First Drive: 2010 Ford Fusion Hybrid

Sounds great. I sure hope to see more similar reviews from other sources to support this.

Excellent article. Everyone reading this should click on the link to the actual article and read the entire article. Lots of good info and photos in there.

"is now entirely Ford’s technology (save for a battery purchased from Sanyo), with over 100 patents pending on the Fusion’s system alone." - an indication that Ford has put a lot of effort and investment into this vehicle.

"Canadian pricing hasn’t been announced yet, but south of the border, the MSRP is US$27,270."
At that price, it should sell very well in the US. (especially since gas prices are heading back up)
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I'll test dive it before I buy the 2010 Prius.

 

nice

good things with ford!

 

It will be interesting to see in the HYbrid package has features closer to the sport model or the base model. From the pics it looks pretty loaded but $30k is a lot to pay for a midsize Ford and the "hybrid premium" could be pretty easy for naysayers to show the payoff period to be prohibitive. That being said it's a nice looking car and I wish Ford best of luck.

 

uh-huh. 40% would be fantastic

 

...and Ford was the ONE of the Big Three that didn't request a bailout.
Way to go, Ford. :cheer2:

 

There are some claims being made about this vehicle that make me highly skeptical. The braking efficiency is just one. The staying in all electric is another.

If they truly are staying in all electric for moderate acceleration, that is not likely to be efficient. The other major problem is that it will result in deeper pack discharge and at a higher amperage rate--not conducive to long battery life as I understand it.

That's not to say it is a bad vehicle, just that it appears that some of the points are being oversold or perhaps misapplied. Until one of the hypermilers spends some time with it I doubt we will get a straight technical scoop.

 

I assume the 94% refers to how much of the breaking is of the regenerative type - not the percentage of the energy recouped from getting and keeping the car moving. If the former is was what was intended, I'm not sure how that figure was estimated (and am still skeptical). If the latter, then I'm getting one of those cars ASAP and and submitting a patent for a "near perpetual motion" machine.

 

It's straightforward: the amount of the car's kinetic energy that is turned into electrical energy and used to charge the battery, compared to the amount that could potentially be recovered. However, it's nothing new: the Prius (HSD, NHW20) also extracts most of the car's kinetic energy through regenerative braking.

Remember that the car is subject to losses while driving down the road. In fact most of our fuel's energy goes into overcoming those losses: friction, rolling resistance, wind resistance. The kinetic energy of a 1725kg car (stated Gross Vehicle Mass) travelling at 70mph is around 840 kilojoules, which for comparison is about 233 watt-hours (one joule is one watt per second), i.e. 0.233 kWh. The fuel's energy content is (per Wikipedia) 34.8 megajoules per litre, so absent other losses and assuming 100% conversion it would only take 24 millilitres, or less than two tablespoons, of fuel to accelerate to that speed. In fact the Prius engine is better than 33% efficient at the engine output shaft, so let's say 75ml of fuel.

Clearly we use much more fuel than that in a day!

Anyway, once you take your foot off the gas, the car is subjected immediately to those losses. Per Wikipedia again, the Prius has a drag area of 6.24 sq ft, which is approximately 0.58 square metres, so the wind resistance is about 730N at 70mph, with the air at 0 celsius and one atmosphere of pressure. It therefore requires 22,776 watts of power to overcome that wind resistance, and no doubt there's some complex integral I can't be bothered to compute which would demonstrate how much of the kinetic energy is simply lost to wind resistance.

 

If I buy another hybrid, this would likely be it. I've driven a Fusion before, and enjoyed it very much.

Apparently Ford claims the vehicle to be able to stay on electric power to 75 km/h, which would be about 45 mph, not far from the 47 mph figure I read elsewhere. I'm not surprised, really. It is fairly normal for my Prius to stay on electric power to about 41 mph, but with more charge, I've seen much more than that, up to 50 mph with the eighth bar showing on the MFD.

