It's fine for Ford to promote choice, but Nissan's three manufacturing plants and three battery manufacturing facilities for the Leaf speaks volumes (250,000 Leafs and 500,000 battery packs a year by 2013). The Focus EV relies on Magna's electric powetrain and the Transit Connect EV is built by Azure; Ford has not…
@MindHacker-: Rotational energy is a different formula (Xander Crews posted it here) but it also varies with the square of the rotational speed, so your percentage difference is right.
@jbh1126 goes quick: Every little bit helps, but those things you mention are very little. Meanwhile a 25mpg car will burn through 4,800 gallons of gas in 120,000 miles, that weigh 14 tons and add 47 tons of CO2; and each of those gallons you burn took about an extra 0.23 gallon to produce, refine, spill, and…
Elwood: "It's 106 miles to Chicago, we got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark, we're wearing sunglasses, AND there's a 36,000 rpm flywheel in the passenger seat"
@analog805: Your engineering comprehension is weak. The Volt uses NO GASOLINE in day-to-day driving if your commute is less than 40 miles. Maybe that means nothing to you, maybe you don't care about the many and varied downsides of America's addiction to foreign oil, maybe you assume everyone drives over 80 miles a…
@∞Gïmmï∞Mørgäikkøŋëŋ∞: Sheesh, tough crowd around here. That R&D delivered the world's first plug-in hybrid, one that uses NO GASOLINE in day-to-day driving if your commute is less than 40 miles, yet can keep going for hundreds of miles. Mission accomplished! It's morning in America! America F*** Yeah! Etc.
@Zaphod_Has_a_Heart_of_gold: The Volt is the first of its kind. If you've the money and your regular commute is less than 40 miles, it's a revolutionary plug-in car that burns no gasoline in daily operation yet can go hundreds of miles just like a regular car.
@stevezilla: I'm sorry the world's first plug-in hybrid, a car that can travel for 40 miles without using any smog-spewing, terrorist-funding, deficit-increasing gasoline, doesn't do it for you. Everyone else should be proud of what an American company has done.
@m.m.shaefer: It's still a ways away, but I believe the Prius C concept uses the same powertrain (1.8L engine, ~1.6 kWh NiMH battery pack, HSD) as the 2010 Prius. It's hard to beat, as other manufacturers have found.
@gophur: Right, and note that Ford's hybrid system *IS* Toyota's HSD. All that talk about patent deals and technology sharing with Toyota is just a figleaf hiding the fact that Ford buys the transmission from Aisin (Toyota parts supplier) and are now going to build it under license. If you have evidence otherwise,…
@xequar: It's not as different as you make out, Toyota offers the (dated and outclassed Camry Hybrid), and will sell a plug-in Prius in 2012.
@Xander Crews: Those are fine cars, but they aren't nearly as fuel efficient as the Prius, and Toyota claims the C is better still.
@Ravey Mayvey Slurpee's current urge: V12 Volvo: It's hard to fit the battery pack in a smaller car that will give it decent range. Toyota says they'll sell an electric version of the tiny iQ in Europe in 2012, but its range is estimated at only 100 km (65 miles).
@Wagons Now!: No, the Prius is already a practical mid-size hatchback, and the Prius MPV is estimated to be a foot longer. If that really isn't big enough for you, there's the Toyota Highlander (an astounding 28 city mpg from the 2011 hybrid model) and then Detroit's SUVs...
@brandondrums: Most of the really efficient subcompact diesels in Europe have brake regen and stop-start, i.e. they're mild hybrids. Ask VW why they don't sell the Polo Bluemotion here. Mild hybrids are rare in the USA because the benefit doesn't show up in EPA mpg testing.
@tekdemon: I was looking for someone to point that out. Jalopnik covered the FT-CH a year ago in The Toyota FT-CH Hybrid: A Baby Prius That Doesn't Put Us To Sleep, so any "shock" is from lack of attention. Back then Sam Smith wrote "But as a package, it's a nice, thoroughly non-Venza piece of work."
@solomonrex: Turning it around, how come nobody else sells a SMALLER car that gets 50 EPA mpg? If you downsize to a Fiesta, Mini or a Smart, you suffer worse fuel economy.
@Xander Crews: Indeed, so where are the better looking, better driving mid-sized reliable cars from the rest of the industry that get 50 EPA mpg? They've had a decade to step up.
@Elhigh: I obviously didn't phrase it well, because the math demonstrates that continuing to drive an older car that gets poor mpg may well be an environmentally unsound practice. You'll be net ahead on energy and CO2 after ab0ut 60,000 - 90,000 miles of driving if you buy a dramatically more fuel-efficient car, and…