The New Electric Ford Bronco Looks Awesome. But It’s Not for America

The Ford Bronco has two powertrain options in the US: An inline-four and a V-6. The ‘four comes with 300 horsepower in base form while the twin-turbo V-6 makes 418 horsepower on the rowdy Raptor version. The smaller Bronco Sport, meanwhile, gets either a three- or four-cylinder engine. But in China—a market overflowing with EVs—the Bronco and Bronco Sport have a new EV sibling.

This is the Ford Bronco New Energy, which offers pure EV and extended-range EV powertrains. Revealed on China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) website earlier today, the battery-powered SUV is essentially a bigger, unibody Bronco with BYD battery technology underneath.

Measuring in at 77.0 inches wide and 197.0 inches long, with a 116.1-inch wheelbase, the Bronco EV is massive compared to its ICE counterparts. The Bronco Sport is just 74.3 inches wide and 172.7 inches long, by comparison. The bigger Bronco has a matching wheelbase, but it’s still only 75.9 inches wide and 189.4 inches long. In fact, the new Bronco EV is about as large as a three-row Kia EV9.

Photo by: Ford

The electric Bronco is heavy, too. The extended-range EV weighs 5,535 pounds, and the pure EV weighs 5,800 pounds. The lightest Bronco Sport is just 3,500 pounds, while the heaviest Bronco Raptor is 4,945 pounds.

The standard EV version makes 271 horsepower from a 105.4-kilowatt-hour battery pack and gets 404 miles (650 kilometers) of range on China’s CLTC cycle. The extended-range Bronco packs a 1.5-liter plug-in hybrid powertrain is good for 241 hp, with a 43.7-kWh pack that delivers an impressive 137 miles of EV range.

The design is an odd blend of the Bronco Sport and standard Bronco, with the nameplate front and center in the grille, a boxy body, and a spare tire out back—just like a real off-roader. It even appears to have a side-swinging tailgate, just like the gas Bronco, and there’s a Lidar sensor on the roof.

The electric Bronco is a joint project between Ford and Jiangling Motors, and should go on sale in China later this year. Estimates suggest it could cost anywhere from ¥300,000 to ¥400,000 (about $42,000 to $55,000 at current conversion rates).