Open up your mind and say, ahh...

Photo: Courtesy Ford

Ford is at the onset of a massive push towards electrification. The Blue Oval estimates that between 10 and 25 percent of its products will be “electrified” by 2020, with a mix of traditional hybrids and plug-in versions joining a brace of new EVs. And its first all-electro-powered product is this: the 2013 Ford Focus Electric.

Ford announced plans to electrify its Focus compact at last year’s CES and the automaker has already begun handing out its EV hatch to fleets, including the delivery of the first Focus Electric to Google. Later in 2012, Ford will begin selling the Focus to consumers in 19 markets across North America, with prices starting at $39,200 – or about $4,000 more than the Nissan LEAF before taxes and any state or federal government incentives.

But do you want it?

We took to the streets of San Francisco for a brief drive in Ford’s first EV and discovered that while it might not boast the same range or bespoke body as its competition from Nissan, the Focus Electric wins on charge time and something that’s been missing from other mass-market EVs: genuine fun.

Photo: Courtesy Ford

A cursory look at the Focus Electric’s stats aren’t going to stoke the flames of enthusiasts’ hearts. The front-mounted electric motor powering the front wheels is good for 141 horsepower and 188 pound-feet of torque, the latter of which is available – as with all EVs – as soon as you tramp the throttle. That makes for a spirited sprint from a stop, despite being down some 20 lb-ft from the Nissan. But more impressive is the tractability of the brushless motor and the single-speed gearbox putting the power down.

Unlike other EVs that begin to wheeze as you pile on the speed, the Focus Electric retains a suitable amount of punch above 40 mph. Credit the extra 31 horsepower over the LEAF, which does its best to counteract the additional 300 pounds the Focus Electric has to lug around over the Nissan.

But the additional tonnage over the standard Focus (around 500 pounds) added by the liquid cooled and heated 23 kWh lithium-ion battery pack and assorted plumbing is used to good effect, with Ford claiming weight distribution is an Ultimate Driving Machine-approved 50:50 front-to-rear. It’s just too bad the overly-grabby brakes aren’t up to par with the keenly tuned electrically-assisted steering, front MacPherson struts and multi-link rear suspension.

Even mild brake application is enough to send you and your passenger hurdling towards the windshield as the seat belts strain to keep you in place. There’s sure to be a learning curve – one that we weren’t able to scale in our short time behind the wheel – but the lack of EV-tuned brake regen to slow the car as we rolled off the throttle was notable.

More notable is Ford’s claimed charge time: 4 hours to fully top up the batteries with a 240-volt outlet, or a little more than half the time of the Nissan LEAF. That boosted charge time is thanks to a 6.6 kW Leviton charger (versus the LEAF’s 3.3 kW unit) sold at Ford dealers for $1,499, rolled into the purchase price of the Focus Electric and installed by Best Buy’s Geek Squad.

The 23 kWh of juice is good for a 76-mile range – a few miles off Nissan’s hypothetical pace – but because of the liquid-cooled and heated battery packs, Ford maintains there’s no degradation in range or performance, something that can’t be said for the LEAF’s air-cooled batteries.

Photo: Courtesy Ford

And then there’s Ford’s killer app: an app.

Available for iPhone, Android, Blackberry and through a dedicated web portal, MyFord Mobile allows owners to keep tabs on charging, find 240-volt stations along their route and plan their trips accordingly, along with remote cooling and heating while the Focus Electric is plugged into the grid, boosting range in the process. The app even gives you tips on your driving style (ranging from “zippy” to “zen”) and the ability to automatically juice up during off-peak hours thanks to an exclusive partnership with Microsoft and its Value Charge program.

This all adds up to one of the most compelling EVs available from a mass-market automaker, combining a gas-free existence with a suitable entertaining driving experience. We’ve waited long enough for an automaker to deliver on both fronts, and Ford seems to have arrived there first. But we won’t make a definitive call until we can put the Focus Electric through its paces as a commuter-cum-corner-carver.

What’s the world’s biggest company up to? It’s ever-secretive, but the rumors just keep coming, and recently they’ve gone a bit strange.

The 7-Inch-ish iPad Mini

Apple’s long been rumored to be looking at a smaller-format iPad, which would carry a lower price tag, to bolster its market dominance against the incursion of cheap generic Android tablets, and low-cost bespoke versions like Amazon’s Kindle Fire and Google’s upcoming own-brand unit. Now there’s another jolt of power added to the rumors, courtesy of Chinese website NetEase. According to this site’s sources it’s due in the third quarter of this year (July to September) and about 6 million units will be available at launch. The price, according to this new whisper, is between $250 and $300–which means it would possibly start at about half the iPad “3″‘s launch price.

For a July launch window, Apple would definitely have to have a final prototype in place and be moving toward a finalized production design, which makes sense. Chinese plants would need a warning well ahead of time. The price is definitely possible: We can imagine for a smaller iPad Apple would be able to use a cheaper smaller screen, with fewer LED lights and also a smaller battery inside the shell–it could even go for just 16GB of storage to minimize costs. Guesstimates about the iPad 3′s bill of materials suggest a 16GB Wi-Fi version costs around $310 to make, and the potential savings definitely fit inside the suggested price bracket with a razor thin margin.

