Very encouraging for Ford, those concerned about the future of the US
auto industry, and buyers looking for high FE.

In the last paragraph of the article, this sentence appears:
"One area where the 2010 Ford fusion is sadly lacking is that while the
Fusion Hybrid provides a standard 110-volt power outlet it is not a plug in
hybrid."

I am unaware of there being any connection with the car having a 110V
outlet, and the car having plug-in charging capabilities. Or am I missing
something?

I take it that this means that there will be a built-in inverter. I wonder, will
it be under the dash with just enough capacity for in-car electronics, or
perhaps under the hood with enough umph to run a 'fridge or sump pump
in the house in an emergency?

From the article:

1.3Kw/hr means that the car would have just enough juice to brew a 12 cup pot of coffee. You would be lucky to do anything else but power a laptop with this kind of battery capacity.

I have been using a Kill-A-Watt energy meter to watch energy consumption on several house hold appliances. Here is support for the claim: Grind your own beans and become a java junkie today! - Cuisinart DGB-550BK 12-Cup Coffee Maker - Epinions.com

I think the reference is to an emergency situation in which the vehicle would function as generator, ie using the energy of the gasoline as well as the battery to, say, keep the dialysis machine going during a regional blackout. Then the question is the current carrying capacity of the inverter, not the amount of energy stored in the batteries.

As an engineer with a bit of electrical engineering knowledge, this seems to be flat out backwards.

Electrical losses are due to resistance.
Losses due to resistance go up with square of the current. (Joule effect)
When you reduce the voltage, to get the same power output, you need to increase the current, which also increases losses due to resistance.

This is one reason why long-distance transmission lines use extremely high voltage.

For example, if you have a 100V supply and you need to supply 100W, this requires 1 amp of current.

If you have a 200V supply and need to supply 100W, this requires 0.5 amps of current. Electrical loses compared to the 100V system are 1/4 of the losses and thus efficiency is 4 times higher.

Am I missing something?

The article states that the voltage (presumably the voltage of the bus from which the controlled motor drive energy flows are derived) was lowered to reduce power dissipation and hence improve efficiency. As an experienced power electronics and power systems engineer, I'd like to point out that there are many trade-offs involved in choosing the proper or most efficient voltage for a system to be operated. It's pretty complicated for a "simple" motor/controller system, and if it's for a hybrid vehicle propulsion system the complexity multiplies. However, for a given power level, one can usually optimize a system for better efficiency with a higher system voltage than lower. This assumes one has NOT yet designed the product. One very notable example is the use of 100's of kilovolts for very high power (100's of megawatts) power transmission system. The basis for this phenomenon is that power loss is driven by the equation R*I^2, where voltage does not figure in. By reducing current one reduces this major source of power loss. One restores the systme power output by raising the voltage commensurately, following the equation P=I*V.

To my mind, Ford was optimizing this aspect of the powertrain late in the design cycle. I assume the associated constraints prevented the (generaally more effective) type of optimization I outline above.

I'm looking forward to this car!

Road Fan

mmmm i dont read anything new

the stuff is written so it seams there a special things and better then the prius

but its not!

the new ford will for the first time be on par with the prius maybe

"the pack no longer needs its own air conditioning system. Instead, cabin air can be routed through the pack to keep it cool."

wow so before there was active a/c on the pack? prius already got normal FAN cooling in 1997 ?

97% regen capture? nice figure dont believe it.

"Another energy saving technology used in the Fusion is Electric Power Assisted Steering (EPAS). This utilizes a steering column mounted electric motor that provides steering power assistance on demand and typically consumes less than 7% of the energy of a conventional hydraulic rack and pinion power steering system."

damm electronic powered steering in 2009 WOW WOW....... is this for real? is ford really putting this in there report for the hybrid car?
i can not think of any car over here that not already ( or brand of car ) got electic instead of hydrolic power steering for years now.
nothing special about that.

but anyway good that cars like this are going to be on the road soon

1.3Kw/hr is not a small amount of power and is way more power then required to brew a 12 cop pot of coffee. It should run a fridge for a day unless you open it too much.

