This is too expensive. I think they are targetting Volt, but this vehicle has only 20 mile electric range. If automakers think of milking money, then people will end up buying smaller cars like Fiesta, Sonic, Fit, Prius C and so on.

Lets hope the lower price of upcoming Leaf will pull down the price of EVs, Plugins & Hybrids.

Here is why it is priced at almost $40K, because it is priced in a way so the sales will be minimum. Because Ford will lose lot of money even at $40K, so why bother selling more and lose more money? I mean Ford is not owned by government, so they have to behave a little more responsible.
This is the opinion of the battery team at Ford headed by Ted J. Miller!

The anonymous commenter two positions above me has got it, I think. As with the Ford Focus Electric and its own exhorbitant price point, Ford has no expectation to sell these in quantity and sets the price high to meet the extremely constrained supply. I know a few diehard Ford fans who will buy Ford and nothing else, and Ford will find a thousand or so of those guys to sell to. It's a compliance car and suffers from the same conversion issues as the Focus (e.g. battery location). Ford is just keeping a toe in the game.

@Chris C., how is any gas plug in hybrid a compliance car?

Sadly, again, this is a non-aerodynamic car. Enclosing the wheel wells will not only increase top speed and acceleration, enclosing the wheel wells properly will diminish the road noises that ruin our sleep in busy cities. Being aerodynamic lowers energy costs. Efficiency needs smooth surfaces shaped just so. Why are artists hired to design these cars? The rear should be a boat tail or some other shape that diminishes drag. Aerodynamic cars are actually bigger cars than this car, too. Bigger, quieter car, more efficient, better value, eh?

I have had my 2013 Fusion SE Hybrid for 17 days and have put 1400 miles on it. At speeds of 70-80 mph, it gets 37mpg. If speeds are kept below 63 mph, MPG is over 44. City driving has given me 52 mpg. I considered waiting for the Energi, and I'm now very happy I didn't. I could not make up for the Energi's extra cost at the rate I pay for any additional electricity, and I'm sure there is a very significant loss of cargo area. The Fusion SE Hybrid is one of the best looking and handling cars on the road. I couldn't be happier with it.

C-Max Hybrid starts @ 25,200 while C-Max Plugin starts @ 32,950, that's an increase of 7,750.

Fusion Hybrid starts @ 27,200 while Fusion Plugin starts @ 39,500, that's an increase of 12,300.

Why this so much increase. Probably because C-Max plugin has Prius Plugin as competitor, but Fusion Plugin does not have any. Honda will launch Accord Plugin, but that will be priced above Fusion Plugin since Honda feels they are on top of everyone. So until we see plugin version of Camry, Malibu, Sonata at lower prices, this is how expensive plugins will be.

But C-Max Plugin seems to be selling well and will continue to lead boost plugin segment. So we can feel happy about that.

20Miles per charge is not good. My electric car that I had in 1983, which I loved got twice that.

I guess Ford is NOT really interested in selling the Fusion Energi models.

Volt is still the king...

Now, Chevy/GM, get back to work and bring out a 2014 model that sits 5 and have 60 miles EV range and return 45MPG on regular gas in extended mode, people will "flock" to your dealers...

Ford doesn’t seem to get the point. People are disappointed that you don’t have 5 passengers in the Volt, but they are not from having more EV miles. We need a Volt like with 5 passengers and at least 40 miles EV range not a Volt like with 5 passengers and at most 20 miles EV range.

@ Spec,

There is no info anywhere to show the Fusion Energi or the C-Max Energi is profitable for Ford. Ford doesn't really intend to sell it. It is really a way to "mess" with the competition with introducing large initial cost. Ford really want to sell the regular hybrid version. Also, Ford doesn't want to take a hit in profit since the Federal Government offers them $3,750 per car to help it out...

Volt is actually "profitbable" on per car basis (~$15,000 to $23,000 per car) if you exclude the "initial R&D investment and tooling cost". But since the intial investment is huge (~$1.2Billion), it will take GM about 80,000 Volt or leveraged models just to break even. In order to be profitable, GM would have to sell more than that and continue to do so at a decent annual pace.

GM already sold about 30,000 of Volt and its variant since the launch (Not including November sales). So, it is about 1/3 way there to recover the initial cost. At the current pace, it will break even in 2 more years. (Just in time for the 2014/2015 model redesign).

@Valkraider,

The profit estimate is from those Volt "bashing articles" about how much money Volt loses per car. But those are including the $1.2Billion initial cost spread across all the Volt sold so far. I don't think I need to find you the link for that. You can do a search on "Reuter's article" on Volt.

"You essentially said that I could sell cupcakes for a profit if I don't count my business startup loan or my kitchen equipment..."

Well, there is someting called net profit vs. gross profit. If your cupcakes is making money on per cupcakes basis which is price of the cupcakes minus the floor, sugar, energy to be bake it and labor to make and sell it, then the cup cakes is making money. The cost of business startup loan and kitchen equipment will be spread out across all the cupcakes you sell from that point on. If you sell enough of it initially and to keep up with the payment of those loans and equipment cost, then you are in profit. Nobody spread the initial cost immediately on the first few per unit basis. That is common business sense.

No different from real estate also. If I bought a house for investment @ 200K with monthly mortgage of $800 + $400 of tax and insurance. I rent it for $1500. I am "profitable". But if you spread the cost of $200k on top of the monthly $1,500, then I am at a loss. Nobody does business that way.

Now back to your statement:
"So you are expecting us to believe that Chevy can make $15k to $23k on a car that only costs a couple thousand more than the C-Max Energi yet Ford won't be profitable with the C-Max Energi?"

Well, those $15k to $23k is traced by to the Volt bashing Reuter business article.

Volt cost $7k more than the C-Max Energi. The different is $2k after Federal Tax credit... Big difference.

Now let us look at cost. The only thing that C-max Energi is cheaper than the Volt is in the battery and size of the E-motor. Assuming other parts are similar.
@500/KWh, the difference between Volt and C-Max Energi is about (16-7.5)x$500 = $4,250. But Chevy is $7K more. The motor difference is negliable since Volt uses AC induction motor which is cheaper to make.

Now, we don't know how much Ford has spent on its R&D cost and tooling. Volt uses standard 1.4 L in the GM lineup. Many of the parts are shared with Chevy Cruze (thus frequently used as example to bash Volt). Initial R&D cost are the expensive part due to testing, SW and all the people investment. Ford did the same thing except it didn't make any "big deal" out of it as GM did or get any attacks. Sure, Ford probably didn't have to test it as much. But the current hybrid powertrain is completely new for Ford. It is designed specifically for the C-Max hybrid which will be shared with all the Ford hybrid platform but still an initial cost. Same can be said for Volt where its initial R&D cost will be shared by ELR or other upcoming cars. Many of the SW features already show up in the upcoming Chevy Spark EV. Also, GM's battery isn't from scratch. Its core cell is from LG chemical and assembled by GM in Michigan and packed in a design specified by GM engineers. Much of the EV program at GM is leveraged across other future cars.

Just about the only arguement that you can make is that C-Max is potentially cheaper platform than Cruze since it is projected to be at larger volume. But we don't know. Ford only sold 3,200 so far... I am sure based on the "estimate" Ford will recover its initial cost quicker b/c its technology is already launched into 2 product and part of the hybrid powertrain is shared across 4 different models...