"Ford's hybrid powertrains and battery packs are nearly indestructible. Try this on for size: Out of the 42,629,318 cells used to make up 190,000 battery packs, only five cells — about the size of a D battery — failed. Of the 380,000 electric motors in Ford's 190,000 hybrids sold (every vehicle has two), none failed. From The Detroit News: Columnists | Burgess: Ford powers up hybrid production | The Detroit News"
I suspect that means 5 failures out of 190,000 packs, as well. Usually one bad cell is enough to wreck the whole pack. Nice reliability, though. Should we send him a dictionary? 'Reliable' is not 'indestructible'.
34k hybrids sold in 2010 is depressing for Ford. Didnt Toyota sell around half a mil? Also, it is not Ford battery or Ford electric motor... they purchased from Panasonic-EV and Sanyo.
Detroit cheerleading at its worse. When the battery was in a Prius all we read was 'battery death anxiety" FUD.
Goes to show how gentle a full hybrid on the battery and how NiMH is highly suitable for hybrid operation.
I'd guess that Ford also has good battery management algorithms and software, unlike another maker of hybrids.
It appears that Ford buys good batteries from Japan. So does Toyota. It also appears that Ford had done an excellent job of managing those batteries. Probably with a good bit of assistance from the battery manufacturers. So I congratulate Ford on making some good purchase decisions, and following through with excellent engineering in the use of those products. But they still use the same offensive marketing tactics as GM. They could honestly sell the Fusion on its actual characteristics. But they have to come up with a tortured claim like "The highest mileage sedan sold in America". Right. The Prius is not a sedan. It's a hatchback. The highest mileage car is a Prius. The Volt and Leaf offer new twists on what the marketeers can say. Again, GM splits hairs and sells FUD, when they could honestly sell the Volt on its actual properties. Nissan sells the Leaf based on its actual properties. I prefer to buy products that I don't have to wade through FUD to determine reality. Detroit doesn't seem to have learned anything from the Saturn experiment.
not only that, but they are batteries made buy panasonic toyota JV . since they started using sanyo only since fusion hybrid, i suspect most of those in the numbers were same ones that go into prius, and we know how well those worked out in any case.
Well, I congratulate Ford. People can quibble about domestic vs. import all they want, but all this does is increase consumer confidence in hybrid technology.
