Oman

Hmmm, marketspeak. LiPo has better power to weight ratios than the others. The statement that they can better handle physical damage is complete bunk though... the reason Hyundai had to work so hard with them is to try to design a casing that reduced the chances of physical damage and an interconnect system with multiple break points to try to prevent catastrophic runaway. The risk (outside of the chemistry itself) is directly related to its energy density and rapid discharge ability. I've been working with LiPo packs for several years now and they can be extremely violent when mishandled. The thing you can say about the Ford NiCD system is that it is reliable, well understood, and safe. I think everyone will be moving to LiPo systems in the future. Someone has to be first... just not me. I want a few years more improvement on the tech first in an automobile environment. The article also mentions laptops but forgets that iPods and such use tiny little LiPo packs. When a LiPo pack is pierced the reaction is instant and violent. I don't have a GOOD link handy but I do have a link to a couple of, well, not too bright, folks who shot a small LiPo pack with a 357. The pack is INSIDE a metal tool box. Now imagine 200x this much material behind your back seat in an accident. (ate my link - try again - http: //www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eqbTLwVynE - had to add a space after the HTTP) Jon

All of the high voltage cables are covered with blaze orange insulators. If you disconnect the 12v battery you are essentially disconnecting the HVB. The interconnect relay on the HVB pack will only close when 12v is present. The way to be super-sure is to remove the HVB manual internconnect. The instructions are in the owners manual. The 12v system in the FFH is pretty much the same as any other car. The only difference is that instead of an alternator there is a voltage converter that generates 12v from the high voltage system. There are a boatload of computers on the FFH (as in most modern cars). They communicate on two different busses running around the car. The real risk is that you modify the 12v wiring and cause glitches. Jon

I was waiting for this comment... An eCVT and a CVT are not at all the same thing. Every non-hybrid car that has a CVT uses a completely different system. There have been reliability problems with standard CVT transmissions. eCVTs are far more reliable and flexible than CVTs. A standard CVT works just like the belt based speed control on a riding lawn mower. In fact many use high-strength belts. You just adjust where the belt sits within a large pulley and that changes the ratio between the two pulleys. There are wear and strength problems with this system as well as unwanted friction. An eCVT is a single planetary with the sun gear driven by an electric motor. This allows a very wide input to output ratio (because the sun can spin in either direction). The reason you can't easily put this into a standard car is because the motor needs to draw power at low ICE to wheel ratios and will generate power at high ICE to wheel ratios. There must be a source and sink for that power which in a hybrid is both the HVB and the traction motor. The eCVT is far lighter than a 6 speed transmission. It consists of about 40 parts with few significant wear items, where a 6 speed consists of over 500 parts including fluid pumps, valves, clutches, and bands. The Hyundai system is a 6-speed mated to an extra set of clutches with an electric motor bolted in. It is an improvement over the older partial hybrid design but doesn't quite get to the advantages of a full hybrid. It's all about the patents and cost to license (if that was even an option). BTW: The advantage of the CVT in general over a standard transmission is that the computer can choose any combination of ICE RPM / POWER and electric power based on a real-time calculation for best efficiency. When using a 6-speed the computer has six ratios to choose from and each has "slop" because of the torque converter. The "shift" feeling is something long enjoyed by car buffs. Stomping on the gas and getting whiplash when a shift occurs is/was a desired trait and showed how much power was under the hood. Getting the exact same acceleration without the shift is often described as "mushy" or slow. Even when the car is accelerating faster people often think that it isn't performing as well if they don't feel the bang of a quick shift. I should know - I restored a 1969 "R" code Mustang (that's a 428 Cobra Jet with shaker). It has a C6 three-speed. The seats don't have headrests and if I don't warn the passengers about the hard shifts, well, let's just say I always warn them.

When you open the door there are no lights and the dash is completely blank, right? When you say your battery has 3/4 power you mean the HVB display? That is a different battery. The 12v system must come on to power the computer in order to enable the high voltage system. Two things need to be done. First the 12v battery needs to be completely charged. It isn't like the 12v on a normal car as it is (or should be) a deep cycle battery and doesn't receive a heavy drain at start. It needs a long drive (several hours) or a charger put on it to charge it completely. Second the dealer needs to do a load test when the car is off. It is possible that there is a load draining the 12v. The most common is a phone charger. The 12v sockets stay live in the FFH (which I LOVE) but some chargers are crap and they have a pretty good draw even when nothing is connected to them. Jon

I can't speak to how Toyota does it but the FFH will refuse to drive in EV after the HVB drops to a certain level. Turn the car off and on and you can go again for just a little bit. Repeat a few times and the HVB will drop to a point where the car will not switch at all to EV mode. At this point there should still be enough to get the ICE running again but no one can guarantee that. The computer won't let the HVB drain to a point where the cells would be damaged (this can only really be done by storage loss or a malfunction). If there isn't enough juice to get the ICE running you have to have the car towed to the dealer where they can put a special charger on the HVB to bring it up to a point where the ICE can be started. No tow truck or the like can "jump" the HVB and that is the only thing that can start the ICE. There have been cases of the 12V battery going out and that can easily be jumped. The 12V system has to be "alive" to allow the high voltage system to work. Jon

