If you’re able to cast your mind back to 2017, you may remember a promise from Ford that it was working away on a hybrid Mustang. That was to be based on the then still fresh-ish S550, and to quote a press release directly: “The Mustang Hybrid, built at the Flat Rock Plant, debuts in 2020 and will be available in North America to start.”
Obviously, that never happened, and Ford has never publicly stated why. Since then, the S650 Mustang has been introduced, and its Coyote V8 continues to live on without any sort of electrification option. That could be about to change, though.
Ford Mustang GT
Reported by Ford Authority, several internally-coded S650E prototypes are now in operation and have entered Ford’s ‘Technology Prove-Out’ stage, suggesting the concept is at a pretty deep stage of development.
That’s all that’s known so far on the state of the hybrid Ford Mustang. It’s unclear if it’d take on a plug-in hybrid state with a large-capacity battery, or go down the route of another American icon – the Corvette E-Ray – and use a small-capacity battery serving mostly to improve performance and torque fill.
Ford Mustang Dark Horse – rear
Although Ford never kept to its 2020 promise for a hybrid Mustang originally, there’s been no public backtracking of its plan to introduce an electrified option of every car it offers by 2030 under its Ford Blue proposal. Unless there’s a dramatic U-turn on that plan (not impossible, given the current US administration’s scaling back of economy and emissions regulations), that would include a Mustang.
Don’t expect to see an electric version of the pony car, though. Ford CEO Jim Farley said last year: “I can promise that we will never make an electric Mustang.” Provided you ignore the existence of the Mach-E SUV for a moment, anyway. It’s unclear if a pure V8 Mustang would be able to co-exist alongside a hybrid variant, though.
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