No amount of
denial will alter the future and that future in personal transportation will be
totally electric. It is just too good of
a solution and allows the manufacturer to strip a lot of mass from the
vehicle. The holdup has been solving
the most difficult problem facing engineering and more specifically physics and
that is to seriously increase the energy density of the batteries core to this
whole production paradigm.
There are
convincing attempts underway that do promise to evolve into a solution and it
is quite right to expect a true second generation battery inside the next five
years. Thus going after the electric
market now makes total sense.
Ford clearly
understands that the day after that battery becomes available the gasoline
engine becomes a serious commercial liability.
Consider what I just said.
Existing stock and obligations will be a serious liability because the resale
market can and will collapse. Just why
will you buy a three year old gasoline car coming off lease or warranty when an
electric sans battery will be available for less and you can lease the battery.
This is not
going to b e a long gentle transition at all.
At best it will mirror the eclipse of the vacuum tube by flat screen
except that the first adopter threshold will be low because they already have a
gas vehicle for long haul driving that will simply be never replaced but used
less and less.
Ford Goes Balls
To The Walls With Electrified Vehicles
An hour or so ago I
tore into Chrysler for being the luddite of the developing green
technology in vehicles market. Now, let’s take a look at a much more positive
success in the space, at least as far as American automakers go anyhow, in the
form of Ford. Fresh
off of news that it continues
to slowly cut down the lead of the Prius in hybrid sales– even as it
also has to address
fuel economy issues with some of its offerings – is word of its “best
hybrid sales quarter ever.” Did you catch that Chrysler??
For the second quarter of 2013, Ford reported
today, it had record hybrid sales of 24,217 vehicles. This is said to
be up 517 percent over last year and 15 percent over the first quarter of this
year. Having sold so many of this particular niche of cars has seen the
company’s share of the U.S. electrified vehicle market grow “to nearly 16
percent in the first half of 2013 – a 12-point gain over last year.”
Leading the pack of Ford vehicles in this regard are
its C-Max and Fusion hybrids, which are said to be seeing strong growth in
California and “other new hybrid markets.” Some examples cited include more
than 1,000 percent growth in New York, 840 percent in Chicago, almost 730
percent in Seattle and close to 500 percent in Washington, D.C.
And, in a nod to buying foreign hybrid versus
domestic, more than 60 percent of U.S. customers are coming from non-Ford brands,
with Toyota and Honda vehicles the top competitive trade-ins.
Now I’m not saying Ford is the end all, be all of
automakers in this space. It still has a lot of catch up to do to Toyota, and a
lot of innovating to match the likes of Tesla Motors. For a company of its size
though, it has shown some strong leadership in a niche market it only entered a
few years ago, having now sold more than 46,000 electrified vehicles
through June.
Ford spreads its green vehicle fleet across hybrids,
plug-in hybrids and electric cars, including the Fusion Hybrid, C-Max
Hybrid, Fusion Energi plug-in hybrid, C-Max Energi plug-in hybrid, Focus
Electric and Lincoln MKZ Hybrid. It has some pretty impressive technical
specifications going on amongst these vehicles, including the Fusion
Energi’s EPA-rated total range of up to 620 miles; the Fusion
Hybrid’s EPA-estimated rating of 47 mpg city, highway and combined;
the Lincoln MKZ Hybrid’s EPA-rated 45 mpg city, highway and combined
and the Focus Electric’s EPA-rated 110 MPGe city, 99 MPGe highway and 105
MPGe combined.
In announcing its current successes, Ford also gave
a preview of what’s up next for its green technology under the hood,
including a rear-wheel-drive hybrid system for pickups and SUVs that
should be available by the end of the decade. There’s also a continued push
to bring in-house more of the development of its most advanced vehicles.
This latter item means more green jobs, and to that end the company is “hiring
more than 200 new electrification engineers and expanding its research
facilities to speed development of hybrid and electrified vehicles.”
So, please excuse me a bit if this story sounds like
PR spin for Ford. When I compare though the mundane, petri dish approach of
Chrysler to the more balls
to the wallsattitude of its Big
Three competitor when it comes to electrified vehicles (i.e. on track
to triple its electrified vehicle production by the end of this year, compared
with 2011), I can’t help but smile a little bit as I type the final period.
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