Gadgetory

the 2014 fusion energy is Ford's plug-in hybrid that means gets electricity straight from the grid to drive the wheels let's take a look at this car that's more hybrid than a hybrid the Ford Fusion is a good-looking and versatile sedan Ford offers it with four different engines a hybrid version and this the energy the plug-in hybrid version now with a hybrid you're recapturing kinetic energy and storing it in the battery to drive the wheels you're not burning up your brake pads you're actually creating electricity now with a plug-in hybrid you get all that but you also can plug this car into the grid overnight to charge up the battery here we have this port here this is a standard J 1772 port you can charge up the 7.6 kilowatt hour battery in this car takes about two and a half hours on a 240 volt outlet seven hours on a standard wall outlet now a full charge will get you 21 miles of pure electric range that's the EPA number it'll vary depending on your driving style that doesn't sound like much but it beats the range of the Toyota Prius plug-in and the Honda Accord plugin both come in about 13 miles now driving the front wheels is 818 horsepower electric motor we also have a gasoline engine a 2-liter four-cylinder gasoline engine that produces 141 horsepower 129 pound-feet of torque those two power sources when mixed together in this cars transmission get a total system output of 188 horsepower now that gets you according to the epa 100 miles per gallon equivalent that's just using the electric power source or when driving this car as a hybrid using the gasoline and electric motor that gets you about 42 miles per gallon average now in this 2014 Fusion Energi the myford touch interface comes standard we've seen this a lot in different Ford models different future models as well so this is a set of four quadrant paradigm here we have phone in the upper left we have navigation in that but right now that's an optional device we've got an SD card plugged into an SD port in the console that powers that we have climate control on the lower right and entertainment on the lower left that we got a navigation we get our map views I've noticed this this navigation system kind of fills up the map a little bit slowly else's traffic and it'll automatically avoid traffic problems so that's a pretty modern good system under entertainment we've got of course audio sources here we've got a lot of audio sources they're stacked up neatly along the left side here pretty easy to get to we got AM FM HD radio satellite radio still have a CD player in this counter that hasn't gone away yet we've got a USB port in the console here I've got my iPhone plugged into it right now and then go down we also have Bluetooth audio streaming and you could also use that SD card slot currently used for navigation for music as well now the phone has the usual functions here I've got a dial pad I can go straight to my contact lists and what's really good in the Ford cars in general and this Fusion Energi as well is the voice command system with voice command I can place any calls via my contact let's can just say call dad or something like that and it'll pull up the number for my contact list I can ask for music directly from anything plugged into the USB port so I can say play Led Zeppelin for example or in navigation I can enter an address is a single string that's all pretty good stuff everything here is mirrored on the right-hand screen in the instrument cluster and I control that by this d-pad here I can see my climate controls here and I can go up and see what's playing on music or I can go down to navigation and get my turn-by-turn directions if I have a route programmed into the system and I have a neat little thing because this is the fusion Energi I've got this little energy button here so this gets me some energy screens here this settings screen actually lets me program in a charge time so if I had this plugged in overnight I could say charged at 2:00 a.m. in the morning or something when electricity is cheaper even cooler than this though is on the left side of the instrument Custer I've got this pretty detailed screen which shows me a lot of information about how power is being used in the car I could also shift this around and see different things like a standard trip display different fuel economy display a lot of things going on here to monitor how the car is brought it's driving just like an electric car pretty good pickup seller inter feels good quiet moving forward and when I hit the brakes I can see this little display showing me that I'm recharging the battery and that's always a little bit gratifying because I'm gaining miles with that big battery pack that weighs quite a bit that actually adds 500 pounds compared to a standard gas engine toward fusion and I feel that in the suspension when I'm going around corners there's just a little more load on the suspension now when I run out of my electric range which I'm almost there dental one mile and the engine kicks in but I'm really impressed about is that power hand out adding the gasoline engine to the power mix is totally smooth I mean I haven't noticed really any change in the power response from the accelerator the power curve doesn't seem to change much at all the ride still remains comfortable this car does a good job of remaining feeling like a Ford Fusion so let's price out our 2014 Fusion Energi in SE trim the base price is thirty-five thousand five hundred twenty-five dollars with destination to do it up CNET style add navigation for seven hundred and ninety five dollars that's an SD card that plugs into the car driver assistance package goes for one thousand one hundred and forty dollars that includes blind spot and lane departure depth of cruise is another nine hundred and ninety five dollars the rear view camera is a cheap two hundred ninety five dollars that probably should have been standard but it'll be mandatory in 2016 that puts us at a total of thirty eight thousand seven hundred fifty dollars now plug-in hybrids are kind of odd vehicles they depend a lot on your working lifestyle but you have a commute of twenty miles or less you will spend asset in gas all week and then on the weekends for the longer trips you won't have range anxiety either with that gasoline in