So here is the unedited, unpublished draft of the write-up from my track day at Waterford Hills in Clarkston, Michigan. I feel…the need for speed Putting the new Ford Fusion Hybrid through its paces at Waterford Hills racetrack By: Ewen Chan, Global Core Weight Engineer, Ford Motor Company I recently bought myself the brand new Ford Fusion Titanium Hybrid and I was very curious to find out what are the limits of its performance. However, finding a suitable venue where I would be able to push the car to the limits and finding a safe environment to do so was a bit challenging. Obviously, I wouldn’t want to try it out on open, public roads. As luck would have it, through the Shelby American Automobile Club-Motor City Region, they had an open track day at Waterford Hills racetrack in Clarkston, Michigan. I was pleasantly surprised to find that a car powered by a 2-litre Atkinson engine (141 hp @ 6000 rpm, 129 lbf-ft @ 4000 rpm) augmented by a permanent magnet AC synchronous electric motor (118 hp), it performed quite well. It certainly had dramatically different vehicle dynamics compared to the rest of cars in the group that I was driving with, but it held onto its own. One of the spectators had asked me if I was aware of the amount of body roll as the car took the corners at speed, with the tires doing a bit of squealing under pressure. From my perspective, I was more worried about watching where I’m going than the amount of body roll. Still, that did not stop me from reaching speeds upwards of 90 mph towards the end of the back straight before nearly slamming on the brakes for the turn at the end. The brakes are very strong and very powerful. I didn’t get a chance to do a full panic stop, but according to Car and Driver online, it should be able to stop from 70 mph in 177 feet meaning that it has plenty of stopping power to slow the car down at the 100-feet marker before throwing it into the corner. The best part – since it’s a hybrid – meaning it uses a combination of both gas and electric power – it managed 16 mpg over an 11.1-mile run with 1.7 miles running purely on electricity-only during the first heat. For the second heat, it faired an even more impressive 18 mpg over 15.8 miles with 3.2 miles in pure EV mode, and 1.0 miles from the energy it recaptured through regenerative braking. While it’s certainly no Shelby, it’s no slouch either – something that you just wouldn’t expect out of a hybrid.

Well...usually being naseous isn't so bad so long as you can complete the task, you know what I mean? The problem was that I COULDN'T "complete" it, so it just like "sat" there bottled up inside you know? It's like I wanted to, but I couldn't? So like I said, I ended up sleeping it off for probably like at LEAST an-hour-and-a-half before being okay-enough to drive back home. And the funny thing was that the guy that was driving the Shelby was like "you have that look of terror on your face" not realizing that I could've hurled at ANY minute or in my head I towards the latter part, I was thinking like "I wanna get out I wanna get out". But that's alright though. It just means that I probably won't be a performance test engineer (at least not a regular one anyways). And that's fine. I've accepted that.

Nice! I'm glad that you're enjoying your new Fusion Titanium Hybrid. :) It IS a great car. I had ANOTHER customs officer today say "Nice Fusion" as I was pulling into his booth (completely silent BTW). And I can tell you for a fact that the car can definitely handle/hold its own. (I still have to do the write-up for when I took one to a track day last Monday and I think that my "instructor" might have been a little bit surprised at how hard I was able to push the car without spinning out or going off the track/off course. Mine had already 4200 miles when I did that. I wouldn't recommend you doing that to a brand new one mind you.) It was a LOT of fun trying to find/figure out what are the limits of the car.

Thank you. See if you can talk to your dealer about having that fixed for you. They should be delivering a vehicle that's to your satisfaction and in pristine condition regardless of whether it was a tester or a dealer trade. (And given that Fusions are like flying off the shelves for the most part, even if they were a tester, it should have had a very short life as one.) I would check though because people who test drive cars (if left to their own devices) have a knack for beating the crap out of it, which is probably not the best thing to do during the break-in period. From my end of things, I didn't mind taking a car with higher delivery miles because since I work for Ford corporate, I was able to run the VIN number against the production schedule and once you subtract the Google distance between the two dealerships, it was fairly obvious that it brand new when it arrived at dealership A (the original dealership) that my dealership (B) picked it up from. I've been getting a LOT of really nice compliments about the car and a LOT of people are surprised that it's a Ford. yay! I'm sure that you'll enjoy yours too. But I would definitely take it back to the dealership if there's any problems cuz I'm sure that they'd want you to be 100% satisfied. The SMART dealerships know how important it is to make and keep their customers happy because they also know that between say you, your wife (if you're married) and your kids (or future kids or maybe future kids) - they could end up selling 10+ vehicles over your lifetime. And to them, that's a pretty big deal - dealership loyalty - nevermind brand loyalty.