I agree with your point about relying on the system. I always do a mirror and head turn check. I also use my turn signal (I think I might be the only one up here that does). There was one of those times though when somehow I completely missed the car... it must have moved over or in or something because I SWEAR IT WASN'T THERE!... but I saw the orange light on as I went to move over and thought "that darn thing is malfunctioning." Another shoulder check to see what could be bugging the sensor and it was a car. Ugh, I'm telling you is wasn't there before. So the technology is a nice back-up for the normal human condition of being imperfect. What I do find very valuable on a regular basis is the other feature of the system, backing out of a parking lot. Often I'm boxed in by larger cars and I just can't see much. The warning is a bit more sensitive than I would like but it is nice to know that it sees something. I it does and I don't have a bead yet on whatever it is yet I can be even more cautious. Jon .

I lose about 5MPG, but most of my trips are over 30 miles. It would be more if I were doing short trips. The car needs to warm up before it is efficient. If it doesn't get to warm up it will get crummy mileage. The cold weather is only part of the problem. In cold weather states the gas is reformulated in the Winter and contains less energy per gallon. Add up the denser air, less energy in the gas, having to roll over ice and snow, and cold engine and it hurts. Jon

I use this one quite often. Start car. Leave it in park. Depress accelerator 3/4 way. So long as you press, ICE runs. Perfect for what you need. Jon

According to the FOMOCO it is a deep cycle battery. Makes sense but it will test differently. Don't replace with a standard starting battery. Jon

Most people forget to add in the single biggest impact in cold weather states after cabin heat/emissions system heat - fuel blend. Winter blend in Minnesota has about 3% less energy then Summer. Comes right off the top. Jon

There is no way to know precisely when the car will run out of gas. The reason being that #1) the car is never perfectly level and 2) none of the systems used to measure the fuel level / consumption are completely accurate. There can be 2 or 3 usable gallons of gas in the tank when you start to venture down a hill. At that point the fuel sloshes to the font of the tank and the pick-up runs dry. Out of gas. If you had been on level ground you could have gone quite a ways more. Because it is a liquid in a tank and the car moves about it is very hard to determine the difference between 99% empty and 100% empty. The point is you shouldn't care about that difference. For several reasons you should fill back up before you get close to 100% empty. Is there any good reason to drive it down to nothing, other than playing silly games with pump prices or fooling yourself into feeling good because some stupid number on the dash says you went "real far" on your tank? (sorry for the harshness, I just can't quite understand the willingness to risk your safety (running out of gas on the road - bad for your health) and life of the car (run the fuel pump dry and Ford can refuse the warranty repair)) Jon

Holy cow! I'm glad I got the '10. I did some checking and it seems first the front headrest changes were mandated now they have to carry through to the rear. I'm sure the Gubment meant well. Seems you were supposed to put up the headrests on the '10 when people were back there. No one ever did so when there was a rear-ender any back seat passengers could suffer neck injuries. Now the lowest position meets the safety standard. I haven't had an accident in over a dozen years, but I still would not let a passenger in the back seat without a headrest. PS: Have you tried moving your mirror up? It is mounted on an arm with two ball joints. I actually keep my mirror up next to the roof of the car, then adjust the angle to see out the back properly. This makes the auto-dim work better and gives better visibility both out of the front window (no mirror in my front field of view) and back (the higher angle gives me a better angle to see what is behind with less obstruction) Jon

Yes, there is a Lloyd's rubbertite cargo liner cut specifically for the hybrid. You have to find a site that allows you to specify the Fusion in general and then when you select the product it will ask for the sub model. This is where you specify the hybrid. Not all sites are setup hybrid aware. Sometimes you have to call. I think I got mine at autoanything.com

Went from a 4WD/AWD Expedition to the FFH. I had heard that there were issues with the Prius and snow when it came to traction. Braking, T/C, and mode switch issues. I have not had a single problem here in MN. If I park the car wet the brakes can sometimes be a bit grabby the first time they are used when I leave at the end of the day but it will do that in the Summer too. Overall I am pretty pleased with the Winter performance. Jon

In my quote above MG2 is the traction motor. I'll rephrase to traction motor. The reply was actually about understanding how you can use a single planetary to accomplish a very efficient transmission. The traction motor is a huge part of a completed hybrid but it doesn't have anything to do with the planetary and reduction motor being an efficient transmission. As well MG2 doesn't alter the traction motor RPM. The traction motor is geared directly to the wheels. MG2 takes the narrow range of efficient ICE RPM and maps it to the larger wheel RPM. An electric motor already has a large RPM range. Jon