Welcome back to EV News Daily. Coming up today, Smart enters the mid-sized sedan market, the Polestar 4 now available, and the Jeep Wagon Air S-EV.

We get a first look, plus stay tuned. Because later in the show, I'll tell you what Nissan is saying about their plan to use cheaper batteries for more affordable EVs.

I'm Martin Lee. I go through hundreds of articles, feeds and stories a day, so you don't have to.

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Well, let's talk about Ford announcing the launch of a new plugin hybrid. This time, it's their third-gen transit connect.

The transit connect, it's got the transit name, but it's not a big panel van. This is the smaller compact panel van and expands their electrified van line up here in Europe. Built on Volkswagen's platform, actually. The Transit Connect plug-in hybrid is on their MQB platform, which they get from Volkswagen. It's basically a technical

counterpart to the VW caddy. It's not a badge engineered thing. It is a Ford. It features a

hybrid power train with a 1.5 litre petrol, but the electric stuff has a really decent range

to it. That's 110 kilometers. That's over 60 miles. 11 kilowatt

AC charging, 50 kilowatt DC fast charging, but it's that electric range of over 60 miles,

of 110 kilometers, even if that's not real world, even if you've got to account for

winter temperatures and things like that,

it does mean that so many journeys will be done on electric power alone.

It'll enter the market by mid-year, and the Transit Connect plug-in hybrid joins Ford's other

EV-Offering, the E-Transit custom, and the forthcoming E-Transit Courier, which I think the

courier is the smaller one, isn't it, in Ford World? Power is through a six-speed automatic

transmission, dual-clatch technology. So whether you like plug-in hybrids or not, there's going to be

a use case for this where it's, I think, very useful to have all of that EV power, but ultimately

a backup that if you have to go and do the last minute, a 300 mile round trip to get some

supplies in your van, you can rely on the petrol engine, but I think for many people, this will be

a work van. This could be tradespeople.

This could be deliveries.

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