Gadgetory


All Cool Mind-blowing Gadgets You Love in One Place

2013 Ford C-Max Energi First Look

2011-12-16
like Roman here for TechnoBuffalo I'm with John Davis he is the chief c-max engineer for Ford and John you're gonna run through the c-max Energi and what is it specifically about the energy that is different from the hybrid model sure what the c-max Energi does is our first production plug-in hybrid we basically use a lithium ion battery that has greater storage capacity therefore greater energy so we begin to blend the capabilities of a full electric vehicle with a traditional hybrid and get that best of both worlds so that we don't have the range limitations that a true electric has and then as soon as we get to a depletion level on the battery now we go into full hybrid mode of course that's done seamlessly now what are we talking about for a driving range so we haven't released the final specifications for that yet but what I can't tell you is it will be greater than the Toyota Prius plug-in hybrid that they've recently launched and we expect in terms of overall fuel efficiency that our miles per gallon equivalent or mpge that you've heard of will be better than both the Chevy Volt and the Toyota Prius plug-in can we talk about the battery that is its lithium-ion what type of lithium-ion batteries now there are different flavors of them yeah I would probably turn you over to one of our cell experts in that but basically it's a multi-celled configuration we actually assemble it in-house both for the c-max hybrid and the c-max Energi and the real difference between them are the number of cells and the amount of cell energy storage that we can utilize the other thing that's unique for the c-max Energi is it has its own onboard charger it's actually packaged within the overall battery assembly so it's within that steel casing that Derrick mentioned earlier and of course all of that is housed within additional high-strength steel shielding or for safety purposes you also have some other technologies regenerative braking and there's also an exhaust heat system works and how do both of those work so in a normal car you'd press on your brakes and two things would happen your car would slow down and you'd basically be creating Heat in the case of the hybrids both the c-max Energi and the c-max hybrid we're utilizing the propulsion system and the transmission to help slow down that vehicle and it's actually providing the mechanism to recover the energy and basically work as an alternator or generator to charge that battery up while you're slowing the vehicle that's what makes hybrids particularly so effective in city cycles right do you do a lot of braking a lot of stop and go effort the other item you asked about was the engine heat recovery we're doing that from the standpoint of being able to pair a heat off of the exhaust manifold we utilize that as a part of a fast warmup cycle it's more efficient for us to heat up the emission system so that we can get to the right emissions control and part of our neighbor to do that is to use the engine heat from the exhaust to warm it up faster so we haven't announced final pricing what we said is obviously these vehicles in their space will be very competitive in terms of the c-max hybrid it'll be our most affordable hybrid we'd ever believe it reproduce so I've been talking with John Davis chief engineer of the c-max the rumored Prius killer but that's off the record all right so this is my chrome from TechnoBuffalo thanks for tuning it
We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.