2025 Ford e-Transit Road Test and Review

2024 Ford e-Transit ・ Photo by Brady Holt

Idling in a customer’s driveway to put together an estimate. Repeatedly shuttling back and forth between a work site and a nearby Home Depot. Stopping at every third house to deliver a package. These are three common ways to burn lots of gasoline in a typical Ford Transit cargo van. And they’re three scenarios in which the 2025 Ford e-Transit shines. 

The e-Transit is a fully electric cargo van. Like other electric vehicles, it’s much more efficient than gasoline when it’s idling, traveling at low speeds, or making short trips. Yet unlike the typical EV, it’s all about dollars and cents rather than exuberant acceleration. For this review, we just spent a week testing the e-Transit. Keep reading to learn more about our experience and to see if an e-Transit – or one of its rivals – is the right work van for you. 

Priced From $51,000

The 2025 Ford e-Transit starts at $51,000 as a cargo van, while business owners interested in a custom box truck can pay about $5,000 less for a cutaway or chassis cab model. However, you can’t get the e-Transit from the factory as a passenger van with rear seats and windows. That’s a pity, as it would be an excellent hotel shuttle. 

At $51,000, the e-Transit is about $4,000 more than a gas-powered Transit cargo van. Many buyers will also qualify for a $7,500 federal tax credit on plug-in vehicles, though only through the end of September 2025. That price includes a big 12-inch infotainment system with GPS navigation and wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto integration. Power windows and locks, cruise control, and even rain-sensing windshield wipers are also included. Like many other EVs, you might be able to negotiate a big discount off the sticker price, so shop around. 

Notable add-ons include Pro Power Onboard, which lets you use the van’s battery capacity to run power tools or even serve as a whole-house generator; a rearview camera mirror (letting you “see through” the cargo hold); a surround-view parking camera (which uses a network of cameras to create an overhead view of the van while you’re maneuvering in tight spaces – possibly paying for itself if it helps you avoid a costly scrape); and adaptive cruise control that can automatically match the speed of cars in front of you. 

2024 Ford e-Transit ・ Photo by Brady Holt

Your Range Will Vary

Every 2025 e-Transit has an 89-kilowatt-hour battery, which Ford introduced last year to provide more range than early e-Transit models. The e-Transit is too big and heavy to get official EPA fuel economy and range estimates, but Ford predicts that it can travel 159 miles per charge with the low roof, 148 miles with the medium roof like our test vehicle, and 143 miles with the high roof. That’s more than enough for many fixed delivery routes or for tradespeople working on the same job site all day or within a small service area. But it’s not a great fit for someone who’d be bouncing around on jobs an hour away from each other. 

The range you’ll experience will vary widely from Ford’s estimate, too. We drove our e-Transit test vehicle empty in pleasant weather, including a mix of short errands and stretches of highway driving, and we were on track to get around 200 miles on a charge. However, the van has a 3,200-pound payload capacity; if we’d filled the back with shelving and supplies, our range would have dropped. It would also fall in cold weather or extreme heat; we enjoyed temps in the 70s during most of our test. Highway driving is also much less efficient than lower speeds, with the electric motor needing lots of juice to push this tall van through the air. 

Potential for Very Low Operating Costs

The e-Transit can be very cheap to run depending on how you drive it and, even more, how you charge it. As we mentioned, the e-Transit is most efficient at lower speeds rather than cruising at 70 mph down the freeway. But the bigger difference is where you plug it in. 

The e-Transit can add about 67 miles of range within 15 minutes at a DC fast charging station, or go all the way from 10 percent to 80 percent charge within half an hour. (DC charging an EV past 80 percent is much slower.) Ford even gives you access to Tesla’s famously reliable Supercharger network via an adapter. That’s great flexibility when you’re on the go. However, at many DC chargers, electricity is as expensive as gasoline per mile. 

That means the e-Transit works best when it can primarily charge at a driver’s home or workplace. Based on the average U.S. commercial electrical rate of 13.6 cents per kWh, it would cost $12.10 to fill the e-Transit’s battery. At a 150-mile range, that would be 8 cents per mile. If a gas Transit averages 17 mpg (it also lacks an EPA rating and varies by payload and driving style), it would cost 18 cents per mile at the average U.S. price of $3.13 per gallon. That’s $1,000 in extra fuel costs every 10,000 miles, plus the costs of oil changes. 

