Equally Explorerless
The Netherlands has to do without Ford Explorer for a while. While we wait for the arrival of the delayed electric Ford Explorer, the Dutch importer has already cut its considerably larger plug-in hybrid namesake from the delivery range.
After the last copies of the then current Ford Explorer were registered in the Netherlands in 2006, the Dutch car market had to do without Explorer for more than ten years. After 13 years, the Explorer finally returned to the Netherlands. We missed some generations, but the sixth generation Explorer really came our way in 2019. Only as a plug-in hybrid. For a while it even seemed that Ford would deliver two completely different Explorers side by side in the Netherlands. Earlier this year, Ford presented the electric Explorer based on Volkswagen’s MEB platform. That significantly smaller electric Explorer, which deviates down to the smallest nut from its big brother, seemed to be placed next to the plug-in hybrid Explorer, but that is not going to happen. In fact, we are in almost the same situation as between 2006 and 2019. The Netherlands is Explorerless again.
The Dutch importer has stopped supplying the Ford Explorer PHEV. At least, from brand new copies. Contrary to what we heard earlier, the Explorer PHEV may still be available from stock until early 2024. The biggest difference with the situation before 2019? This time we do know that the Explorer is coming back. The electric Explorer will not come on the market in the first quarter of 2024 as initially planned, but in the summer of that year in the Netherlands.
You have to wait until the summer of 2024 for this electric Ford Explorer.
A total of 404 units of the Ford Explorer PHEV, now defunct in the Netherlands, have been registered from 2020 to 2023. The predecessors could only dream of such a number. The relatively great success for an SUV such as the now disappeared Explorer undoubtedly owes the model mainly to its plug-in hybrid powertrain and the associated theoretically lower CO2 emissions and therefore lower bpm. Although the Ford Explorer PHEV cost more than €88,000, you did get a more than 5 meter long SUV with a 457 hp plug-in hybrid powertrain in a relatively loaded ST-Line version that also allows you to drive up to a small 50 miles of electric driving. Fun fact: in the United States, the Explorer is available as an ST with 406 hp 3.0 V6, which is available with both four-wheel drive and rear-wheel drive.
– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl