Ford's Badly Needed Plan To Catch Up On Hybrid, Electric Cars (arstechnica.com)

Ford supposedly has a plan to adapt to the changing world of transportation. The company recently announced that it's "going all-in on hybrids," readying six new battery electric vehicles by 2022, with the first due in 2020, and adding more performance versions of its SUV line up. "Additionally, by the end of 2019, every new Ford will have 4G LTE connectivity, and the company is developing a new cloud platform that will deliver over-the-air updates," reports Ars Technica. From the report: New hybrids: "Hybrids for years have been mostly niche products but are now on the cusp of a mainstream breakout," said Jim Farley, Ford president of global markets. "The valuable capability they offer -- plus fuel efficiency -- is why we're going to offer hybrid variants of our most popular and high-volume vehicles, allowing our loyal, passionate customers to become advocates for the technology." So America's best-selling truck (the F-150) will get the ability to act as a mobile generator, something that should come in handy on job sites. Meanwhile, the Mustang will have performance to match the 5.0L V8 version but with more low-down torque, according to Ford. The company says that these new hybrids will be cheaper and more efficient than its current hybrids, via "common cell and component design and by manufacturing motors, transmissions, and battery packs."

New BEVs: We have to wait for those new BEVs, too. The first of these -- an electric performance SUV -- also shows up in 2020, but with five more planned between then and 2022. Ford says that it's "rethinking the ownership experience" as part of this and that over-the-air software updates to add new features will be part of the $11 billion investment plan.

More SUVs, more commercial vehicles, a super Mustang: Other new vehicles on the way include a reborn Ford Bronco SUV and an as-yet unnamed small SUV, but before then we'll get redesigned Explorers and Escapes, due in 2019. Next year, Ford will also bring a new Transit van to the US, and it says advanced driver-assistance systems, like automatic emergency braking and others, will be added to future commercial vehicles like the future E-Series, F-650, F-750, and F59-based vehicles.

Comments

Re:So long as...

[aix tom]

It's not really a software / hardware distinction, the problem is more how complicated it gets. When we switched from relay logic to software logic in the production lines I was working on in the 1980 and 1990 the fault rate went way down, because less things were able to break. Plus you didn't have to re-wire the entire cabinet when the logic changed, you could just copy over the software. But of course those processor maybe had 512 bits of input and 128 bits of output, and the software consisted of maybe a few thousand and/or logic instructions and perhaps 1028 bits of RAM to store intermediate results. (and yes, i *mean* 0/1 bits, not bytes or anything else)

But yes, anything that has anything that's even remotely in the the area of "over the air" ... something is *way* to complicated to be trusted with operating machinery in my opinion.

Re:4G LTE OTA updates

[ThosLives]

I'm all for hybrid and electric vehicles, but I'm really not happy that every industry is going to over-the-air update models.

There are of course the security issues, but there is also the more insidious side effect that it promotes a "ship it now" mentality instead of "ship it when it's ready" mentality.

I'm hoping the "right to repair" movement maintains its momentum and also includes "right to not require connectivity."

Re:Turbines

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure why you said turbine... Turbines are lightweight and reliable, but they are fuel hogs... In the aircraft I fly, turbines burn about twice the fuel of a piston engine of the same HP. They also have limits on how many times you can start them up, so they're not great for frequent start/stop operation. You might be thinking of a co-gen turbine system, but that's not mobile...

These guys on the other hand make an engine that might work well, or of course you have BMW with their motorcycle engine in the i3 Rex.

My other comment on the big automakers in general is that when they say Hybrid, a lot of them mean "mild hybrid" i.e. a 48 volt hybrid system. It's a quick and dirty way to get some of the benefits of a hybrid grafted onto existing cars without a major redesign, my worry is that with the state of global warming a 15-25% increase in fuel economy isn't sufficient. I'm of the opinion that we need a combination of BEV and PHEV (like the Volt) to radically decrease the amount of fuel we're burning. I'm concerned that a 15-25% decrease, while automotive use seems to be increasing, may help stop the increase in carbon emissions, but won't help decrease it by the amount we need to be thinking of.

Here's an article on mild hybrids and here is the Wikipedia page on mild hybrids.

My experience so far has been with a BEV (Honda Fit EV) and PHEV (Chevy Volt First Gen). Of the two, I liked the Fit the best. However, my daughters did not. The main problem was, as a pilot I'm used to figuring out ahead of time where I'll be going, where I'll refuel, etc. But the average driver (like my daughters) just wants to hop in and go, and when the little gauge says "E" to just find a nearby gas station and top off. They don't want to have to plan the trip.

The Volt works out very well for them, in that they can drive typically 35-40 miles on the battery, and then the gas motor kicks in, and they don't have to do any planning unless the gauge reads "E". So, in many ways a great compromise between pure electric and pure gas, and I would think a great way to transition people into electric vehicles... but I wish the battery range was more like 100 miles.

What I don't like about the Volt (and mostly I think it's a good car):

1) Especially in the winter, a lot of trips end up running the gas engine. If it's below freezing, the car often will not use the battery at all (it just flashes a message that it's using the gas engine because of the temperature). In the winter the car simply doesn't have the range - the battery range drops to about 20-25 miles which is NOT enough to complete most trips that aren't just around town.

2) The fuel economy when the engine runs isn't that great... about 40-42 mpg. I think that's because they put in an engine big enough to keep the vehicle moving at highway speeds once the battery is depleted.

3) You're carrying a full sized engine around all the time. I think the BMW i3 has the better idea... have a much smaller engine just barely big enough to recharge the battery. In fact I think I'd like the option to go even further than the i3: instead of an engine which can keep the car moving at highway speed (except on a steep hill) give me a really small range extender engine, one that won't move the car much faster than 25 mph... Here's my reasoning:

Most of the time I charge at home, do a trip, and hopefully get home, all on battery. Sometimes I'll drive further and I'll plan on charging at some point during the trip so that I can make it home without having to use gas. But sometimes there's no place to charge, and that's where it's great to have the gas engine.

But instead of hauling around a full size engine all the time, or even a motorcycle engine like the BMW i3, how about a really small engine that can act li