Ford Delivers Five Focus Fuel Cell Hybrids to Florida
23 September 2005
Ford Motor Company is delivering five hydrogen hybrid Ford Focus Fuel Cell vehicles (earlier post) as part of a five-city 30 car-program for testing of fuel-cell technology. The Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) will get three vehicles and Progress Energy will receive the other two.
The Ford Focus Fuel Cell Vehicle (FCV) is one of the first hybridized fuel-cell vehicles, using an electric motor powered by two sources.
A Ballard Power Systems hydrogen fuel cell provides the primary motive power, while a Sanyo nickel metal-hydride (NiMH) battery pack and a Continental Teves Electro-Hydraulic regenerative braking system provides the additional source of electric power. Continental Teves also supplies the regenerative braking system in the Escape Hybrid SUV.
As a result, the Focus FCV hybrid has up to double the driving range of the non-hybrid fuel-cell model: between 160 to 200 miles (320 km) versus 100 miles (160 km).
Knowledge gained engineering Ford’s Escape Hybrid and Mercury Mariner Hybrids has been shared between the FCV vehicle engineering team and the people working on both Ford gasoline-powered hybrids on the road today as well as future gasoline hybrids Ford will sell.
The engineers who work on the Focus FCV work hand-in-hand with those developing our gasoline hybrids. The knowledge we gain by engineering these cars not only benefits our expertise in innovative fuel cell propulsion technology, it also will help us deliver even better gasoline hybrids in the near term.
—Mary Ann Wright, director of Sustainable Mobility Technologies and Hybrid Programs
This year, Ford is delivering evaluation fleets of Focus FCVs for placement in demonstration programs in the United States, Canada, and Germany. This includes five vehicles now in use in Vancouver, BC; five cars delivered to the Sacramento Municipal District; the five cars delivered to Florida today and five in Michigan.
We continue to develop hydrogen, which is a dead end for energy independence from fossil fuels.
It can only come cheaply from oil, shale, CNG, coal.
For every other process I have read here, it would be more efficent to pump the energy directly into electric car batteries.
Americans are being jackass dumb allowing Congress to be lead by the present corporations keeping the present energy infastructure in place.
Corn fuel, hot fusion, cold fusion, hydrogen, spinning water will not save the world from increasing energy costs and wars.
We must implement what we know, now!: Solar, wind, dams, atomic power.
THE GOAL OF CONGRESS MUST BE INDEPENDENCE FROM FOSSIL FUELS.
Posted by: Tonychilling | 23 September 2005 at 09:16 AM
Type 4 nuke plants. High temp method is vastly better.
Posted by: wintermane | 23 September 2005 at 05:36 PM
Folks, you are commenting on energy in general. The topic of this article is not the suitability of hydrogen as a fuel, nor is it about nuclear power - those are covered elsewhere on this website as well as the rest of the net - but on a specific hydrogen fuel cell vehicle evaluation program.
Posted by: Jack | 25 September 2005 at 04:45 PM