Hope Ford survives to see all this thru. One of the most overlooked things, in my opinion, is weight reduction, as it dramatically helps any vehicle. Good to see Ford adressing this.........

Ford's been promising great things on the technology side for years. They haven't really delivered yet because they have not yet decided to leverage their global organization in the same way GM has. Case in point: the Ford technology roadmap sketched explicitly omits diesel engines for anything other than trucks and SUVs in the US. That is a mistake IMHO, large sedans, MMPVs and minivans would all benefit greatly as well.

Plus, all the fancy technology in the world isn't going to make any difference to the bottom line unless customers like the styling of the vehicles it's put into. That means ditching lacklustre passenger car models like the US Focus in favor of their European cousins. Ford's SUVs and pick-ups are American specialties and should therefore retain distinctively American styling. The concept of a single global design language is misguided IMHO.

Most of all, the Ford brand needs to go somewhat upmarket to increase margin per vehicle, even if it comes at the expense of somewhat reduced unit volume. VW has demonstrated how this can be achieved, at least in their European operations.

Hi Raphael...You're right about advanced diesels being healthy for Ford & companies in general, even tho diesels aren't healthy for children & people who live, work & school near freeways(& diesels). Diesel health effects are probably wider spread too(but I don't know except for port facilities). With the new reports of diesel particles causing heart disease, & further reports saying New Delhi & Europe aren't lessening polluting emissions despite extensive emission regulations, we must be careful putting too many diesels eggs in our basket lest those eggs be stillborn.

Hi Tom...Boy, are you right! Your reasons are why I temper my enthusiasm for efficient EVs with breakthru advances in dramatic increases in electric battery storage densities. I know people's(America only leads the way) desire for more can sweep efficiency gains completely away.

Tom:

You hit the nail on the head.

How can we change this acquired addiction ....bigger is better?

Who needs a 6000+ lbs V-8 vehicle to take the kids to school. A minibus the same size could take 12+ kids to school. A Toyota Prius could do it just as well with 1/4 the fuel.

There aren't any short term improvements. It takes close to 15 years to turn over the entire vehicle fleet.

People will get over this obsession with power, weight and speed when the cost of fuel forces us to do so. Recall that small fuel efficient cars quickly became the rage in the early 1980's.

I have no confidence that Ford (or GM for that matter) has a plan of any sort that will be of any use in the long run. They are still fixated on oversized vehicles that are overpowered. Whatever we use for transportation in the future is likely to come from other companies.

The original People's car and the most extensively built vehicle in world history, had an interior capacity that a Mini outsizes. It had a 42 HP engine and achieved tremendous mileage... all of 16 miles per gallon.

You have to search among the biggest fuelish SUVs to find something that gets such poor mileage offered by any automaker today.

Progress has come and continues to do so at a compound rate of over 5.1 % per annum for decades, as documented here on GCC, but some people are myopic about it. And a quantum leap in efficiency is just starting to arrive.

In 6-10 years when many practical family vehicles get 60 mpg equivalent or more, some of you will still be trying to get people to drive pregnant roller skates that get 120 mpg, "for their own good".

Even as oil demand then drops precipitously and oil prices collapse along with them, amid the shrieking of Oil sheiks and Marxist oil tyrants, as both quake about their survival.

And once again you will be pissing into the wind.

Bob Lutz has made a cogent observation about fuel mileage improvement. When the automakers achieve it, at a level comfortable to consumers, then consumers decide they can now afford to drive a more comfortable up sized vehicle. All despite the hectoring and hair-shirt-ism so prevalent in certain quarters well represented here.

Oh, its you, Stan....You compare 2008 gas guzzler gas MPG to the worst ever WWII VW bug built during 20cent per gallon gas. My Subaru used to pass up VWs, both speedwise & at the gas pump. & my Subaru wasn't as good as the Nissan B210 which was like a little station wagon getting 35 MPG. So did other small cars. After them, small cars got even more roomy & MPG. My Plymouth Champ & Ford Festiva averaged 42 & 45 MPG in the 80's. Still got my Festiva, altho my Champ which banged up many many logging roads I finally lost track of after 24years. Ya got anymore comparisons.

Stan, if you're referring to the VW beetle, you're just plain wrong. In its 36 and 40hp 1200 cc versions (forties through 1965), it delivered an honest and consistent 32mpg average. This was validated by millions of owners (including myself). The engine was so throttled, that even at the flat-out max speed of 72mph, it would yield 30+ mpg.

Don't forget the beetle was designed in the mid thirties; for its time, and right through the sixties, it was always a relatively economical vehicle.

Roger: agreed that walking, bike riding and public transit will alleviate some of the energy burden - but we will see a rise in pedestrian accidents. In the US alone pedestrian accidents reach 70,000 annually. Factor in the attendant medical costs. Those numbers will increase as people abandon cars for walking and bikes. As the relative number of cars is unlikely to decline due to population - we will have to face rising injury/medical/recovery as part of the new "paradigm."

I was hoping he would say 2, 3 and 4 cylinder engines, rather than 4 and V-6. Weight reduction is job one, and savings of 250 to 750 pounds is not enough. It still means producing grossly oversize vehicles, very lightly loaded for daily operation. The auto industry keeps on giving us the wrong tool for the task at hand. They're caught in a complexity paradigm, rather than using simplicity and size as problem solving tools.

The latest Ford scion recently criticized the biofuels industry for not moving fast enough to meet the needs of 2 billion cars in the world by 2050. This statement tells us a lot about the industry. It means they expect per unit distance fuel usage rates to be in the ballpark of today's rates; they expect a 135% increase in vehicles while population goes up 50%; all this while oil peaks and food supplies have become inelastic. They see the last 100 years as a norm, while in fact it is an aberration.