Ford Explorer 2024 Review

Exterior Design

Ford intended to give the Explorer functional, practical looks, with echoes of the brand’s American origins. The front is not particularly sloped, but the corners and edges are rounded. The effect is a face that’s quite serious but not aggressive – more like it means business than it means trouble.

The Explorer is also a bit smaller than the Volkswagen Group vehicles that share the same type of drivetrain. The Volkswagen ID.4 is 11cm longer, and the Skoda Enyaq iV 18cm longer. The Tesla Model Y is also 28cm longer. Ford is trying to differentiate the Explorer as a more compact, city-friendly SUV that still has great long-distance and countryside potential.

There’s nothing about the exterior design that shows any of the Volkswagen Group heritage underneath. However, although this is a Europe-only vehicle, the styling is more American than European staples like the Puma, Kuga, or Focus. The Ford team told us they meant for the car to evoke American ruggedness and durability.

Interior Comfort

The Explorer has a comfortable looking interior. We drove various versions of the car for many hours across lots of different road types, and found it lived up to its looks. The driver’s side seat is electrically adjusted with two memory slots, heating, and a massage function. The passenger’s side is heated with a massage function too, although it’s manually adjusted. We did see some cars with electrically adjusted passenger seats at the launch, though. This may be a European-only option.

The central console looks like it has dual wireless phone charging pads, but one of them isn’t powered. The twin cupholders further back in the central console are removable, so you can use this space for something else if you need to. There’s also a secret compartment behind the infotainment screen. You can slide the bottom edge backwards and forwards to reveal this. It’s locked when the vehicle is powered down.

Overall, the interior is like the exterior – not flashy but with a sense of solid quality, which is what you want in a family SUV. The Premium car also has the B&O soundbar across the front of the dashboard, which looks quite stylish.

There is a decent amount of rear space. With average-sized adults in the front, there is enough knee room for average-sized adults in the rear. But for people over six feet tall the rear space will be more cramped. However, the headroom is fine and with the Premium car you get a panoramic sunroof that adds to the sense of space.

The middle rear seat is narrower, as per usual, but if you don’t have anybody here you can pull the seat back forward to make an armrest with a couple of cupholders. There’s no control over air conditioning temperature in the back, but there are moveable vents and a couple of USB C ports for charging devices.

Storage and Load Carrying

Although it’s quite small relative to other SUVs with the Volkswagen Group MEB powertrain, the Ford Explorer still offers a reasonable amount of luggage space. With the Premium trim, you can kick to open the boot hands free, and you get this with the Select too if you’ve added the £1,800 Driver Assistance Pack. We particularly like the way the luggage cover is attached to the tailgate, so it moves completely out the way as the lid raises.

With the rear seats up, you get 450 litres of space – more than a typical hatchback, but about 100 litres less than a Volkswagen ID.4. You can drop the central section of the rear seats down on its own to accommodate a long item with two rear passengers. Otherwise, the rear seats go forward with a 60/40 split opening up 1,422 litres of space. This is also larger than a typical hatchback, but 300 litres behind a Volkswagen ID.4.

With the £900 tow-bar add-on, the rear-wheel drive cars can haul up to 1,000kg braked, and the all-wheel-drive version 1,200kg. These are not huge values. It will be enough for a trailer or small boat, but only a limited two or four-birth caravan will be viable.

The controls are standard, with only a few nods to the Volkswagen origin of the drivetrain. The left-hand side of the steering wheel hosts some buttons, although having volume controls next to adaptive cruise functions could get confusing. There are some menu functions on the right-hand side of the steering wheel, too.

The left-hand stalk has triple functions of windscreen wipers, indicators and lights. One leftover from Volkswagen is that the right-hand stalk is a knob that you rotate for drive, B-mode, reverse and neutral, plus a push on the end for park. There are also some membrane buttons that are right out of the ID.3 and ID.4 parts bin.

The 5.3in instrument display is more integrated with the dashboard than Volkswagen’s, but the contents are similar to an ID. car, with simple digital readouts. The £1,300 (Premium) / £1,800 (Select) Driver Assistance Pack adds a useful head-up display with all the essential information, so you never need to take your eyes off the road.

There are minimal buttons for infotainment volume and toggling the parking camera. But the air conditioning is entirely operated via the central screen. However, the controls are always onscreen and quite large. So they’re almost as good as having discrete controls. You won’t need to look away from the road for long to use them.