Does the whole idea make sense? Kinda–Apple could try to diversify the iPad line the way it did with the iPod line. It could polish its hyper-strict supply chain management, leveraging iPad 2 and 3 production expertise, to minimize the cost of production and suck up slightly lower profit margins in order to hook customers into its revenue-generating iTunes system. The iPad mini would be a “gateway” device, in effect.

We’re still dubious about this recent rumor, but let’s face it–this is the new post-Steve Apple, and almost anything is possible. Plus, this rumor just won’t go away … much as the long-held rumors about the first iPad wouldn’t.

The MacBook Refreshed With Air

We’ve been expecting Apple’s to make its bigger MacBook machines more “Air”-like since the arrival of the first MacBook Air. It would beat Intel at its own Ultrabook game, push the envelope of the current laptop design paradigm, act to end the era of the spinning storage disc (both DVD and hard drive), and target mobile professionals who like Apple gear but are looking for something lighter, more portable.

Intel’s upcoming chip refresh would drive the new machines, and thus they’re not expected for a few months.

Now there are rumors that MacBook resellers are experiencing shortages, which is usual fare for an imminent product line refresh. And last year Apple played it incredibly safe with this effort, which may imply a bigger, bolder move is due this year.

We’re guessing the rumors are roughly on track this time. It is, actually, time for a refresh and the launch window doesn’t conflict with other bigger Apple news. Our guess is for Air-inspired touches throughout the MacBook lineup, though the bigger devices could retain a spinning hard disk. We’ll also stick our neck out–and say the “Pro” label will go from the name.

The Apple TV (Again), This Time As A Game Console

The Apple HDTV is, currently, as real as a unicorn. But we all still would love to see a unicorn trotting around, right? Apart from an enormous groundswell of rumors, there’s absolutely no info to confirm this.

There is Foxconn’s mysterious deal with Sharp, which gives the Chinese firm access to one of the world’s bigger large-scale LCD unit manufacturers, and recent word Sharp has begun retooling to produce IGZO displays, which may be considered the cutting edge in LCD tech now due to their thinness, reduced need for backlighting, and lower power consumption.

Plus, there’s the recent hint that Apple’s Tim Cook recently met with game-maker Valve. Valve owns one of the most successful Net-based game-distribution networks that works a little like iTunes App Store, covering both Macs and PCs, a stable of highly successful games, and its execs are attuned to the idea of having someone else make gaming hardware for them. The iPad-esque guts of an erstwhile Apple HDTV would be a perfect match to these aspirations, and the idea of using a wireless controller (be it iPhones, or a unique touchpad hardware) is already being explored by Apple.

The iPhone “6″

Four inches of screen, a radical body shape, and generally just better. That’s about the state of these rumors, as it’s early days if Apple’s due to debut the 4G-enabled iPhone “6″ for 2012 (likely just called “iPhone”) in October. Unless it’s going to suprise us before the summer, that is. Which it’s not.

The “Extra” Apple Designer

French designer Philippe Starck caused a bubble of excitement last week with suggestions he was working on a kinda “revolutionary” product with Apple, having worked for some time with Steve Jobs himself.

We’re not sure what Apple design honcho Jony Ive thinks of this, but we do know Apple officially said “what revolutionary product?” Now it seems that Starck may have been working on a yacht for Jobs … not for Apple per se.

Image: Flickr user Alexander Marten Zhang, Tim Crook

Voters checking out a politician’s website want a clean, easy-to-use interface that establishes an emotional connection with visitors and teaches them about the candidate — not links asking them to contribute financially to a campaign.

That’s according to a study that literally explored how we look at politicians’ websites — by tracking our eye movements.

Usabilla, a usage-tracking organization, asked 50 voters to navigate the websites of Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich. Their eye movements were tracked and they were asked for their impressions of different features on each site.

Many participants reported that they responded well to sites that tugged at their emotions. Some reported that
they connected with pictures of Romney’s family, for example — which is evident from this eye-tracking analysis:

“I always like to know a little bit about a candidate and whether he is a good dad or husband because it tells a lot about his moral character,” wrote one participant.

Many of the respondents also highlighted the easy navigability of Romney’s site. When Usabilla asked participants to find out about candidates’ backgrounds, Romney’s prominently displayed “Meet Mitt” section made the task easy to achieve.

“I’d want to “Meet Mitt” and get to know him,” said one participant of Romney’s site. “I like right off the bat at the top of the page there is a bar that will take me to the page with the info I want to know,” reported another.

Others said that finding similar information was more difficult on former candidate Rick Santorum’s site, which chose the title “Why Rick?” — a prompt some users found confusing and unclear.

So what did the participants dislike about the candidates’ sites? Many took issue with websites that feature “donate now” buttons littered across every page along with stores for candidate-themed merchandise.

“The importance of receiving money is really obvious on this site,” reported one user regarding Romney’s site. “Is this a campaign website or retail store?” asked another.

For Romney, who is often accused by critics of being excessively wealthy and out of touch with ordinary Americans, this issue is particularly salient. A handful of respondents took issue with an image of a large, expensive house used on a Romney page asking supporters to get involved with the campaign. Some wrote that the house image reinforced those critiques of the former Governor.

“This is depicting an upper class home in a wealthy neighborhood,” said one participant of the page. “That is not the life I lead.”

What do you want from a politician’s website? Sound off in the comments below.

Thumbnail image courtesy of iStockphoto, sjlocke