 

Can anyone tell me what is with that bloody ugly chrome grill?

I wish them every success but do something about the ugly stick they hit the front with.

 

My best guess of what the "up to 94%" statement refers to is how much energy that leaves the generator ends up in the battery. I am pretty confident it does not mean that up to 94% of kinetic energy makes it to the battery. The statement of EV up to 47 mph is also fairly simple for Prius devotees to grasp: it just means that M/G is allowed to spin about 10% faster than the Prius before ICE counterspins, similar I think to newer HSD spec, and less than what we will see in the first gen Prius PHEV.

Mainstream auto press still does not really understand the Prius after 10+ years, so I am not surprised to find them blindly quoting numbers for the Fusion with nary a clue.

 

That "bloody ugly chrome grill" is the new face of ford. The 3 bar grill was first introduced on Interceptor concept car and is now on every US spec ford car except the Mustang. It is also on newly introduced crossovers like the Flex and Edge.

Ford Interceptor Concept----------------------------Ford Focus Coupe----------------------------------------------Ford Edge



Automakers have a problem. Large grills / grill openings became very popular in the late 90's and remain very popular. However, large grills are not required for cooling and can greatly increase aerodynamic drag. According to Race Car Aerodynamics by Joseph Katz, the Cd of internal airflow through the cooling system ranges from 0.005 to 0.07. When you consider that the average production sedan has a Cd of 0.30 to 0.35 that means internal airflow can make up 20% of the total drag from the car. At the same time, car makers are being pushed by both the EU and US regulator bodies to increase fuel economy. So you have a conflict between the engineers and the stylists.

The compromise has been to keep the large opening but fill it with something to block the airflow. Ford does this with the new 3 bar grill.

VW has blocked off 1/3 to 1/2 of of the grill opening for their Bluetech vehicles to get better fuel economy.



Honda is doing the same thing, the 2010 Insight and 2009 Pilot still have a large grills but they are blocked:




For a visual of how crazy the stylists have gone with large grills here are front pictures of my last 2 cars, the first a ~ 200 hp V8 and the second a ~ 90 hp hybrid that shuts off the engine at stoplights:

 

Does anyone know if the Fusion uses the same hybrid system as the Escape hybrid?

I used to think each company uses the same system in all their hybirds but then I read something that said Toyota uses a different system in the Prius than they do in the Hylander.

 

Does anyone know if the Ford Fusion Hybrid uses a power split device (and thus a fully variable transmission) similar to the one used in the Prius?

 

I find it sad that like the Camry Hybrid, Altima Hybrid and this new Hybrid Fusion get relatively lousy mileage. A Prius, basically the same size, gets 33% better mileage. There is NO reason they can't do as well as the Prius, yet, they are not designed with high mileage in mind, just compact car mileage in a mid sized car.

 

been in a TCH and it might only be slightly bigger in overall capacity, the passenger area is more roomier... its wider and makes a lot of difference, but then again, i have never ridden in the back seat of a Prius before

 

Yep, to chime on this... the TCH feels significantly bigger and wider after having driven one for a day. It also has (and feels) a lot more powerful than the Prius. The NAH is way more powerful (88 hp more) and feels WAY faster than the Prius. (I drive my mom's NAH every now and then.)

The NAH is also ~600-700 lbs. heavier than a Prius...

So, I'd also agree that it's unreasonable to expect the same mileage vs. a Prius w/all these factors against it.

Just take a look at Most fuel-efficient cars. The all the non-hybrids there are wimpy in terms of power.

On a side note, I saw the Fusion Hybrid at CES at the Microsoft tent. I did see the gauges and tried out Sync w/my iPod. After some struggling (lack of familiarity w/command set and UI goofiness), I was able to do things like (push button) then say USB, Play Song [name of song]/Play Artist [name of artist] off of songs on my iPod. Very cool!

Too bad I couldn't take it for a drive. There also wasn't much to see under the hood since most stuff was under plastic covers.