Dietary Predator: Totalcar Guide

I’m sure most automotive engineers hate all the days spent designing an electric car for a fiercely competitive market full of new entrants from parts that have been sitting in a drawer for years, preferably without spending a cent. Ford, on the other hand, took this task seriously and turned an originally gasoline-powered car into a better electric car than many others on a stand-alone platform.

Ford brought back the Puma name six years ago, in 2019, and although some people thought that taking the name of the original cat coupe was a goalpost, I hardly believe that in the 90s the Puma would have had a different target audience and a different use of the car than it does today. Puma starts in one of the most popular European categories, crossovers, and accordingly they took its foundations seriously, they invested 200 million euros in the development of the internal combustion version, and now they sell as many of them every year as the Pumas of the 90s combined in five years.

The Puma, which is made in Romania and is based on the Fiesta, has a lovable shape, and the choice of colors is also charming, so it is love at first sight for many girls, but it is also suitable for a smaller family car based on its dimensions. The Puma is a well-established car, and it is so well thought out technically that its advantages are not impaired even as an electric car.

On the one hand, they made a 43-liter front storage compartment, a space for the charging cable and the first-aid package, and on the other hand, there was a 574-liter luggage space in the back supplemented by the MegaBox lower compartment, which is considered huge in the category, and even there, four people can fit normally. The rear legroom is a bit small, the floor feels high, which is not surprising, since the battery pack is only under the passengers, so the battery installed as an extra is mostly to be found in the ground clearance, which has been reduced from 164 to 129 millimeters.

Puma is a living example, it is not only possible to produce an electric car with a good use of space for a skateboard platform, but the advantages of an electric car do not end there, they have also paid attention to the software so that the end result does not feel like a chore to the user: while the Stellantis group still has electric cars converted from gasoline that are not even willing to list their average consumption, here even the temperature of the battery and the electric motor are highlighted is indicated by the instrument panel in front of the driver: it may seem like a slight engineering exaggeration, but my soul can easily be bought with such.

In terms of general interior quality, you can and should get by with a good kind of average, here and there it is a bit bleak and knocking, but it is very decently put together, there are physical buttons left, the display of the instrument panel in front of the driver is huge and the middle panel is also a good size. There aren’t a hundred different equipment packages, but the 10-speaker B&O sound system sounds very decent, with the LED Matrix headlights you can understand why today’s cars are better than those of twenty years ago, and the fact that the air conditioning remains single-zone even with higher equipment levels doesn’t bother me at all, after all, we’re talking about a car based on Fiesta.

Behind the large steering wheel is a display with lots of information

There are things that are always good with Fords, the steering and chassis are typically like that, and it’s no different here. MacPherson at the front and multilink at the back doesn’t say much by itself, but the Puma Gen-E is tight, decently damped, agile and direct. It has drum brakes at the rear, but this is not felt for a moment in its braking effect. My main criticism with the 18-inch wheel is that it could be a little softer, less bouncy, since the Puma has to hold its own in daily traffic rather than on the mirror-smooth serpentine, but the basic rim size is 17 inches, which would surely make it more calm.

The curb weight of the Puma Gen-E is around 1,560 kilos, so it is 200 kilos more than its gasoline version, and 100 kilos heavier than a Renault 4 E-Tech Electric, but even so it is not particularly heavy, the majority of Stellantis cars are similar in a given size, but a slightly more spacious Volvo EX30 is typically over 1,800 kilos, which is a significant difference that can be felt by anyone.

Legs used to electric cars have a real single-pedal mode with a serious engine brake, and there is a real difference between the driving modes in terms of the sensitivity of the gas pedal, and in Sport mode there is also a slight humming sound, which does not have much enjoyment value, but it can help ears used to internal combustion cars to determine whether the car is accelerating or not without looking at the speedometer. In this category, 168 horsepower and 0-100 km/h acceleration in 8 seconds are enough for everything, as is the top speed of 160 km/h. The traction control of the front-wheel drive car was also smartly tuned.

The combined WLTP range of 376 km is already a very good value compared to the relatively small battery pack of 43 kWh, but the Puma can consume significantly more in the city, although in the case of the car without a heat pump, I must highlight that the average outside temperature was still around 15-20 degrees when I had the car for a week.

The consumption of the car was just below 10 kWh/100 km in careful, regular city traffic, and although the city range of 523 kilometers seems very optimistic, the Puma’s real trick is that its consumption remains very favorable even at around 90-100 km/h, so the 400 kilometer range can in principle be approached without any problems by driving outside the city, if you don’t have to use the 130 pace.

The driver can view the consumption values ​​in batches, even by consumer, on a pie chart, and if he plans for a charger with the factory online navigation, he will also start the battery tempering in order to reach the maximum 100 kW DC charge: it charges from 10 to 80 percent in about 23 minutes.

Of course, there are things that we must mention on the negative side, the 12-inch central one is of good quality, but the Sync 4 system does provide a well-functioning phone mirroring and plenty of other functionality, but it still does not have a Hungarian language interface, and the system speed is at most average.

At a starting price of HUF 11.5 million, the Ford Puma Gen-E already offers quite good equipment, in terms of price/value ratio, it is in a very good place on the market, for HUF 12.3 million it comes with adaptive LED Matrix headlights, a 10-speaker B&O sound system, and 18-inch rims. At a similar price, the Stellantis competitors are the first to come to mind, I have longer experience with the electric Frontera, which is a more modest car in terms of functionality, lacks a front luggage compartment, and represents a lower level in terms of chassis, but at the same time, the driver’s seat is more comfortable and somewhat more spacious than the Puma.

We love the Renault 4, it’s a smart car built on modern foundations, but the basic version under 12 million only has 120 horsepower and the trunk is much smaller than the Gen-E, and the electric Vitara can also be a good alternative, but it’s more expensive than the Puma and its fuel consumption is not as good.

Of course, there is also Chinese competition, the base price of the BYD Atto 2 is a bit higher, but with the almost constant discount it is a few hundred thousand forints cheaper than the Puma, and although the basic version without the leather steering wheel, wireless phone charger and seat heating may be sad, it has everything that is realistically needed one level up, and with the current discount it can still be bought for around 11.2 million.

Many people said that every man falls in love with a Puma, but I thought something else: actually, it wasn’t bad either. The biggest advantage of the Puma Gen-E is that it shows that a competitive electric car can also be built on an internal combustion platform. Its price is not too high, its large trunk and low consumption are advantages that most competitors can look at with envy.

Would you like to read more about the Ford Puma Gen-E? Here is the article by Kristóf Elvis, a colleague, about the international presentation.