2024 Ford e-Transit ・ Photo by Brady Holt

Easy to Drive

Every Ford Transit is easy to drive for such a big van. It has a gentle ride, direct steering, and excellent outward visibility. Our test van’s 360-view camera, rearview camera mirror, and generously sized conventional side mirrors helped, too. 

The e-Transit adds the smoothness of an electric motor. It makes 266 horsepower and 317 lb-ft of torque. That’s similar horsepower and a lot more torque than the base V6-powered gas Transit, though less output than the optional turbo V6. The e-Transit never revs and roars if you need to floor the accelerator, but makes a steadily building whoosh that’s uncannily like a subway train. Speed isn’t overwhelming, but it arrives without fuss. The accelerator pedal has built-in resistance that you’ll have to get used to overcoming; we often found ourselves driving slower than we intended. We recommend using the cruise control so you don’t have to worry about maintaining speed. 

The e-Transit has a choice of three driving modes. We didn’t notice much difference between Eco and Normal, while Slippery provides extra protection against wheelspin on wet roads. Unlike the gas Transit, the e-Transit is sold only with rear-wheel drive and no all-wheel drive option. 

2024 Ford e-Transit ・ Photo by Brady Holt

Blank Canvas in the Back

Behind the two front seats, Ford provides a huge blank canvas of cargo space. You can get your e-Transit in a choice of “long” or “extended” bodies and with a choice of low, medium, or high roofs. Our test vehicle is a long medium-roof model. 

Cargo capacity ranges from 312 cubic feet for a low-roof model to 536 cubic feet for the high-roof extended body. Our test vehicle has 401 cubic feet. For context, that’s nearly four times the cargo capacity (109 cubic feet) of a Ford Expedition full-size SUV. Standing nearly 6 feet tall, we were able to walk around the medium-roof Transit with only some crossbar supports grazing our head.

Ford will also sell you some interior shelving or, new this year, one of four fully outfitted packages intended for different trades: HVAC, electrician, general contractor, or delivery services. But you can also buy an empty van like our test vehicle and customize it yourself. The e-Transit shares its body with the gas-powered Transit, the best-selling cargo van since its debut a decade ago. So there’s no shortage of aftermarket upfittings. 

2024 Ford e-Transit ・ Photo by Brady Holt

Up-to-Date Infotainment

We mentioned that every e-Transit has a 12-inch infotainment touchscreen. This screen is generously sized and shares its attractive graphics with Ford’s passenger vehicles. We don’t love having to use the screen for all climate settings, but at least there’s a simple volume knob for the audio system. And as we mentioned, you can run some of your phone’s apps on the screen via Apple CarPlay or Android Auto. That’s great news when the three-year trial of the factory GPS system runs out – then you can switch to your phone’s Google Maps for free. 

The e-Transit’s interior is almost entirely shared with the gas model. It’s not futuristic or fancy, and big cupholders are everywhere. We do wish there were a bigger display to keep an eye on the all-important remaining range.

2024 Ford e-Transit ・ Photo by Brady Holt

Costs Less Than the Competition

The e-Transit is just one of five fully electric cargo vans available in the U.S. It faces electric versions of the rival Ram Promaster and Mercedes-Benz Sprinter, plus the funkier-looking Rivian ECV and the bigger, more truck-like Chevrolet BrightDrop. 

Of this group, the e-Transit has the lowest starting price and is the only one with the Pro Power vehicle-to-load system (though the others have three-prong outlets for light electric loads). The Mercedes and Chevrolet have a longer electric range with an even higher-cost battery upgrade. The front-wheel-drive ProMaster has a conveniently low cargo floor. The Rivian and BrightDrop are purpose-built electric vehicles, while the e-Transit is an ordinary-looking van that telegraphs its EV status only with some subtle badges and blue grillework. 

The other top consideration is which vans are available at a discount. With electric vehicles in particular, sticker prices are often disconnected from what people pay out the door. Consider getting price quotes on multiple vans. 

2025 Ram ProMaster EV ・ Photo by Ram

The Pros and Cons of Going EV

The 2025 Ford e-Transit cuts fuel and maintenance expenses, lets you use its big battery to power your other equipment, and is as comfortable and easy to drive as other Transit vans. 

Its range and charging limitations mean it’s not for everyone. If you frequently need to drive more than 100 miles per day, especially cruising at freeway speeds, you’ll likely spend more time and money using public charging stations. At a minimum, you’ll have to worry about running out of juice. But for lots of shorter trips with most recharging happening overnight at a home or workplace, the e-Transit can be a great fit. 

2024 Ford e-Transit ・ Photo by Brady Holt