The basic view on the 14.6in portrait orientation infotainment screen includes satnav and media widgets. You can make the satnav map fill most of the screen, but if you press the top-left button with six dots, it takes you to a simple screen full of icons for all the different functions, which is quite easy to navigate. There’s support for Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.

You can alter the behaviour of the Driver Assistance, for example to disable lane departure warning, although for safety reasons this will always re-enable for your next driving session. There’s an attractive charging interface, battery pre-conditioning and the radio. This is also the only way you can adjust the driver profiles. All cars have normal, eco, sport and individual modes. With the all-wheel drive car, you also get a traction mode to help with offroad or slippery conditions. However, it would have been good to have faster access to changing these modes.

Performance and Driving

The rear-wheel drive car has 286PS and the all-wheel drive car has 340PS, so both are fast off the line. The rear-wheel drive car can hit 62mph in 6.4 seconds, and the all-wheel drive car drops this to 5.3 seconds. The difference in acceleration isn’t the most significant factor, however. The steering is lighter with the rear-wheel drive car, but the all-wheel drive car feels more solid on the road, implying that the suspension was set up more for this variant.

We drove both cars in a wide variety of conditions – windy mountain roads, highways, and about town. They felt capable in all conditions. The Explorer is meant to be a “do it all” kind of vehicle and it fits that bill well, although it’s not a driver’s car. Despite the good performance, even the all-wheel drive version isn’t that exciting. But with the good range, comfort and space it’s going to tick a lot of boxes, particularly as it’s smaller than a lot of SUVs.

Range and Charging

Thanks to sporting the latest Volkswagen Group electric drivetrain, the Ford Explorer is capable of competent range in its class. The 286PS rear-wheel drive car’s 77kWh (net) battery can deliver 374 WLTP miles in Select trim, although the larger wheels of the Premium version drop this to 354 miles. With the 340PS all-wheel drive powertrain and a 79kWh battery, the range is 329 miles. With a 52kWh battery, the Explorer can only manage 239 miles.

These are all decent figures for their battery sizes. In our real-world driving at the launch in Slovenia, which involved quite a bit of fast, tight mountainous roads, we achieved 3.1 miles per kWh from the all-wheel drive car and 3.5 miles per kWh with the rear-wheel drive version. That would equate to 245 miles for the former and 270 miles for the latter, which are very usable ranges.

Charging speed varies between the different models. All have 11kW AC, so if you’re lucky enough to have this you’ll be able to charge from 0 to 100% in less than 8 hours, but with a 7.4kWh wall box it will be more like 12 hours. The all-wheel drive car supports DC charging up to 185kW, so can replenish from 10-80% in just 26 minutes. The DC power drops to 135kW with the 77kWh battery, so this takes 28 minutes to go from 10 to 80%. The 52kWh battery is slower still at 125kW max, so also takes 28 minutes to charge from 10 to 80%.

Still, the versions with the larger batteries will be more than capable of long-distance journeys, with good range and fast enough charging, even if the speeds aren’t quite state of the art. You also get a year’s access to IONITY and BP Pulse networks included alongside Ford’s Blue Oval Charge Network.

Running Costs

The Explorer’s WLTP rating would equate to nearly 4.9 miles per kWh for the Select RWD car with the 77kWh battery, 4.6 miles per kWh for the 52kWh battery, and 4.2 miles per kWh for the all-wheel drive car. Our real-world results were about 75% of those figures, making this a reasonably efficient car.

The basic warranty is three years for 60,000 miles, but you can extend this to four years for 80,000 miles or five years for 100,000 miles. The car also comes with a five-year service plan if purchased through Ford retail rather than a fleet or Motability. This includes two scheduled services after two and four years of ownership, as well as roadside assistance, repair and recovery.

Insurance groups are reasonable. The 77kWh Select car is Group 28, the Premium 77kWh Group 29, and the all-wheel drive car Group 32.

Safety

There are plenty of safety features with the Explorer as standard. There’s Intelligent Adaptive Cruise Control with Stop & Go for stationary traffic jams. Lane Keeping and Departure Warning are standard too, as is traffic sign recognition. You get cross traffic alert with active braking and exit warning. There’s a rear-view camera plus front and rear parking sensors.

Specifying the £1,300 (Premium) / £1,800 (Select) Driver Assistance Pack, aside from including the aforementioned Head-Up Display, adds driver alerts, lane centring with lane change assist, and active parking assistance. The parking camera extends all around the vehicle, providing a full 360-degree view.