How Magna's electrified Focus wowed Ford

Editor's note: An earlier version of this story, which also appears on Page 34 of this week's print edition of Automotive News, contained the wrong title for Magna founder Frank Stronach in 2007. He was chairman of Magna International Inc.'s board at that time.

DETROIT -- Ford engineer Sherif Marakby was impressed with Magna's technology and verve when the supplier's executives stopped by with a retrofitted 2008 Ford Focus.

Ford had not solicited the prototype, which Magna had converted from gasoline power to electric drive. And Ford at the time had only a vague notion that Magna had created an electric-car business from scratch.

Magna's electric Focus "was quite impressive," Marakby, director of electrification programs, recalled last week.

From that tryout in 2008, Ford Motor Co. and Magna International Inc. decided to collaborate on an electric vehicle, the 2012 Focus Electric, which is scheduled to go on sale this fall.

The car has helped vault Magna E-Car Systems, partly spun off last year from parent Magna, to the front rank of companies supplying full electric powertrains and other electric parts to the industry.

From a handful of engineers moonlighting on the project in 2008, Magna E-Car Systems today has grown to nearly 700 employees at technical centers and plants in Detroit; Aurora, Ontario; and Graz, Austria.

For the 2012 Focus Electric, Magna E-Car is providing nearly all of the electric powertrain except the battery pack, said Vice Chairman Ted Robertson.

The plug-in Focus will give Ford an entry to compete with the Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid and the Nissan Leaf electric. The price and launch date have not been announced, Marakby said.

The car is engineered so it can be built on the same assembly line in suburban Detroit as the gasoline-powered Focus compact and two C-Max hybrids.

In addition to the Focus electric's launch, which Robertson calls the company's top priority, Magna E-Car is working on a project to supply a European carmaker with an electric powertrain for an existing vehicle platform.

Robertson would not identify the carmaker but said the vehicle is scheduled to launch next year. A technical center in Graz now has 210 engineers and technicians working on that project and others, he said.

Magna makes everything from battery packs and electric motors to gearboxes, inverters, computer controllers and wiring harnesses.

"We're involved with 30 hybrid and electric platforms," Robertson said.

The progression from electric-parts startup to full system integrator has been lightning-fast.

The inspiration was a conversation Robertson had in late 2007 with Frank Stronach, then Magna's chairman. Stronach suggested strongly that Robertson find a way to get Magna into the electric-car business.

That spawned the idea of buying the 2008 Ford Focus, tearing it down and installing an electric powertrain.

Then Magna contracted for assistance with a startup in suburban Detroit, Bluwav LLC, that was heavily involved in electric parts and motors.

Magna bought Bluwav in 2008 when it looked like Ford was convinced that Magna could save Ford money and dramatically reduce development time on an electric Focus, said Kevin Pavlov, Magna E-Car Systems COO and founder of Bluwav.

Since then Magna has spent "hundreds of millions of dollars" getting into the electric powertrain business, Robertson said.

At Magna E-Car Systems's technical center in suburban Detroit, Pavlov showed off a lab with a bank of five high-powered mainframe computers.

The computers were hooked to various electric parts and circuits to capture performance information that could be sent by computer anywhere to simulate exactly how the parts operate in the real world.

In another fenced part of the technical center, lines of machines that resembled ovens were putting parts under loads and certain conditions to test them.

Meanwhile, Stronach, the founder of industry giant Magna, demonstrated his bullishness on the business last year when he sold his controlling stake in Magna and negotiated a 27 percent stake through a family trust in Magna E-Car Systems.

Stronach is chairman of Magna E-Car Systems and a board member of Magna. Magna retains the other 73 percent of the electric-car parts spinoff.

Ford's Marakby said an unknown of the Focus project was whether the automaker could work easily with Magna. That turned out to be a nonissue.

"The two organizations had very complementary skills," he said.

Marakby said the two companies have tried to address any problem that crops up within 24 hours, adding: "We've used each other's resources to make this a very lean project."

For Ford, using an existing car platform for the Focus electric, combined with the partnership with Magna, allows the carmaker to introduce a refined electric compact at a fraction of the cost of similar vehicles, Marakby said.

"We didn't have to retool the whole body," Marakby said. "It saved us hundreds of millions of dollars."