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I want to take issue with Ford's marketing of the Fusion and C-Max. Just like in Who Killed the Electric Car? it talks about how the automakers didn't really educate consumers or advertise the electric vehicles we see the same thing today with hybrids and PHEVs. If Ford really wanted to sell the Fusion Hybrid/Energi and C-Max Hybrid/Energi they would target their marketing at people who weren't previously considering hybrids/PHEVs and show them the advantages of these vehicles. But, they don't do this. Ford only advertises the C-Max as a Prius killer trying to convince people that it is better than the Prius. If you were not previously considering a Prius then this advertising is wasted on you. Also, many people have a negative image of the Prius in their mind, linking the C-Max with the Prius in advertising is not going to sell C-Maxes to those people. The Fusion Hybrid is advertised like a footnote at the end of the regular Fusion commercials and nothing is done to tout the benefits of the Fusion Hybrid in comparison with the gas Fusion. Also, where is the advertising for the Energi models??!? I have seen nothing other than the banner on Ford's website that occasionally displays the C-Max Energi and Fusion Hybrid when going to Ford.com. There is a scene in Who Killed the Electric Car? that mentions how GM went about contacting people who were interested in buying the EV1 and telling them all the limitations of the vehicle and then proceeding to claim that no one wanted it. Nowadays there is not enough done to advertise the benefits of buying a Fusion Hybrid over buying a Fusion EB. There appears to be ZERO advertising about the benefits of buying an Energi model over buying a gas only vehicle. This is very disappointing. A few months ago I made a comment about how I'm not convinced that Ford really wants to sell these cars because of how they had to know that there would be an uproar about the real world fuel economy. I don't think that the engineers, marketing people and executives at Ford are so stupid that they didn't expect some backlash for building a car to ACE the EPA tests that would thus perform worse for many people in real life. When regular cars that are not built to ace the EPA tests often perform worse in real life for some drivers and better for others there is no way that Ford could have thought that what they did wouldn't cause an outrage from disappointed consumers. It seems that just about all consumers are disappointed. Experienced hypermilers are unable to exceed the EPA ratings in the Ford hybrids like they can in other hybrids. Regular consumers are getting much worse than they expected. And even I am a bit disappointed. I tried to not expect better than 47 MPG overall, but when our past cars have all done better than EPA estimates consistently it is hard to not expect that this car will also exceed those numbers. Sadly we're at 42.1 Lifetime on the dash and have found the city mileage to be more than 47 MPG but the highway mileage to be worse. And I am a bit disappointed. Cognizant of how consumers would react, I question how much they actually wanted to sell the cars...looking at the advertising I also question how much they want to sell the PHEVs. If we think about it, the hybrids and PHEVs and BEVs hurt the Ford dealers. Since we need to change oil less often in our hybrids than a gas car, that costs the dealerships money and costs Ford income from selling parts. Since we need brakes less often we also bring in less long-term revenue. A PHEV is even more extreme with the lack of oil changes and a BEV has no oil changes period, and no other routine maintenance associated with an ICE. This makes me worry that maybe the automakers have engineered the batteries to fail at a certain point, say 100,000 miles since that is beyond warranty outside of California, and then they're hoping to make up this lost revenue replacing battery packs. Since we're driving the first year of cars with a NEW battery pack design who knows what changes have been made. The old NiMH packs were proven to last a long time, but we don't know that about the Li-Ion packs yet. This makes me nervous. I'm not a conspiracy nut, but I try to be realistic. This whole world is corrupt. The system is broken. And who's to say that this isn't going on... Your thoughts?

Here is an article from Edmunds about the future of the ICE and EVs. It is very heavily biased in favor of gasoline. http://www.edmunds.com/car-reviews/features/why-the-internal-combustion-engine-is-the-future.html This link is a critique of the Edmunds article by Green Car Reports. http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1083696_yes-combustion-engines-will-be-with-us-for-decades-howeve