Alan Mulally, president and CEO of Ford, pledged yesterday to form an alliance with the Edison Electric Institute to work on plug-in cars. Speaking at EEI’s annual convention in San Francisco on Thursday, Mulallly outlined his company’s path toward high fuel-efficiency, which included—but by no means was limited to—electric vehicle technology.
Toyota announced today that combined sales of Toyota and Lexus gas-electric vehicles in the United States topped the 1 million mark. This comes just one day after Ford announced that the 100,000th Ford hybrid SUV rolled off the assembly line of the company’s Kansas City assembly plant—and one month after Honda announced that it had sold more than 300,000 hybrids worldwide.
San Francisco taxi drivers are providing solid information about the outer reaches of hybrid battery life. At a recent Ford Motor Company event, Paul Gillespie, San Francisco Taxicab Commission president, said some of his city’s Ford Escape hybrid taxis had passed 300,000 miles of use with no problems.
In a personality shift that would make Madonna jealous, the hybrid gas-electric vehicle is being transformed from ecoweenie-mobile to lean green crime-fighting machine. Law enforcement departments across the country are considering the use of hybrid vehicles as police cruisers.
Ad campaigns from Ford and General Motors are increasing interest in hybrids. But the companies are not producing enough hybrid vehicles to meet customer demand. Ford and GM representatives point to lack of manufacturing capacity and insufficient supply of hybrid batteries. The result is high dealer markup for hybrid SUVs, according to a report from National Public Radio.
ZAP, the California-based electric car maker, is teaming up with Colorado-based Hybrids Plus to offer plug-in conversion systems for the Toyota Prius and Ford Escape Hybrid.
