Who cares? If you are not the leader of the pack, you are an also-ran. If I were Ford, I'd just shut up and let the results speak for themselves, whenever that is.

Ford's competition then will not be GM but Toyota who are coming out with PHEV Prius in 2012. Good luck going head to head with the world leaders in hybrids!!

Ford have been mucking around with Escape Plug-in since 2006-2007, and only now feel the competitive pressure with GM and Toyota (and everyone else) jumping on EV or PHEV bandwagon.

simple - kW tells you how FAST you can go, and kWh tells you how FAR you will go. One tells you the size (displacement) of the engine, the other tells you the size of the gas tank!!

What GM are doing is typical durability testing to which all automobiles are subjected to by all OEMs in more or less the same fashion, so that they can expose the car to 99.xx percentile of operating conditions and iron out any design bugs before they hit customers' hands. Given the complexity of today's automobiles, it's this type of testing that keeps the recalls and warranty costs under control.

Nothing unusual here at all.

That's a ridiculous comparison.

First, there is no practical way those cars can be put to work to do any electricity production, plus the efficiency would be horrendous. Plus, while the power generators are designed to (or at least targeted) to operate closest to their full capacity all the time and have their highest efficiency there, cars are designed to operate at their full power only a very small fraction of the time, with the worst efficiency (and emissions) at that operating point.

A more suitable (although equally useless) comparison parameter would be steady-state cruising power at worst case rated payload (GVW or GCVW -car terms, non-car people ignore it) that is usually the continuous power capability of the engine.

Paul- you are obviously not a fan of GM, which does not bother me. However, if you think fuel economy improvements are possible by someone making inexpensive and simple systems (as against expensive, complex systems), while keeping their costs below revenues to make profits, they would not need to be bailed out.

I agree with a profitable company not needing bail-out, but don't quite understand the logic about how simple and inexpensive systems can provide high fuel economy.

Have you had a chance to look at what constitutes a gasoline-driven car in terms of control systems on-board? Have you seen the inside of an engine controller? Have you seen the inside of an engine control management software? Have you seen the control head of an automatic transmission? You can pick any auto manufacturer for this exercise. All of these systems, when they were introduced about 30 years+ ago, were very complex, error-prone and expensive. that's how it's always been. how otherwise can a manufacturer develop new technology and also recover their costs to remain profitable?

The way OEMs typically do it is via a portfolio approach wherein their 'bread-and-butter' products generate sufficient profits that can subsidize the next generation of technologies that move down the cost curve as they move up in volume, trickling down from luxury to near-luxury to sport/premium to economy segments.

This is how Toyota did Prius, Honda did Insight 1 and 2 and everyone else did whatever else they are doing.

I'm all for auto companies not having to get bailed out, and where domestics (and all of them are to blame for one reason or another) screwed up is to not plow in the huge amounts of profits they were making in 90s into developing new technologies in powertrain and battery arena. now they have to do it in a hurry and these things can't be done in a hurry without a huge pile of cash coming from somewhere.

That's the reality.

Real-world range is a function of real-world Cd times frontal area (A). So, the comment about frontal area is totally valid.

As to Cd, most, if not all, drag numbers are reported with the wind blowing towards the car at zero degree (straight on the nose). Most body shapes are fine tuned to this. In real world, however, the wind blows from all directions relative to the car's nose. Therefore, the 'wind-averaged' number for any vehicle will be higher than the quoted number. This is why how the car is tested really matters.

As to someone wanting to buy an EV with 100 miles range versus an EREV with 40+ miles electric range, it's purely a matter of preference, as long as one can afford the price of a larger battery needed in a 100 mile+ range EV.

That anyone can have a patent lock on anything is utter BS - especially in an area like hybrids where so many different ways to achieve the same results are possible.

What Toyota *do* have a lock on is the technology that puts them at a cost advantage (after having spent billions either developing or subsidizing the initial generation of technologies). For that, they are reaping the rewards now and will continue to do so. That technology, however, won't be free to licencees - they will have to pay stiff royalties, and also will have to be dependent on Toyota's parts and supply base for their product plans.

