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Supported by:
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AFD Show Cases |
| Ford Focus Flexi Fuel Vehicle procurement |
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Stockholm (Sweden)
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In 1998, after a pilot study was made, the City of Stockholm contacted the vehicle manufacturers. In November 2001 Ford started to sell the Focus FFV (Flexi Fuel Vehicle) at the same price as the petrol version. |
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Summary
In 1998 City of Stockholm realised that it would not be possible to reach the objective of 5 % market share by electric and biogas vehicles only and initiated a common procurement of an ethanol flexifuel vehicle as a way to introduce this vehicle type on the Swedish market.
A pilot study was made to scan the interest of this kind of vehicle and what size would be suitable for most potential buyers. After a year, a specification and an initial consortium was ready and contacts were made with the vehicle manufacturers. Volvo and Ford showed interest but in the end of the day only Ford remained interested, in spite of additional contacts with French manufacturers that had shown interest in other types of AFVs.
In late 1999 Ford Europe put a condition that the consortium should buy 4 000 units if Ford should deliver. This was based on the development costs and Ford regarded such an interest unlikely.
After another year of campaigning it was possible to gather 3 000 interested buyers. Ford accepted this as sufficient and in November 2001 Ford started to sell the Focus FFV (Flexi Fuel Vehicle) at the same price as the petrol version. In the beginning Ford also offered additional 500 € discount on the FFV version.
After some initial delivery problems, the Focus FFV has advanced to the 6th most sold car in Sweden, due to aggressive marketing and public incentives. The infrastructure is developing and the 14 000 cars operate to 64 % on E85 .
Users and stakeholders
The consortium was mainly made up of cities and to a small extent of private companies, national bodies, NGOs and individuals.
A few fuel companies started the development of infrastructure and most of the other companies have followed suite.
Presently, the main buyers are private citizens and private companies. Inquiries indicates that the reasons are a combination of environmental concern and economical incentives. Most buyers seem to be willing to improve environment, if it does not cost too much.
Technical description
The innovative aspect of Focus FFV is that the very same technology that analyses the exhaust fumes in conventional vehicles, is used to control the fuel injection, which needs to be slightly different depending on the actual mix of ethanol-petrol. This makes the flexibility cheaper than former technologies and keeps the emissions low. The car is however not optimised for dedicated ethanol use and consumes hence somewhat more ethanol than necessary. Since the introduction, Ford has refined the control to further bring down the consumption and has upgraded the vehicles at the service occasions.
The development of this technology is a direct result of the procurement and the specifications made on flexibility and emission standards.
Implementation set-up
A project organisation, including steering group, management team, reference group and a customer group was set up in an early stage and a person with good knowledge of vehicles was employed to run the project.
A close co-operation with other cities was necessary in order to gather so many interested buyers. In the second phase, campaigns, advertisements and nation-wide tours were made together with the national Ford agency.
A political debacle started when the promotion went too ambitious for the politicians. A public body needs to be neutral and should not promote one company before another. A more modest promotion, not directed towards the public could however be accepted.
Ford Focus is regarded a smaller medium-sized car in Sweden. The big bulk of cars (70 % of all new cars) are however bought as “Private-company cars”, i.e. cars that are paid by company and used as company cars but designated for a single person and possible to use also privately. This group of buyers prefers bigger cars than the Ford Focus, e.g. SAAB 9-5 and Volvo V70.
Future prospects
As both SAAB and Volvo are entering the ethanol car market at prices that almost equal petrol cars and there are a large amount of gas car models available, there is no present need for yet another joint procurement of cars.
There is still a need for more models of ethanol buses. An international joint procurement has recently started with the aim to achieve at least one competitor to the single manufacturer Scania.
Also the amount of transporter models is rather small, but no one is willing to take the initiative for a joint procurement at the moment, but prefer to wait and see if other incentives will increase the demand sufficiently to make manufacturers to introduce the already available models.
Source and further information: NICHES website |
Author
Jonas Ericson
Contact
project coordinator in Polis coordinator
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