"The PHEV Escapes...are getting as much as 120 mpg in testing."

Now your talking!!! Put me down for one of those!

@ sjc -

I'm guessing there are two electric motors on either side of a clutch in the transaxle. If the clutch is open, you're in series hybrid mode, useful for low speeds, reverse gear emulation and recuperative braking. Once you close it, you're in parallel mode, which saves fuel and increases available boost torque at higher speeds.

Of course, in Ford's private dictionary, the term could also refer to a Toyota-style single-mode compound hybrid. In that setup, part of the engine power is always routed electrically and the rest mechanically to deliver a continously variable transmission ratio using just one set of planetary gears.

@ Mark Gutting-Kilzer -

they are almost certainly ignoring the fuel inputs at the power stations, because (a) they vary by region/country and (b) marketing types like big numbers regardless of what they really mean. There is as yet no agreed-upon technical standard for measuring the aggregate fuel economy of a PHEV or E-REV.

I know that single-digit range or low-speed restrictions of "EV mode" seems like a useless feature to many, but I personally value it as a nice complimentary feature. One may not be able to use EV mode all the time, but it's a feature that is certainly useful in traffic jams, parking lots, and driving around residential areas.

I'd love to see that perfect EV some day, but for now, hybrids with some EV features will probably be the right-now vehicle that can appeal to masses. It took almost a decade for hybrids to get to where it is today, and I think pure-EVs will take some time to gain some traction in the mainstream.

Ford is licensing the Toyota patents, so it's a planetary transmission that blends the properties of series and parallel hybrids. The list of improvements planned sounds just like the list of improvements that Toyota released in the 2004 Prius.

This is just solid engineering producing improvements. Its nice to see it occurring. As 21st century Science deflates the power of GHGs to only a tenth of a single degree or so per century, and so deflates concerns over AGW caused by GHGs, nonetheless there is a definite and valid concern for hydrocarbon fuel availability to provide enough for the entire world. There is simply not enough to go around for everyone if that is the only choice.

But it is not. Substitution is finally arriving for Ground Transport.

Reducing hydrocarbon demand from 20 mpg to 120 mpg for liquid hydrocarbons is a reduction of some 600%, of that commodity,even as electrical demand grows. If the US demand for Oil fell by 600% with an automotive fleet of such vehicles, the US demand would drop from 21 million BBD to around 3.5 million BBD.

It becomes not only possible, but probable to envision the US becoming independent of the Oil Sheiks and the Commissars who bottleneck petroleum supply while stealing their citizen's wealth.

I must say I can't think of a better reward to the Chavez's and Putin's and the House of Saud.

Even if the present US electrical supply is currently produced with about 70% total hydrocarbons, almost exclusively coal and gas, that will change in the next decade. While such PHEV vehicles also replace current vehicles in the US automotive fleet. By then, the US will be generating only 50% of its electricity from coal and gas. Half or more of US electricity will be supplied by a last generation of uranium,(doubling to 40%), falling water, essentially constant, and assorted miscellaneous other sources adding a per cent or even a percent and a half of supply. We will then be well positioned to harness clean,inexhaustible, Fusion when it starts getting practical around 2030 or so.

We will have clean air in the US in only a half a decade, at most. That is a triumph that merits a a national holiday, as it was a bi-partisan effort over 40 years in the creation. Too Bad the EU is a couple of decades away from such progress. We will have clean air, and clean inexhaustible energy for all.

It is so refreshing to see the world getting better, in spite of the Leftist propaganda attempts to depress and convince everyone that they must submit to sharing the misery. While putting the commissars in charge, to supervise the equal misery for all,(except themselves, of course!).

@Patrick,

The technology will be available and the Chinese companies may actually be building it for export to the US. But China is about two years behind the Japanese in adopting emissions standards internally. The Japanese, in turn, are about half a decade behind the EU in implementing emissions standards internally; and they pattern their standards after the EU model.

Since the EU is almost two decades behind America, it may be three decades before the Chinese actually equip their domestic fleet with emissions abatement equipment that they may be exporting to America in only a half dozen years or less.

Too Bad.

At least Ford is trying to produce full hybrid sedans. Unlike the less than innovative green vue line. The battery for the Fusion/Milan is only 5.5 Ah compared to the Prius 6.5 Ah battery. At a 60% increase in city mileage means from 24 MPG to around 38 MPG. Don't know if it is the old EPA figures or new ones. The Prius new EPA figures around the 44-46 MPG.

Stan's off in his own world again. 40% nuclear? Really? From what? There's only 6 applications for COL licenses so far and that doesn't mean that they will even be built.

To do what you believe nuclear is going to be in a mere couple of decades would require the building of at least 90 GWe worth of reactors. In an era when the economy might turn down, the utilites are going to mass build them? This isn't field of dreams. Try going to any board with the idea of build it and they will come and they'll rightly toss you on your behind.

All this in the 15-20 years before your crystal ball belief that nuclear fusion will come and save the world? Right Stan. There is no evidence that a viable commercial fusion reactor will be built by then.