Truthfully, a lot of that is probably marketing. lol....but you are right though. If you count all the arrows for the power seats, it's 10-way. But for the manual seats, they don't show the arrows, and they just say the two controls (fore/aft and tilt up/tilt down). haha...that's interesting. *I* called it 2-way because that's what it says in the official documentation so I'm kinda stuck having to go with that.

Oh haha...my bad. I must have mis-read that then. In that case, sorry. All front passenger seats (as far as I can tell) are all just two-way adjustment.

That's what I thought. Which means, like I said, that the top row of pictures on p.134 of your Fusion manual should be able to show you where to find the control for raising and lowering the driver's seat. Now, if it's a question about the travel limits, that's probably not going to help with that, but you should be able to adjust them. Can you please check your manual and then play with your seats to see if it is doing what I think that you are trying to get it to do? (I don't have the SE version and I don't know if I have one available at work right now, so I can't play with it for you and find out/confirm that). Sorry. Alternatively, if you like your dealer and your sales and/or service contacts there, you might be able to give them a call and see if they will be able to help you out.

Not too bad actually. The guy that ran the event is also a Ford employee (in the IT department) and the guy that runs the Shelby American Auto Club-Motor City Region newsletter asked if he could take a few picture of me and my FFH and also asked me if I can write a very short article for their newsletter. And the guy that ran it was also very interested in the fuel economy stats for the run. I only ended up doing two heats though because I sat as a passenger in another guy's Shelby Mustang and I got so sick afterwards (motion sickness induced migraine) that I ended up sleeping in my FFH for prolly close to an hour and a half so that I would be safe to drive home. More details to follow. Thanks.

Do you have pictures of the controls though? The front driver seat should both be 10-way power regardless of whether it's cloth or leather. It may LOOK different because of the fabric, but if the functions are the same (i.e. they're both 10-way power) then he/she should be able to raise and lower the seat to its limits or as needed. Yeah, actually it happened when I took delivery of the vehicle. It's pretty bad when you take delivery of your brand new vehicle and the windows don't work correctly. It's kinda embarassing I would think for the dealer.

It appears that it's easier to hit the fuel economy numbers in the SE hybrid than it is with the Titanium hybrid.

So some bad news: Here's a list of things that's gone wrong with my Titanium Hybrid already. I've had it for a month and almost two weeks and this is kind of ridiculous. It's not exactly a "cheap" car, but it's already having some issues. It's currently I think either 4200 or 4400 miles on the odo (I forget), and it's already back at the dealer. [grumble...] - "skipping" when playing a song over USB to my MyFord Touch/SYNC with an iPhone 4 (iOS 4.1). Thought that might have been the cable, so I went to Apple to get a new one and it still does it. Interestingly enough, it only does it for SOME songs (and is repeatable) and if I were to play the exact same songs over Bluetooth, it has no issues. - Front passenger side window regulator one touch-up wouldn't work a few weeks ago when it was slightly cooler here. Then it got warmer again, and the problem went away on its own. - Check engine light came on on Saturday and then went away by lunchtime the day before yesterday. Apparently, because it self-cleared the code, so it took the dealer more time to find it, but it's apparently a very small, minor evap leak. C'mon guys! Seriously? at 4200 miles and 6 weeks of ownership??? Not what you'd expect from a $40k MSRP car.

Hmm....odd. They should be able to order it. Titanium feature group code is 900A and they should be able to get their ordering guide from their Ford dealer website that they plug into. If you have the SE hybrid, it should be 10-way power seats which should be able to go up and down. See p. 134 of your owner's manual. Unless it was one of those feature items that got deleted just before the start of production, but you should have it. I would check with p. 134 of your owner's manual first to see if you have the 10-way power seats and see if that's what you're looking for. If that doesn't work for you, PM me. The only differences between the SE hybrid seats and the Titanium hybrid seats should be one's cloth and one's leather (respectively) and one's 10-way power/2-way manual (driver/pass respectively) and the other is 10-way power/2-way power. You might be able to do it with black vinyl or something as well. I'm sure that you could figure something out if you need to. Is that with the seat raised up all the way already?

