Ford's Green Efforts | Green Energy News

January 9, 2005 – Vol.9 No.42

FORD’S GREEN EFFORTS.

Ford’s Escape Hybrid was named 2005 North American Truck of the Year by 50 automotive journalists at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, Michigan.

Ford is certainly proud of the honor and is glad to show the driving public that it is concerned about the environment.

To keep the company name under that green spotlight, the company has announced four new, additional fuel efficient hybrid models (well, really one new hybrid vehicle, you’ll see) that will be available to consumers beginning later this year.

The first is the Mercury Mariner Hybrid. The SUV will be in showrooms later this year. But the Mariner is really a re-badged, gussied-up Escape so there’s no new actual vehicle.

Also Ford said that it will be selling a hybrid version of its Tribute in a couple of years. The Tribute, sold by Mazda, is another re-badged, restyled Escape. So there’s no totally new vehicle here either.

But by 2008 Ford said it will be offering two hybrid sedan models, the Ford Fusion and the Mercury Milan. The cars are new, but are essentially the same, with only minor differences.

So Ford is correct when it claims five hybrid models. But really, the company will have engineered only one new hybrid vehicle, the Fusion/Milan.

Teasing aside, Ford is taking other actions that will put the company in the green vehicle arena.

The company has announced that the state of Florida will be the first customer for its hydrogen-fueled, internal-combustion-engined E-450 buses. Ford is also in negotiations with officials of Dallas-Fort Worth Airport for the sale of additional hydrogen E-450s.

Looking ahead the company is showing a diesel/electric hybrid concept car, the Mercury Meta (based on the Ford Freestyle crossover vehicle) That car, the company says, could run on biodiesel. (All diesels could.) The hybrid car, along with the biodiesel fuel, could have significantly reduced emissions, comparable to gasoline engined cars Ford says.

The company is not stopping at road-worthy vehicles to introduce green vehicles. Ford is in the process of switching all of its materials handling equipment in its factories from internal combustion engine driven vehicles to electric.

The batteries in vehicles, such as fork lift trucks, will be recharged without removal using PosiCharge (tm) fast charging systems. PosiCharge is a business unit of AeroVironment.

The PosiCharge system includes computer monitoring and data management of each battery to determine the health and possible replacement cycle of each battery in the fleet of materials handling vehicles.

Visit Ford at http://www.ford.com/ , Ford media at http://media.ford.com/ and PosiCharge at http://www.posicharge.com/ .