Writing this Focus vehicle up as a hybrid is an attempt to capture some hype from somewhere. Fuel cell vehicles are never going to operate without a substantial battery pack. That is unless you want to wait 24 hours for your PEM fuel cell to warm up. For practical reasons all fuel cell vehicles will need nicely operating battery pakcs be it NiMH or Li-ion/polymer. So why not just call it like it is---a PEM fuel cell vehicle. Traditional ICE vehicles don't operate without a Pb-acid battery for SLI. No one makes a big deal out of that.

Well, I think the difference they are trying to capture is primarily the addition of the regenerative braking -- which, from what I can see, is indeed absent from earlier versions of the FCV. Now, you could make the point that earlier versions were incomplete, and that really, a production FCV should be a "hybrid" in that sense, so what’s the point of making noise about it—aside from the marketing benefit short term.

I’ll take the responsibility for any inadvertant amplification of hype. :-)

No by using hybrid tech they upped the power while shrinking the size of the fuel cell( the one most costly part in that car) and upping the range all while lowering weight almost 200lb.

Thats a big deal and because its using the battery far more then before its no longer a fuel cell car its a hybrid.

This is suppose to be a "Production" car!!!!!
Get real!

Yes a very very short production but still a production car;/ It means they have the tooling up that they need to mass produce the buggers but likely they dont have all the PARTS needed for mass production. Its more a test of the plant then anything else realy. Seeing how the line actauly managed to pop the buggers out and troubleshooting anything that pops up as a result. The important bit is they would ONLY do this if they do in fact plan to mass produce something based on a signifigant amount of the parts in that car in a timeline no greater then 5 years or so... so ya they are up to something.

Ford is treating this like a production car, albeit one whose primary goal is learning for later programs. The fuel cell vehicle has been tested like other cars. The development of a vehicle that runs on a new technology is not trivial, whether the goal is 30 cars or 300,000. "Production" in steps allows Ford and the other vehicle manufacturers to learn along the way and incorporate those lessons into the next generation of vehicles.

The "hybrid" designation also (in addition to regenerative breaking) refers to usage of the HV battery to enhance the driving experience in several ways, most notably during hard accelerations when the fuel cell cannot react as quickly as combustion engine drivers are used to (the flow of gases in the fuel cell slows response down). The hybrid functionality allows the vehicle to accelerate more like a normal car.

I'm interested to see where it takes the industry! It's exciting and I hope to be driving one some day!

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i dont like this