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Ford Motor Company has unveiled
a hydrogen-fuel cell,
battery-powered plug-in vehicle
at the 2007 Washington Auto
Show.
And this vehicle is no
pie-in-the-sky concept car -
it's a Ford Edge that's
currently being driven on
Michigan roads as a test vehicle
for exploring alternative
powertrains.
Unveiling the hybrid Edge in
Washington, D.C., helps Ford
showcase the vehicle and its
technology in front of leading
government officials and
legislators, an important
audience as Congress begins
working under new leadership.
Developed under contract from
the U.S. Department of Energy,
the plug-in hybrid Edge is being
used to demonstrate the
reliability, lifetime, range and
freezing-weather operating
performance of such a vehicle.
The Edge is powered by the
HySeries Drive™, a
hybrid-electric propulsion
system that uses the fuel-cell
power unit as a charger for the
336-volt lithium-ion battery
pack.
The vehicle operates in
battery-only mode for the first
25 miles at speeds of up to 85
mph. When the battery is
depleted to 40 percent of its
charge, the fuel cell
automatically kicks in to
recharge the battery, giving the
car a range of 225 miles.
The technology gives the vehicle
the equivalent of a combined
city/highway fuel economy rating
of 41 mpg. The vehicle's battery
pack can also be recharged
overnight by plugging it into a
standard electrical outlet.
"We wanted to take what was in a
'gee whiz' vehicle like the
Airstream and connect it with
something people are driving on
the road today, something that
wasn't just a futuristic concept
vehicle," he said.
For those who do get inside and
buckle up, the most obvious
difference between the hybrid
and a regular production Edge is
the hybrid's bigger center
tunnel between the seats. The
slightly-larger tunnel houses
the vehicle's protected hydrogen
tank.
In the future, Staley said he
hopes such hybrids would be
designed to be built on common
assembly lines with regular and
alternative powerplants being
added as easily as other
components.
Concept Car
Achieve
Audi Q7
Hybrid
Citroen C-Métisse Hybrid
Hummer H3 FlexFuel
Lexus LF-A
Mercedes Bionic
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