In the quest to reduce fuel consumption and pollution, manufacturers have come up with ideas that will reduce stress on our environment all the while maintaining sales. This last part is the trick. Money is what makes the world go around and I used to add, and drown. What I am trying to say is that even if the environment is a huge pressing issue, car manufacturers will not invest hundreds of millions of dollars into technologies that will not improve the bottom line. Ford was very smart and decided that mixing SUV DNA with a hot-at-the-moment Hybrid powertrain, would allow them to get the best of both worlds and please as many potential buyers and tree-huggers (in the good sense) as possible, all in one instalment. They may have been successful in combining gas and electric motors; however the end result may not be as great as they had hoped. Road Test Link
Have you noticed the wording in the newest Ford Freestyle commercials? They're stressing the "car like" appeal. That's a subtle move against the way they used to advertise back in 2003, since their own SUVs clearly cannot compete with that. The reign of the dinosaurs is finally coming to an end. Ancient technology in vehicles so grossly oversized that the compromise safety is now becoming a thing of the past. Hooray! Though relevent in Canada, this quote is definitely not accurate for the American market: "The Ford Escape was first introduced in 2001. Since then, it has sold very well and it continues to do so today." Sales of Escape were so poor at one point that Ford really struggled to figure out where to produce the hybrid... then came along the idea to make it bigger and more powerful, which eliminated the possibility of them using THS, since it wasn't designed for that much of a load. And of course, with the rise of gas prices and that anti-SUV crusades, the appeal of Escape has grown to the "sold very well" level only recently.
Also... I'm really growing sick of this source-material for the electrical misconception: "These batteries are recharged through regenerative braking" Most reporters are causing problems by implying that electricity only comes from that solitary source, which is absolutely false. In a "full" hybrid, the majority of the electricity actually comes from regular driving. The regenerative part is just icing on the cake, and it is much more than the current "assist" hybrids can provide. For example: The Civic-Hybrid only has a 10kW motor. HSD Prius has a 50kW motor used for capturing electricity through braking. Clearly, HSD Prius has a significant advantage over Civic-Hybrid. Far more electricity can be regenerated... even more than you expect, in fact. That's very easy to prove too. Just look at the improvement from the Classic model Prius, which had a 33kW motor for regenerating. So you can imagine how little a 10kW motor actually provides.
The reporter said he got about 100km per 9.9 l. That's only about 24 mpg. I wonder how many people, over the long run, are going to be willing to pay the US$4,000 price premium for a hybrid for the sake of 24 mpg? The same doubts go for the new Lexus SUV hybrid, the mpg figures for which are similarly unimpressive. What we really need is a collective dope slap for all the fools who neither drive off-road nor tow trailers, yet think they must have an SUV.
I'm not sure that the 50kW motor of the new Prius really allows much more regenerative braking than the 33kW motor. I thought the charging rate was limited by the battery. Something of the order of 60A = 12kW, IIRC.