NORMALLY, I would be tempted to check internally first. But again, because of the whole disclosure thingy, and that if I am to use our dynos, I have to be able to present a business case for it...so...hence why I am going outside. Like I said, it's really moreso to satisfy my curiosity more than anything else. And while I know usually people like to mash the throttle in on a dyno run, I'd also be interested in seeing how much ACTUAL power is required to keep the car running at various speeds (say...starting from 25 mph, in 10 mph increments).

I should be able to. They might not be able to give me the bsfc vs. rpm vs. load data (cuz that would involved taking it out and running it on the engine dyno which with it being a hybrid is a LOT more complicated). The specs say that it's supposed to be 188 hp combined (peak). Assuming a 12% loss (I have no idea - I'm just pulling a number outta my butt) - that works out to be 165.44 hp. I also figure that if I do a lot of the basic data collection now while the car is still relatively new (3700 miles in a month-and-a-week) then I would have that data.

But this is a hybrid. lol....it's like the movie "Horrible Bosses" - the part where the guy goes to court for racing his Prius. lol...

I'm thinking of doing it because I'm curious like that.

I just managed to put 13.266 gallons in my tank. DTE showed 0, but I probably drove 3-4 miles beyond the DTE that's shown on the display cluster (and then prolly another mile on pure electric. Yay! Thank Ford for that!) I probably could have put more in too, but I hit the $50 mark (@$3.769/gal) so I just left it there. First clicked happened at like 11.something gallons. So it's quite possible to put 13.5 gallons in there. Or I would have gotten REALLY close to it.

Has anybody here every taken their FFH and have it actually dyno'd? I'm thinking of taking my Fusion Titanium Hybrid to Livernois Motorsports to have it dyno'd so that I can find out what's the torque output as a function of rpm. I wonder if they'd also be able to generate a bsfc vs. engine speed vs. load data table/CSV file for me as well.

So the beauty about my having gone to an engineering school like Kettering is that you end up meeting a LOT of engineers. I just sent a message over Facebook to a girl that I knew worked at one of the suppliers of airbags (she's an electrical engineer) and hopefully if she isn't able to answer that question, that she might have a name and contact of someone else that I would be able to ask. Otherwise, I would have to find out who our internal airbag person is (which then the information might be protected), so I'm trying the public road first. Yea, let's hope that none of us here will be in an accident. But the first things that I would check for is to make sure that none of the occupants are injured, and more importantly, no head, neck, or back injuries (because those have the potential to REALLY REALLY bad). And then do a check for all other types of injuries. And then start securing the vehicle. Check for fluids (coolant, oil, fuel), and then disconnect all of the power sources. (That's what I would do, in that order.) And once the person is more or less secured, and the vehicle is secured, now to start with the occupant extraction. But yea, cars in the next 10 years is going to be quite different (from a first responder's perspective) compared to cars of today (and of course, compared to cars of years gone by).

It's almost like the first thing that first responders should do in the event of a motor vehicle accident now is disconnect ALL the batteries (even the 12V ones) so that it de-energizes the car so that hopefully there won't be any power going to the airbag charges. (And those suckers are POWERFUL, even the multi-stage ones.) Same thing with the high voltage batteries of pure EVs and (P)HEVs. And I would not be surprised if NHTSA is going to need to come up with a new certification crash test for battery systems for both front, small overlap, and side impacts to also test for intrusion of the battery into the occupant compartment and also whether the battery itself remains intact. (I was just told yesterday that part of my job now also involves reading the FMVSS, so I'm sure that I'll come across whether that has been added to the regulations/federal requirements soon enough. haha...it's a good thing that I love my job. Otherwise, I can't imagine anybody else saying that they would LOVE to read the FMVSS.)

Yeah...once again - I'm forgetting about the fact that I'm an engineer and that I also have some (limited) access to chem labs and GC/MS. And for $20, it's not a bad deal at all. Like I've said before (which I learned from my engines prof) - changing your oil more frequently than it is necessary will never hurt your car (assuming it is done right every time). It'll only hurt your wallet.