Great planning ability there, hope that something new emerges that doesn't really exist now. Heck, why not say that nanotechnology will be around by 2030 too while your at it, so that we can keep pigging out in our non sustainable lifestyles.

If the air is so great in the US, why are the north eastern states suing the US industrial heartland? Because of all the clean air? You keep saying that Europe is behind the US in emmissions by decades? Where does this come from?

Leftist propaganda? Stan, most of the clean air act was created by "leftists" and is still considered by many conservatives to be propaganda. What makes it anything that disagrees with you leftist? In fact, there is little fact in your diatribe but there is many emotional appeals and barbs. Commissars, Stan? Painting a picture that your viewpoint is american as apple pie and anything that isn't such as any hint socially oriented programs is part of some communie plot? Geez, McCarthy would be proud of you.

I don't believe in a future utopia and yours, like most, is totally unanchored in any reality but your own.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epat1p1.html

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/nuc_reactors/com_reactors.pdf

WOW Treehugger very emotive diatribe of your own. Come on the US auto industry is not solely to blame. Mostly they make cars for Americans that like big cars and trucks. Now why is this.

You could say they just want to rip the consumer off and destroy the environment. If they just did that they would of quickly gone out of business years ago. Their image is set by their product path, consumers, media, and their business model. They have been stuck in the role worse than your favorite TV role has his.

Now convince people to buy small cars or hybrids and every manufacturer will make them. No company has such a big technical leap in this area and the others can't follow. Lets support any greener alternative that any car produces. If you gotta have your big car a hybrid Escape or in 2009 Fusion you might be a good choice.

"Since the EU is almost two decades behind America... in adopting emissions standards internally..."

Hmm, I think you ought to back that one up Stan.

I assume you are talking about the red herring NOx restrictions motivated by smog in unusual climate areas (like coastal california) rather than CO2 emissions per mile tragets on auto production. Whos leads on the latter?

If the residents of west coast america were not putting down quite so many miles in their cars, they might not need the T2B5 restrictions for clean air in the first place...

I agree that the targets of Euro V and T2B5 are a good push to improve local atmospheric conditions for the public, but when it comes to energy consumption per household - Europe is very gladly behind on that one.

aym,

I think I understand what you're trying to say in a very long-winded way - that in a free market economy society develops according to the financial pressures on it - basic capitalist concept - fair enough and I agree. But this site is devoted to 'Green Cars' - that means, the interest and aim of the contributors and readers is the reduction of the impact on the environment of vehicles.

I think it is very important to have the debate over how the metrics Nox emissions per BHP.hour and co2/unit benchmark distance are used to measure the greeness of a vehicle.

If the g Nox per BHP.hour of a vehicle is low, but vast volumes of fuel are used to propell a single person a few miles in slow traffic - that is not green to me.

While I understand the value of very low pollutant concentrations to the high quality of life expectations in small areas of the planet - the consumed fuel must obviously come into the value of the car somewhere too - as those emissions are thought to have much longer lasting and further reaching effects. Most people posting here agree with me on that, I'm sure.

I get very upset when european technology is rejected on the basis of air purity restrictions, when it is using vast amounts of energy less that the vehicles that meet these standards.

You only have to look at the European vehicles engineered to meet these US standards to see the difference in emphasis either side of the water: most are large and use V8 spark ignited engines, and all have greater cylinder capacity than european versions.

The market pressures are changing, and one simple solution, that nicely compliments all the technologies presented here is simple - *drive smaller lighter cars*.

"america were people are on average shamely ignorant and clueless about everything."

Especially English.

aym,

I don't know from where you get your numbers but there are 32 nuclear power plants in the early pipeline, preparing for or seeking COLs, or getting ready for them. Please check the NRC web pages such as:

http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/new-reactor-licensing.html

Those 32 plants would be equivalent to about 60 of the 100 odd current running plants. The current plants are bifurcated in power output, with a earlier first and later second wave of designs. Since these new standard designs are about a third larger in output than the current running second wave plants; and two thirds larger than the first wave of current plants.

They won't double nuclear generation to 40%, all by themselves, but will easily raise it to well over 30% and there surely must be a few more plant orders that will emerge in the next decade and a half. After all, this backlog has developed from zero in only two years.

All but a couple are sited in currently existing nuclear sites with other existing nuclear plants, so siting opposition will be less. In fact, most of the opportunity for obstructionism is now already done with, as the Westinghouse designs are now already approved as "standard designs"; and the GE designs are almost finished with their multi-year approvals as "standard designs". While other standard designs are being sought, they represent little of the existing base of current plants.

No more construction delaying critiques are allowed under the new laws, except for NRC itself, and provable malfeasance by not following construction standards.

This is much less likely, as the plant manufacturers are undertaking to supervise the construction under fixed price, fixed delivery, contracts. This is totally unlike the environment in which we principled critics, could, and did, critique the one-off designs, sloppy construction, and rump construction contracts often done by firms who had never undertaken to build a nuclear plant before. Today you simply can't tie up construction, under the revised laws, like we could back then.

So they are in th pipeline, and they will be built, and built in under 4 years from first concrete; and operating generating electricity in under 5 years.