Wow. Brake-by-wire and electronic wedge brakes are pretty high-zoot technologies for automobiles. Stuff like this normally debuts on platforms such as the Mercedes S-class. Good on Ford if the above presumption is accurate; the successful deployment of this braking technology has implications for every vehicle.

I hate bleeding brakes, and it will be nice to eliminate the vacuum (or hydraulic or electric) booster and master cylinder from the engine bay. Plug-and-play calipers will make brake jobs much easier, as well.

I believe all these advancements are already in 2004 Prius. Ford went up one higher with the 47 MPH EV limit.

your joking right?

Excellent !!!! I will be looking forward to seeing these in dealer showrooms.

And it will make GM look really stupid for showing up at the U.S. Capitol in a Volt, and then all of a sudden Ford is actually selling the Fusion Hybrid but GM's Volt is no where to be seen.

Drees, no you are not missing anything regarding the fundamentals. In fact you are a lot clearer than I in making the same point - we posted nearly simultaneously.

Of course it's possible to optimize a system based on engineering fundamentals such as Ohm's Law at the beginning of a design project. I've done this several times in designing power systems for space vehicles. Once one has run a good distance down the road however, such as, in Ford's case start of production minus 12 months, there are a lot of constraints in place. All the components and subassemblies have been validated, investing months of test time for each part, and cannot be significantly changed after that.

Assuming Ford discovered the battery sizing had been too conservative (perhaps based on instrumented "mule fleet" testing) and had excess system voltage, to down-size the cell stack and lighten the automobile seems like an improvement to system efficiency, even though it does not greatly affect electrical subsystem efficiency. There is no possibility at this point in the automotive ready-for-production cycle to re-wind motors, power MOSFETS, power filtering, or other "big EE" stuff - it's all been proven out and cannot be changed without serious impact to the launch date, and the non-recurring engineering cost.

So what you may have been missing is the impact of product life cycle on the available decision space. You presentation of the fundamentals was perfect.

Road Fan

Hi All,

The main reason the Prius, and presumably this new Fusion use the lower battery voltage than motor voltage is to improve regeneration recovery and a secondary benefit of brake life improvement.

When braking the motor has a constant voltage/rpm ratio. Remember the MG2 is fix geared to the wheels. So, as the car slows the voltage gets smaller and smaller. At some point, the voltage is too low to pump current into a battery. By using a motor that is twice the voltage than the battery, this makes it easier to get more energy out of a slowing car. Since the generation voltage will be higher to a lower speed.

Losses for accelleration are not a big issue in a hybrid, because the cars use the engine for accelleration, primarily. Because the engine at civilian accelleration powers are in their most efficient regime.

At speed maintaining electrical loads, the resistance losses can be designed to be sufficiently low for good effect. Also remember the number of cells effects the the series resistance of the pack. The more cells, the more cell-to-cell connections. And the heat these connections make not only waste power, but hurt battery life. So, there is probably a happy medium between too low a voltage and wire/inverter losses, versus too high a voltage and too much loss from cell-to-cell connections. Look at the elaborate battery cooling system in the Tesla for an example of too many cells for a medium performance, low maintenance prodcution car (not what the Tesla is).

These are the Hybrid car/ EV tradeoffs. An EV needs much bigger wires, inverters and batteries to be able to efficiently accellerate electrically. A Hybrid does not. A Hybrid needs excellent regeneration.

A great explanation for the same advancement made for 2004 Prius.

Any idea how many voltage Ford is boosting up to?

I'm pleased to see that Ford is moving in the right direction so quickly...I see no mention of accceleration performance? Perhaps more is coming. :cheer2:

More detail information about Fusion hybrid at GCC.

Way more if you consider having a couple hundred watts left is ok.

Please try monitoring the power usage of coffee maker with a Fluke or Kill-A-Watt meter. I am sorry, but I disagree with your statement.

For those of you celebrating the chance to buy a domestically built hybrid, it depends on your definition of "domestic." The L.A. Times car blog reported last week that the Fusion hybrid is being built in Mexico.