Webasto And Ford Team Up For Mustang Lithium

Webasto And Ford Team Up For Mustang Lithium

Ford and Webasto today reveal Mustang Lithium, a high-performance electric Mustang fastback prototype. With more than 1,000 ft.-lbs. 900 hp available, this Mustang amps muscle car performance to a new level and helps gauge the level of interest the next wave of performance customers have in lightning-quick performance that only fully electric powertrains can deliver. The Mustang Lithium build is not only a one-off prototype to showcase electrification on the world鈥檚 best-selling sports car but also a testbed for battery and thermal management technologies Webasto and Ford are creating for the growing e-mobility automotive segment. An electrified street-ready beast, Mustang Lithium is low and sleek, with custom carbon fiber body components, a 1.0-inch lowered stance and 20-inch forged wheels. Under the hood, the differences are electrifying: a Phi-Power dual-core electric motor and dual power inverters - all powered by an 800-volt Webasto battery system with EVDrive Technology that can discharge a mega-watt of electrical energy. At 800 volts, that鈥檚 twice the voltage of most electric cars on the road today. This allows the system to be lighter, more powerful and generate less heat, and more electric force than most battery-electric systems on the road today.

Indeed, April 1973 ushered in a new mandate for vehicle window stickers showing mileage figures for city and highway driving as calculated by the recently established Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The numbers weren't very accurate at first, but the implication was clear. Then the gas crunch hit. This early "concept" sketch by Fritz Mayhew pointed the way toward 1979 Mustang styling. Note the low, slim nose tapered sharply down from the windshield. As it happened, General Motors was already planning to "downsize" its cars, starting with 1977 full-size models. Chrysler, with far less capital, would bank on updating its popular compacts and offering smaller "captive imports" from overseas partners. Ford had different ideas. In public at least, chairman Henry Ford II staunchly defended tradition. The gas crunch was an aberration, he said. Once it passed, most Americans would again want big cars with big engines and "road-hugging weight," just as they always had.

He was right -- to a point. The oil embargo was short-lived, and much of the public did swing back to big size and power. The idea was "a new corporate worldwide sport/family four/five-passenger sedan" with "imaginative packaging and component application," plus adaptability to both rear-wheel drive and the space-saving front-wheel-drive powerteams long familiar in Europe. In October 1974, project responsibility was shifted from Ford's Production Planning and Research office to the Product Development Group at North American Automotive Operations in Dearborn. Two months later, company president Lee Iacocca green-lighted a 1978 Fox-based replacement for either the little Pinto or the compact Maverick -- and a new Mustang for 1979 or later. As with past Mustangs, '79 styling was chosen from proposals submitted by competing teams -- three in Dearborn, plus the Ford-owned Ghia studio in Italy. Though the mass-market Fairmont/Zephyr would bow a year ahead of Mustang, designers initially worked on both models more or less together under light-car design chief Fritz Mayhew and corporate design vice-president Gene Bordinat.

Because Mustang was first seen as mainly just a sporty Fairmont, early proposals were sedan-like and slab-sided, not very "Mustang" at all. A Mustang II look evidently still had a chance well into 1976, as suggested by this full-scale model photographed in early March. But April 1975 also ushered Jack Telnack into the program after a tour of duty as design Vice President for Ford Europe. From his new post as executive director for North American Light Car and Truck Design, he would soon put his stamp on the emerging pony car. But not before another of Iacocca's intramural design contests. This one pitted Advanced Design and two other Dearborn studios against Ford's Ghia operation in Italy, where Don DeLaRossa was now in charge. All were given the same package parameters or "hard points" including length, width, wheelbase, and cowl height as the basis for sketches, clay models, and fiberglass mockups. This time, however, quarter-scale clay models were tested for up to 136 hours in wind tunnels. That's because aerodynamics was increasingly recognized -- actually rediscovered from the lessons of Thirties streamlining -- as crucial to maximizing fuel economy, a key program goal.