No self-respecting OEM is going to want to put the future of their image products in the hands of a competitor. Plus, the licensing eventually degenerates to Toyota becoming a parts supplier and nothing more - no transfer of know-how and stiff royalties.

Nissan is a prime example- they got access to the technology to look like they were in the game (as much of their resources have been spent developing diesels in Europe). Now, they figured out that a slightly more expensive, slightly less competitive, but home-grown technology is better in the long-run.

Ford had to do this becuase they were using a Toyota supplier's technology.

To refresh everyone's memory, Ford HEV technology came from Aisin Warner when Ford bought Volvo in late 90s or early 2000s). Aisin Warner were also an outside supplier for Toyota developing Gen 1 Prius technology back in mid/late 90s, and when Toyota decided to go with their own version of design, they let Aisin Warner loose to do what they saw fit with the rival technology Aisin Warner had developed. Aisin Warner supplied it to Volvo etc.

Bottom line is that there were some key elements in both Toyota and Aisin Warner designs that were similar (not the same), and Ford were reminded of this by Toyota to extract whatever rent they could out of their prior investment in Aisin Warner technology. So, Ford did what was a cross-licensing deal with Toyota - mainly as a defensive measure and not because they were actually using any of the specific elements of Toyota hybrid system.

I agree with John and disagree with the powertrain nuts. I used to work for Powertrain (won't say which OEM) and when you really get deep inside each of the divisions, the real differentiator these days is software. The hardware and manufacturing ops can be spun off, but the differentiation can be done through software calibrations plus any hardware tweaks needed such as special cams or valve openings or transmission control head mods etc. The tweaks in hardware can be done in a way that still add significant volume to do car lines. How does powertrain do this kind of stuff today? It's the same principle multiplied by 3.

The upside I see is that in this case, Powertrain as a supplier will be forced to compete with the likes of Bosch, Denso, and others who are in segments of this business.

This will also force OEMs to standardize the interfaces between engines, transmissions and vehicles and force the powertrain supplier industry to follow (right now, everyone wants their own proprietary interfaces out of fear for competition in the guise of 'differentiation'). Wouldn't you, as an OEM, or a CEO of a Chevrolet or Cadillac, love to combine, in your car, the best in class engine and transmission (and chassis and others) just like it's done for the rest of the parts?

This is considered heresy in 'old' Detroit, while the rest of the world is moving on.

This is like saying - instead of wearing shoes, I'd rather carpet the whole world and then walk barefooted to get the same effect...

Don't think people are not trying it, though. The concept of MagLev trains (magnetic levitation) relies on the idea that the tracks will have the wiring that will be switched on and off as the railcars pass on them. The cars carry magnets on the bottom surface facing the tracks to interact with temporary magnets on the rails. Magnets can be either superconducting or have coils that can be magnetized by passing current through them.

There's also someone at Texas A&M doing this type of research (they call it 'dual-mode'), putting the same electricity on the pavement (http://www.ceeti.org/).

Who cares about the size of the battery pack other than the folks designing them? As it is, since when are Tesla the world leaders in battery technology / packaging / systems engineering for mass-produced production-capable systems? From the customer's standpoint, Volt does most of the frequent driving trips in electric-only mode, charges from any old outlet (not 15kW fancy charger as in case of a Tesla-type vehicle) and goes 350+ miles (As against 200 miles on a mild, sunny day with one passenger in the car for Model S.

I commend Tesla for their perseverance in this really tough business and Musk personally for having the vision, the guts and the focus to get his products out in spite of all of the issues with the technology, market, customers, economy and so on. However, my humble request to Mr. Musk is to recognize that Volt and Model S are optimized around two different sets of criteria and are good for their own application.

And, there is space in this world for all the emerging architectures. Why bad-mouth a competitor? It just doesn't seem secure and statesman-like.