20 Jul 07
You get underway with just a gentle whining hum, which doesn't get any louder as you go faster so it's quickly drowned out by the noise of the rubber on the road. Ford's engineers talk about a 14-second 0-60mph time, and they've limited top speed to 85mph, so HySeries Drive is hardly a performance option.
But it still feels assured on the road, and that's all thanks to the power source. There's nothing high up and over the nose dragging you wide when you corner enthusiastically or masking the feedback from the front wheels on the tarmac. It makes for light yet responsive steering.
If you've never heard of a Ford Edge you're not missing out on too much. To our less brand-snobbish American cousins the Edge and its Lincoln MKX twin make sense. A large, fancy SUV wearing a Ford badge simply wouldn't sell in the UK. But that's not to say it's a bad car. It wears the blinging great three-bar chrome grille that graces all new-generation American Fords. And with the pearlescent white paint of our test car its silhouette makes it look deceptively small, quite sexy even, like a slightly squarer cousin to Ford's Iosis X concept car.
The Aston Martin DB9 door handles are a nice touch. And on this model they've given it the interior from the posher Lincoln so it's got a surprisingly European feel, with brushed aluminium-style trim and decent-quality plastics. But it's not the car that's important, it's the technology - and that still has its drawbacks.
Acceleration isn't as brisk as it could be because the batteries and fuel cell are heavy so this car tips the scales at a portly 2,450kg - 160kg more than a standard model. To give you some idea how weighty that is, a Rolls-Royce Phantom is only 45kg heavier...
