"At the end of the day, we're a business. We have to make sure that we make money"

The new Explorer EV heralds the start of an all-out transformation for Britain's favourite car maker. Felix Page goes behind the scenes at Ford of Europe and meets its boss Martin Sander to hear more

Despite the fact that it rides on a familiar platform (the MEB from the Volkswagen Group), is a fairly conventional shape and is aimed right at the heart of Europe's busiest car segment, the new Ford Explorer EV is about as revolutionary as any car revealed so far this decade.

Not necessarily in terms of its technological make-up or its functionality targets (both being largely in line with what has come to be expected of cars of its type) but because it marks the start of a ground-up overhaul for a large, historic and much-loved car maker.

Ford's reinvention has been a long time coming, and so far the headlines (which often transcend the automotive media sphere, such is the firm's societal weight worldwide) have predominantly been focused on the company's shedding of aspects of its previous era: Mondeo, Fiesta and Focus retired, Saarlouis factory up for sale and, most recently, 3800 European jobs axed in Ford's EV shift. Even if those losses were made in the pursuit of lofty new electrification and profitability objectives, each came as a crushing reminder that Ford had yet to show anything truly tangible of its shiny new future.

Now, though, it has. And not only has it revealed the Explorer in full, but it's very nearly ready to start building it in huge volumes at the Cologne factory where production of the Fiesta will soon come to an end. Ford will soon reveal another MEB-based electric car, followed by EV versions of the Transit Custom, Tourneo Custom, Transit Courier, Tourneo Courier and Puma over the next year. It's a rapid-fire product line overhaul in keeping with a strategy to offer an all-electric car line-up by 2030 and phase out ICE commercial vehicles five years later.