I had a good laugh when one of our grand nephews noticed a black xB and asked whether that was a hearse for midgets.
Oh, Alfred--that's priceless!
On the subject of brick-like cars, and jelly bean cars that all look the same, thinking about it this is NOT a new phenomena. Just go back to the 70s, with the predecessor of today's Golf--the Rabbit. A lot of cars adapted this 2-box styling including the Plymouth Horizon, and others that started using I4 transverse front drive engines. These however were not new; Giugaro adopted this style from the original Mini, and later 1200 series Austin/Morris platforms. Going back to the 50s there were plenty of bulbous cars that looked similar, and in the 30s, many cars in a certain body style had very similar styles. There's always been the outliers, of course, and I suppose that's what makes life fun.
We picked up the PEV Fusion on Tuesday. Took it for its first longish drive yesterday, about 50 miles round trip. The first 15 miles or so was running on pure electricity, and was something well over 100 MPGe. When the gas kicked in, in regular hybrid mode, eMPG plummeted of course, but the total trip yielded MPGe of 66. The economics are prettying compelling. There's a significant capital cost reduction due to the good deal we got on this, and the reduction in fuel usage only adds to that. When I fill up my "brick" of a Flex, its about $55 now; it gets 17-19 MPG around town, and maybe 22-24 on the highway…when the Fusion gets put into regular use by our daughter to school next year, there will be very little gas used due to the short trips she'll be taking. On the minus side, half the trunk is gone, as this started life as a regular car and they needed some place to put the batteries. On the plus side, this began life and is much like a regular car...
Like a Nissan Leaf; Prius, or even a Smart Electric, there is a boatload of technology in front of the driver, things like a calculator to tell you braking efficiency. Fast braking will yield maybe 50% energy return to the battery. Slow and gentle, I got between 90-100%. These kinds of cues help you maximize your MPGe. Battery drain, gas usage, all of these things are on various digital gauges. The dealer has a two-person tech team (they are, not surprisingly, geeky 20 somethings who know and love all of this) to teach all the fundamentals, if you so choose.
We've got a bit to learn on it yet, which I'll start by reading the manual! Then, have to figure out the best location for the 240VAC Level 2 charge station...
