12-19-08 by dugan
Dan Neil in the LA Times reports today that
he got 52 mpg city/highway in a test drive of the production model of
the Ford Fusion hybrid, in comfort. Too bad this improved-battery but
still traditional hybrid didn’t come out in the spring, when gasoline
prices were heading over $4.00 a gallon. At about $25,000 net for a
nicely upgraded model, slightly bigger than the Toyota Camry, never mind the Prius, it would be a
no-brainer with gas at $3.00 a gallon.
As Neil says:
Wait, so, has somebody invented the car of the future and didn’t tell us?
It’s
a worthy question. The scolding undercurrent of recent congressional
hearings on the auto-industry bailout was the notion that Detroit had
failed to invest in next-generation technology that could help wean us
off foreign oil. Not so. What they did fail to do was sufficiently
commercialize this technology so that it was ready and waiting at
dealerships when people got stampeded this year by spiraling gas prices.Had
Ford made a few hundred thousand of these cars available in June —
along with the financing to sell them — we’d be erecting 50-foot
equestrian statues of William Clay Ford and Alan Mulally in city
squares, and the streets of Dearborn, Mich., would be repaved with
diamond cobblestones.As it was, the meme of national
incompetence and inferiority vis-a-vis the Japanese carmakers —
Toyota, Honda — was again reinforced. Of course, Detroit can’t build a
desirable high-mileage car. We’re the country that bungled Iraq and
bred a Bernard Madoff, that turned the mortgage market into three-card
monte and put Britney back on top. It would seem almost a shame to
interrupt the soothing pleasures of such self-pity.And yet, here
we are, with a car that seemed purely theoretical — a desirable,
affordable, no-compromise sedan that gets 40-plus mpg — about to show
up at Ford dealerships in the first quarter of 2009. Somebody ought to
tell Thomas Friedman.
Anyhow, if Ford can hang on,
I’m happy to predict that (almost) no matter what goes on with the
economy, gasoline prices will rise in spring as the cherry blossoms
bloom. Heck, they blipped upward today even though the price of oil was
still sinking. And if states like California succeed in closing budget
gaps with higher gasoline taxes, the rise will look even bigger. Hybrids will make economic as well as environmental sense again.
Then
there’s the Chevy Volt, which so far is the most hyped non-car ever. Or
never? GM has announced that is suspended construction of the Flint,
Mich., plant that will make the Volt engine. On the official GM blog
today, the company insists
the Volt will still come out in 2010 because "our global manufacturing
process is flexible enough to construct this plant within a year…"
The
math makes this unlikely, even accepting GM’s one-year building
schedule. If GM proves to bailout overseers by next March 31 that it is
a "viable company," and re-starts the Flint plant by, say, July 2009,
would we expect to see the $40,00-plus Volt on the street in 2010?
Seems unlikely for a car that’s using the new built-in-China Chevy Cruze body for even the newest Volt prototypes.
The
Volt’s plug-in engine would let city commuters use zero gasoline on
most days, yet the price and doubts about GM will work against broad
acceptance. It’s definitely a cleaner car, but unlike the Fusion it
won’t be both cheaper and cleaner, at least without a gigantic rebate.
So
for now the Fusion is way ahead. Its specs make it about the size and
weight of a comfy Camry hybrid but a bit more powerful, and its
yet-undecided EPA mileage will be lower than what Neil got but above
the Camry’s 34 mpg. So it’s American-built, and well on the road to
"cheaper and cleaner."