Ford's first mass-market electric vehicle isn't a sexy sports car. It isn't a sleek sedan. And it isn't cool compact. It's a van. A delivery van, to be exact, designed specifically for fleet use. It isn't the sexiest way to break into the electric arena, but it's a smart move for Ford and a logical place for EVs.

Ford rolled into San Francisco with one of the Transit Connect Electric vans that goes on sale at the end of the year. It isn't much to look at – a big box on wheels with a definite European flair – but it offers 80 miles of range and charges in as little as six hours. Ford is offering it only its big fleet customers – AT&T has already signed up for two – for now but opens the order book next year for anyone who wants one.

Ford says as many as one in four cars it builds in 2020 will be a hybrid or electric vehicle, and it's rolling out an electric Focus next year. But it's starting with a delivery van because fleets are a perfect market for EVs. The vehicles tend to follow set routes, so range isn't an issue. They return to a centralized location, making recharging a snap. The up-front cost is higher, but the operating costs are lower.

For those reasons and more, fleets are a logical place for a technology still facing many barriers – real or perceived – to consumer acceptance.

"Aiming their first EV at the fleet market is a smart move for Ford because fleets are more likely to use EVs or natural gas vehicles than individual consumers," said Mike Omotoso, an auto industry analyst with J.D. Power and Associates. "Right now, a vehicle like that would not make financial sense for an individual."

The van swaps the internal combustion engine of the highly successful Transit Connect in favor of an electric drivetrain (more details: .pdf) developed by Azure Dynamics Corp. The system uses a 28 kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery made by Johnson Controls-Saft. It looks like a rectangle, it weighs 661 pounds and it's mounted under the body between the frame rails. Plug 'er into a 220-volt 30-amp line like your dryer uses and the battery's good to go in six to eight hours. Plug it into a 110 and... don't ask.

"One-ten's a dog," Praveen Cherian, program manager for the Transit Connect EV, said in an unusually frank admission for an EV advocate. "You'll want to do it with 220, but in a pinch you could do it 110."

He wouldn't tell us how long charging the battery would take at 110, but figure at least 16 hours. And a 440-volt quick charge? Nope. At this point it isn't possible because that's too much for the van's 3.3 kilowatt charger to handle. The truck would need an external charger to do the job, Cherian said.

"Otherwise it generates too much heat," he said.

The rest of the drivetrain is standard EV fare. Propulsion comes from a 330-volt Siemens AC motor. It produces 50 kilowatts (67 horsepower) continuous and 100 kilowatts (134 horsepower) peak. The motor turns the front wheels through a Borg-Warner single-speed transmission. Most of the components are off-the-shelf.

"The only way to do this quickly is to use off the shelf parts," Cherian said of the project. "That's critical to us."

The battery is liquid cooled, and Cherian claims it will outlive the truck.

"Fleets typically keep a vehicle 10 years or 120,000 miles," he said. "This battery will far exceed that."

Ford builds the Transit Connect in Turkey, but sends the rolling chassis to Michigan to have the electrical bits installed. Although Ford has the capacity to build 200,000 Transit Connect vans each year, Cherian said the company plans to build 1,000 electric vans annually to start.

Open the back doors and you're looking at 135 cubic feet of space. Customers receive an empty van; this one's had aftermarket drawers and sliders installed. The Transit Connect EV has a payload of 1,000 pounds, which is about 600 pounds less than the conventional version because of the battery.

"That wasn't an issue for our customers," Cherian said of the loss in payload. "It was more important to them that we preserve all of the interior space."

Who are these customers? Ford isn't saying.

"We're still working with our fleet customers, but we're seeing lots of hands go up to say, 'We're interested,'" Cherian said.

AT&T has agreed to buy two of the e-vans, which will be added to its fleet of more than 77,000 vehicles.

"Cleaner, alternative-fuel vehicles are the future of our corporate fleet, and the Transit Connect Electric represents a real breakthrough and will be a strong addition to our range of alternative-fuel vehicles,” Jerome Webber, v.p. of fleet operations at AT&T, said in a statement.

Ford isn't naming names beyond AT&T, but some of its other big customers include Best Buy and UPS. UPS has seen good results experimenting with diesel hybrids, so it isn't hard to picture it adding a few electrics to the mix, and the United States Postal Service also is looking to electrify.

Offering the vans to big players first provides Ford with some additional R&D, said Spencer Quong, an automotive engineer and CEO of the alt-fuel consulting firm Quong & Associates.

"With any relatively new technology, fleets are a great idea," Quong said. "It gives automakers a chance to work with someone directly on a vehicle. It's a good way of introducing new technology and getting real-world experience and real-world data in a controlled environment."

Although the big companies get dibs for now, next year Ford will begin selling the vans through its dealerships to anyone who wants one. What's it going to run? Charian said that hasn't been determined, but the conventional Transit Connect van starts at $21,000.

"It'll definitely cost more than that," Cherian said.

So what's it like to drive? It's a delivery van, so it's pretty boring, actually. But our brief time behind the wheel suggested it's perfectly suited to the job at hand.

The van isn't quick, but it's got good torque so it's snappy off the line and can dart into holes in traffic. Ford claims the van will do zero to 60 in 11 seconds, but downtown San Franciso isn't the best place to put that figure to the test so we'll have to take Cherian's word for it. Top speed is limited to 75 mph – again, we couldn't test that – to maximize range.

The regenerative braking minimizes the need to hit the brakes in traffic, but the deceleration is gentle, not abrupt like it is in some EVs and hybrids. Cherian said Ford is still tweaking the software and the production model will offer varying levels of regen the driver will select with the gearshift. When driving down a hill, for example, you might want more regen to slow the vehicle, much like you'd downshift in a conventional truck.

We wanted to use the van to deliver a pile of pizzas and a keg of beer to Wired.com, but Ford nixed the idea so we didn't drive the van with any kind of payload. But we did attack one of the city's steepest hills and had no trouble. Azure Dynamics says the van can ascend a 20 percent grade with no problem and operate in ambient temperatures between 30 below and 120 degrees Fahrenheit.

Just a tiny fraction of the fleet vehicles Ford sells – it sold something like 100,000 last year – will be electric, and sales will surely be slow to start. But Cherian sees big things ahead.

"We're excited by the potential for our electric vehicles," he said. "People were a little hesitant about hybrids at first, but now they accept them and embrace them. We expect the same will be true of electric vehicles."

POST UPDATED 6 p.m. Eastern March 10 after AT&T announced it is buying two Transit Connect Electrics.

Photos: Jim Merithew / Wired.com

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