New Ford Explorer: it’s been around the world and it’s found its specs

►  New electric Ford Explorer to cost £39,875
►  SUV is the first EV to drive around the globe
►  Final spec details, including 374-mile max range

Ford’s Explorer electric SUV will cost £39,785 and go on UK sale in August 2024 – about nine months late. But the Blue Oval has used the delay to good effect, updating the battery tech to boost range and charging – and to drive the car more than 18,500 miles around the world. 

With travel influencer Lexie ‘Limitless’ Alford at the wheel, the Explorer has become the first electric car to visit some of the world’s key antipodal points, racking up the miles in Europe, Africa, Australia, Asia and South and North America. 

The ‘Charge around the Globe’ odyssey ended today (26 March 2024) in Nice, south of France, as Lexie crossed the finish line in her Explorer, flanked by a cavalcade of historic European Fords. Read on for all the spec details.  

Lexie Limitless is quite the explorer, having visited the world’s 196 sovereign territories by the age of 22. This expedition was in an electric car capable of up to 374 miles for the rear-wheel drive Extended range version. With the six-month (on and off) trip required 105 charges in total, charging on everything from ultrarapid DC chargers to domestic sockets.

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In areas without charging infrastructure, filling the 77kWh battery using a 1.5-2.5kW mobile wallbox could demand stops exceeding 24 hours. Long stints across Chile’s barren Atacama desert proved particularly tense, while periodic grid shutdowns challenged the crew in South Africa and Zimbabwe.

‘Lexie’s journey has been the ultimate test drive for our new Ford Explorer, taking on every kind of weather and road condition, and dealing with just about every charging scenario,’ said Martin Sander, general manager Ford Model e Europe. ‘It embodies the true ‘can do’ spirit of this company.’

Ford talks about its ‘can do’ attitude, but it would have been a ‘can’t do’ without Volkswagen – the Explorer is an ID.4 beneath the skin, though overhauled by Ford’s hardware, design and software experts.

The midsize electric SUV is the first fruit of the firms’ 2019 tech