Ford Explorer Review

Practicality and Space 

The Ford Explorer will be a very decent electric family car. There’s a huge amount of legroom in the back seats, and the higher roofline means that you can bend in and hoover out those crisp crumbs really easily. Having said that, headroom in the back of the Explorer is fine, but six-footers will feel a bit more comfortable with the more generous headroom in the Skoda Enyaq and Tesla Model Y. 

There’s no ‘frunk’ for your cable storage but the 470-litre boot is a good size and has underfloor storage. Plus, there’s through-loading in the 60/40 split rear seats, which also fold flat nice and easily. It has to be pointed out that the Skoda Enyaq and Tesla Model Y both have bigger boots, but they’re also bigger cars and that’s not always a benefit if you regularly navigate tight car parks and awkward city streets. 

For a slightly more compact car, the Explorer is impressively roomy and on a par with the Renault Scenic – plus it’s got some very clever storage stuff going on up front: The ‘locker’ is a hidden cubby behind the touchscreen, which manually tilts (useful for avoiding glare from the sun on the screen, as well as to reveal or conceal the storage area). There’s also a huge central cubby, which has removable cupholders and phone tray, and which is deep enough to stow a normal laptop or modest-sized handbag.

The Explorer's not bad for towing, either. It'll tow a braked trailer of up to 1,200kg, which is more than a lot of rivals, if not as much as the Tesla Model Y. 

Interior and Design

The dash in the Ford Explorer looks really smart, and feels a notch up on most Fords, so the sense of built quality definitely isn’t going to disappoint. If you go for the Premium model with its Bang and Olufsen audio, you get brilliant sound quality and a dash-top soundbar that looks pretty cool, too.  

Dashboard

The dash in the Ford Explorer looks really smart, and feels a notch up on most Fords, so the sense of built quality definitely isn’t going to disappoint. If you go for the Premium model with its Bang and Olufsen audio, you get brilliant sound quality and a dash-top soundbar that looks pretty cool, too.   

I do miss having physical air-con controls (you have to use the touchscreen, but at least the temperature control is permanently visible), and the touch-sensitive headlight controls are annoying.   

Technology and Equipment

We’ve already mentioned the clever, tilting, 14.6-inch SYNC Move touchscreen that you get in every Explorer, and is a neat feature. However, there are some annoying aspects, including the haptic, touch-sensitive steering wheel controls that are too easy to activate by accident. The screen usability is a bit frustrating at times, too; there are four shortcut icons at the top of the screen that you rely on a lot to hop from the nav screen to other functions, but they’re small and fiddly to hit, and it’s irritating that there’s no back button to return to the previous screen if you’ve just dipped out to change drive mode, for instance.  

Mind you, there is a home button that’s always visible, and those shortcut icons are configurable, so with familiarity and time to customise the system it’ll be easy enough to live with. 

Equipment is a big perk on the Explorer. Even the entry-level Select models get 12-way electric seat adjustment with massage function, not to mention heated seats, keyless entry, reversing camera and sensors, adaptive cruise control and alloy wheels. That’s usefully better standard kit than you get on most alternatives; Ford will tell you that it’s equivalent to around £3000 - £4000 more than key rivals. Premium trim adds the panoramic roof, 20-inch alloy wheels and Bang and Olufsen audio.

Safety

Every Ford Explorer gets a great suite of safety features including adaptive cruise control with traffic jam assist, so the car automaticallys stops and goes with the traffic ahead. Lane-keep assist is also standard, as is autonomous emergency braking. You’ll have to add the driver assistance pack to upgrade to a head-up display and the full semi-autonomous drive mode that will even slow down and speed up in keeping with the speed limit, and even respond to corners and junctions up ahead. 

The Explorer managed a full five stars (out of five) in Euro NCAP crash tests.