Yeah...I'll TRY to be gentle with it. My biggest concern is actually crashing right now. lol...(but so far, the Fusion has REALLY good brakes from what I can tell). We'll see what happens when I am trying to stop the 3772-pound car from 100 mph. :D The good news is that I already left-foot brake so that should make it a tad "easier" (since one of the hardest things for people to do is left-foot brake. If you drive auto, you're not used to using it at all (at least not most "normal" people). If you drive stick, you're just used to mashing in the clutch pedal, shift, and release as opposed to have very fine, gradual control. But since I do it all the time, people have actually told me that I have really good braking control and they're surprised when I tell them that it is because I am braking with my left foot. Uh...as far as I know. It's part of the Shelby American Auto Club - Motor City Region track day event so if you're in the Clarkston, MI area - sure. PM me for my contact info if you want to meet up with me. Or you can register yourself as well if you're interested in driving. http://www.saac-mcr.com/te/faq.htm I dunno. The website for the track said that they've had everything from Fiestas up to Corvettes out on the track before. I'm not sure if they've ever had a hybrid out on the track, but we shall see. If they have - great. If they haven't, even better. (Admittedly, throwing 3700-almost-3800 pounds around isn't ideal, but mehhhh....) Well...driving is all about control (generally). And it's also about how "attune" you are to what you are doing vs. what your car is doing vs. what you WANT the car to be doing instead. It's a LOT of things. There are some people (from the general public, myself included) that might be able to have a really good idea as to what's going on with the car (it's like your head is a little computer that knows what the pressure, temperature, and coefficient of friction distribution is AT the contact patch (no, it is not uniform or constant) at any point in time so you're able to almost predictively "feel" when the car is about to get loose which lets you take it right up to the traction limit envelop of the car and the tire. And then there are the ones that miscalculate and end up in the barriers. lol... And then after that, it's also about knowing what your braking characteristics are and your torque characteristics (which is then related to your acceleration characteristic). And yes, I am talking like a total engineer right now; but I can't help it. I live it. :D If you've never had driven a non-ABS vehicle or driven an ABS-equipped vehicle where the ABS system was inactive or inoperational - and you had to pump the brakes like you're double-bassing-it like Lars (drummer from Metallica - i.e. having to pump using BOTH your feet on the brake pedal switching between the two in very very very very quick succession to mimick or simulate the ABS) - so you don't lock your wheels up in ice and snow - then you're probably best to leave the traction control on. (Most people won't know that they've locked up their wheels until they see smoke. SOME might be able to feel the super subtle change in acceleration from when they're braking effectively to when it locks up and your wheel just slides on a pool of molten rubber - which is not so good for stopping.) So it depends. But yes, there IS a difference. I'm actually going to see if I can strap my GoPro onto the helmet. I dunno. It's a thought. We will have to see. lol...

This whole 54.5 mpg CAFE fleet average is going to be VERY interesting. It is REALLY going to make making cars REALLY interesting in the coming years, and since weight and fuel are so closely related, and with Ford being such a global company now...as weird as this might sound - I am actually LOOKING FORWARD to those 1 AM conference calls to Asia.

So I got an email notification at work that we were going to have an event with the Shelby American Auto Club-Motor City Region celebrating Ford's 150th birthday. And along with that is a track day up at Waterford Hills in Clarkston. I've cleared it with my boss and it looks like that I am going to be taking the Monday off so that I can take my Fusion Titanium Hybrid up there on the track. We have a test track here at corporate as well, but I can't take my personal vehicle on it, so this is the next best thing. So it'll be interesting to see how it goes around the corners when I really push it. And I've already got 3500 miles on it on the month that I've had it, so I would be able to really give it without much risk of hurting the car. At 3772 lbs total weight (yeah...one of the first things we did to my car was weigh it - being one of the Global Core Weight Engineers) 57.7% front, (42.3% rear), 51.1% left (48.9% right). And wth a published 0-60 time of 8.5 seconds, it's not the fastest vehicle, but we'll see how I do. And I get motion sickness so I'm gonna hafta pop like 4 advils before I go on the track (to pre-emptively strike at the migraine that I'll get from driving my car hard.) And if I can do so safely, there are other things that I want to try/test out - such as simulating a service brake failure (seeing if I can engage the EPB at speed (I'll probably first try it at like 12 mph (20 km/h) or something)) and also simulating a sudden unintended acceleration (SUA) event and shutting down the car at wide open throttle (WOT). But we will have to see, cuz I'm a "novice" on the track, so they said that the instructor will be with me all the time so I might not get a chance to do that. And I'll also try a lap with the traction control still on and then try it with it off. Hopefully, I won't hurt my baby too badly.