It is great to see Ford is getting on board well with higher MPG cars. The 2010 Fusion gets 41 MPG in the city. That’s not bad for a midsize car that can easily carry 5 people. It uses hybrid technology. There is electrical motor propulsion that is used at lower city driving speeds and then at highway speeds the gasoline motor takes over. The battery is also charged from the gasoline motor and there is no provision for plugging into home electrical power. So, sometime into your city drive the gasoline motor may come on to charge the battery. Ford provided a demonstration drive in the north eastern United States to demonstrate the effect of the new technology. They target driving over 1000 miles on a single tank of gasoline. I understand the tank holds about 17 U.S. gallons. The expert drivers drove the unmodified production Fusion for several days and ended up going over 1400 miles on that single tank of gasoline. That put them well over 80 MPG. Of course they used fuel saving techniques such as driving with the windows closed and not using heating or air conditioning. Still the point was well made.

I have generally purchased from Fords competitors (not GM or Chrysler, either) because of quality concerns but they seem to have overcome much of that problem. I have read there is a $1700 tax credit if you buy before October 2009.

It is good to see a U.S. based company in the lead again with some cars. I hope this will continues. We need to reduce the consumption of foreign oil and we need to put less pollution into the environment. This is in my view a good bridge technology to migrate to full electrical propulsion. I believe the plug in version will be available as soon as the battery technology for cars catches up.