorite review comes from Car And Driver, which borrowed the little van and found it to work like a normal car:

Hop in, insert the entirely conventional key into the “ignition” lock, and turn it to what would be the “start” position. Of course, nothing happens, except a batch of warning lights glow. The numerous on-board computers run their self-checks and confirm that they are communicating with one another. Then all the lights go out, except a little green car icon. You’re ready to hum.

From this point, the Ecostar behaves remarkably like a typical but slow gasoline-powered car with an automatic transmission. Ford engineers gave it a little creep at “idle,” plus light regenerative braking (when the motor acts to charge the battery) on lift throttle to simulate engine­-compression braking. The three-phase, 70-hp AC motor, which spins up to 13,500 rpm and drives the front wheels through a single-speed gearbox, squirts the 3110-pound Ecostar away from rest with surprising vigor. The need to scamper across a wide street in front of oncoming traffic is not cause for panic.

The same was true over at Popular Mechanics, which called the little van “impressive.”

You’re confident and comfortable with the Ecostar’s acceleration and ability to cruise. THe little van has no trouble flowing with urban and suburban traffic. Just remember that out on the freeway, it’s strictly a rightlane crawler trying to avoid the front bumpers of most everything that’s behind it.

More impressive than its straight-line capabilities is the Ecostar’s handling. Given its proven suspension and small size, the van should be nimble–and it is.

Reviewers seemed to like the low center of gravity and not-unreasonable weight, though they noted that on a 120-volt household plug it took all night to recharge the 30 kWh battery.

And Then They Started Catching On Fire

What Ford learned from all those test miles was that, while the NaS battery was superior to lead-acid batteries in terms of weight and range, they were not quite ready for primetime as the super high temperatures and leaking sulfur eventually resulted in some unfortunate fires.

From the Chicago Tribune in June 1994:

The first incident occurred May 2, when an Ecostar leased by the Electric Power Research Institute in Palo Alto, Calif., burst into flames while recharging.

In Friday’s incident, Ford said the Ecostar caught fire about 6:40 a.m. while recharging outside the Air Resources Board’s El Monte, Calif., offices. No one was injured and no property was damaged except the vehicle.

That’s right, CARB’s own Ecostar caught on fire.

Ford told the companies operating these vans to park them outside and suspend use until the company could solve the problem. Ultimately, Ford decided that the technology wasn’t ideal for use in modern cars and, later, would use lead acid batteries (and later NiMH batteries) in the short-lived Ford Ranger EV.

It wouldn’t be until 2011 that Ford tried to build another electric vehicle for the larger market, this time with a little help from Ed Begley, Jr. and a bunch of butterflies:

There was no real future for NaS batteries as conceived so it’s not like a ton was lost here, although it’s fun to imagine an alternative universe where Ford skipped straight ahead to the more functional NiMH batteries. Many of Ford’s ideas would later filter into to electric cars like the Tesla Roadster, including regen braking, range extenders, cylindrical cells, and floor-mounted battery packs.

Expect most of these to end up in Ford’s skunkworks cheap EV which, according to early reports, will likely include an affordable small commercial vehicle not unlike the Ecostar.

Ford was also a little ahead of its time in another way. While liquid molten sodium batteries create a lot of issues, work has been done on sodium solid-state batteries and more than a few automakers view this as the future of electric cars.

All images Ford Heritage Vault unless otherwise noted