Ford Fusion PHV- 2013

EV range looks promising 20 miles electric

 

Heck ya. I saw it at the auto show a couple of weeks ago and it is a beautiful car. I think it will likely be the car that replaces my 2008 Prius in a couple of years assuming the price isn't crazy.

 

I think the hybrid version comes out in the next few months. The plug in next year I think.

The sales people at the auto show were pretty clueless about the plugin. I don't know that the range is definitely 20 miles. I thought it wasn't announced yet but I could be wrong.

 

The Ford website says the 2013 hybrid comes out in the fall. The plugin comes out in early 2013 to be more accurate.

 

i'll take one.

 

+2, in fact, i'll take any new car as long as i don't have to buy it.

 

Is there a solid source that said it would have 20 miles range?

We know Ford will be getting the battery from the same supplier (Panasonic) as Prius PHV. More battery = more cost.

 

evnow has a ford clip on his blog saying around 20mile blended range and 100 mpge or more during this initial mileage. It certainly is not as declarative as Toyota's 15 mile range claim. I would wait and see, but for now 20 miles blended range using very little gas is a best guess. The fussion hybrid (not energi) has a combined mpg of 45, I would expect the energi to be close. we don't know what may be changing.

I would not expect ford to pay anymore than they are paying jci-saft for their lower volume transit connect ev batteries and this is under $750. I would certainly expect the price before rebate to be higher than the prius phv, although the rebate will also be larger. This should make it a smaller gap. The big question is going to be how aggressively ford prices the fusion and c-max energi.

 

Ok, found it. Eric Kuehn said up to 20 to 21 miles. That sounds like Toyota's up to 15 miles range.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qn4Y-j3xC2A]2013 Ford Fusion offers Power of Choice - YouTube[/ame]

 

So how large a battery would a car the size of a Energi plug in need for a range of around 20 miles or so. Maybe 5-10KWH?

What is a KWH of battery costing nowadays? Have we seen any significant decrease in cost since the development of the fist generation of BEVs like the Leaf or the iMev?

 

Its really hard to read these press releases, so no claim to be anything but ballpark. Energi is over 100 mpge in CD mode. That means about 6.5kwh from the plug for 20 miles. From plug to use, if we look at prius phv it is about 72%, so we get 9 kwh. I'd feel comfortable saying 7kwh-11kwh, since we don't know the SOC ford will be using, how much if any gasoline is used, and if its really 20 miles EPA.

This is a new supplier of cells to Ford, but we can guess they will be less than or the same as the old supplier at ford's cost of $750/kwh. Let's say they price them about what they did for the focus energi on msrp, about $750/kwh plus $1000. That would add about $7K to the price of a fusion or c-max hybrid, but nets out to $2.5K more after tax credit. Will ford price it this way? I really have no idea, but their marketing department definitely can.

 

Those sound like reasonable assumptions.

Has $750/kwh changed much in the past couple of years? I mean, has it come down or has that been the going rate since, say, the Leaf or the iMev or the Volt?

 

This was the number for the initial transit connects. Nissan said they are trying to drive costs down to $325/kwh. I assume that costs to manufacture have already come down, but we don't know what the cost to manufacture really is. Panasonic could be selling these cells below costs, to get design wins hoping to make the profits in later years as costs continue to fall. In reality, I'd estimate the cost to Panasonic is between $300-$1000, but have no idea what it will be in 2013, and what price is in the contract.

 

Yeah there's no way to determine how the manufacturers are pricing them. I'm curious if there were any manufacturing "breakthroughs" over the past couple of years, or simply mass production efficiencies, that have been driving battery prices down. One would think that it has to be getting cheaper year over year.