Next-Gen Ford Fusion Could Get Up to 48 MPG City

Keep in mind this Chris DeMorro of gas 2.0 is the guy who put together the piece that we criticized at Editorial: A Blind Squirrel Finds His Nut | PriusChat.

I find it funny that he mentions GM and Nissan. GM still has yet to put out anything w/combined mileage anywhere close to the Prius. Nissan is dropping the NAH and has no gasoline powered cars or hybrids w/mileage anywhere close to the Prius. Their econoboxes aren't segment leaders in fuel economy either.

It will be interesting to see if the next FFH gets a city EPA rating that high (due to good optimization for the test) and then to see how it does in real world/other testing. Per http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/sbs.htm, current FFH is rated 41 city/36 highway, 39 combined vs. HyCam's 31/35, 33 combined. Yet at http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/...ce/most-fuelefficient-cars/overview/index.htm, their results were comparable.

 

Ford got it backwards. The Prius gets 51 city, 48 highways and 50 combined. If Ford is able to build a Fusion that can match the combined MPG of the Prius, the Prius will still be the king of MPG because the Prius C will get even better mileage than the regular Prius.

 

We'll see if Ford Inside News ends up being right and again, it'll be interesting to see how it does in the real world or other tests. To quote from http://priuschat.com/forums/prius-h...ind-squirrel-finds-his-nut-3.html#post1285270

edit: After doing some digging, I found the correct link for the above admission. It's at http://www.mercurycougar.net/forums...istens-to-Rush-Limbaugh..&p=226745#post226745.

 

Good heavens that was painful to read. How can the author not even know his subject matter?

I've said it before; more MPG with gas where it is now are more for bragging rights than anything else. If you drive 18k/year in a Prius with 50 mpg and $4 gas you're only spending $120/month. Even if it did 70 mpg you save only $35/month, hardly very much, and remember that's a fairly high 18,000 miles/year. This all due to the mathematics of the situation and increasing MPG having exponentially less relevance as it goes up. What we need today are lower costs and larger/faster hybrids.

We'll keep seeing better MPG, as we see better HP in cars, but cost reduction and other features while keeping MPG similar are of great interest to me and I think others.

I'm glad to see Ford chomping at the heels, though, competition will help us all out here.

 

That's why I'm sayin'.

And you Prius guys are so much fun to poke. The only people I enjoy poking more are the Pajamas Media conservative pundits <3.

 

Eight-speed E-CVT. LOL. The guy who wrote it did not understand what he was reading from the original source.

 

In the immortal words of Bush "Our children isn't learning."

 

FFH might top Prius, but next TCH will top that with 80 MPG.

You heard it first here folks. Top chief just told me that info.
Me and Toyoda go way back, used to nip at the saki bottle together.

 

Sounds like you have been nipping today.

 

Yeah, oxymoron alert. The two terms conflict with each other, like Congressional Ethics.

 

I like to do Google news searches for "Prius" a. to keep up with shiznit and b. cause I'm a dork.

I found this on the Reuters site and was flummoxed beyond what was reasonable. Beyond what was reasonable because after a certain amount of exposure to the internet, you feel as though no scandal will be too racy for you to handle, no gore too gruesome to see.

But this...seeing this guy somehow making it onto Reuters talking about an 8-speed e-CVT, well...just flummoxed, I tell you.

You know, honestly, it doesn't matter sometimes what Toyota does, it doesn't matter how well we defend the car online, in the end, someone always knows that they have a car that can "beat" the Prius. Everyone drives a 30-year-old beatup piece of crap and gets better mileage than Prius drivers. It says so right on the Internet, and Chris DeMorro wrote it.

</rant>

Now, as for actual content I would be very happy to see more manufacturers sell something that lets people get 50 mpg, the guy who wrote it and marketing aside, this is good news.

 

I am shocked that you're right. Reuters did pick up his "story". It's up right now at Next-Gen Ford Fusion Could Get Up to 48 MPG City | Reuters. Sigh... (The Reuters version still has the mistakes that he's since fixed on gas 2.0, e.g. "51 mpg highway".)

It appears they've picked up at least one of his other previous stories.

 

Hey Chris. I figured you would be in here shortly. lol I liked your C-Max article as well.

 

when it comes to FCH, i think it is telling that they expect 50% better sales... and it has sold 5k up until April.... If FCH was to bring some crazy gas mileage close to the Prius, it certainly would not sell 2k per month while Prius sells 15k-20k.

 

I love all the weaselly wishy-washy phrases in the title: "Next-Gen ...", "... could get ...", "... up to ..."

That's like saying: "My paycheck next year could be as high as $100M."

 

The relationship is an inverse one, not an exponential one. Admittedly, not as painful to mathematicians as 'lowest common denominator'.

 

I think it's inversely exponential You save half as much money going from 50 mpg to 100 mpg (50 mpg increase) as you did going from 25 mpg to 50 mpg (merely 25 and yet more impactful).

 

There are some cars out there that do get good mileage, at least part of the time. My wife's 2001 VW TDI New Beetle with its automatic tranny will get 48mpg on road trips while my brother's 2003 w/stick shift has gotten as high as 57. But ours in average around town driving falls back to around 30 - 32mpg. and the Beetlejuice (diesel fuel) it uses is higher priced than regular gasoline, at least here.

I have wondered why Toyota didn't pair a diesel engine with the hybrid system for maximum economy.