Rolf-Dieter,
I've been driving it around town. It's great; the pure-electric mode won't last long, and if you take it on a highway, you'll drain the battery in a hurry. But, driving around town it's fine. There's no trunk to speak of, being consumed by hidden batteries, but for passengers this car is quite comfortable. Normal operation mode is "automatic"; the car decides when to use the battery, and when to turn on the engine. For the around town yesterday, I switched to pure electric just for fun. It's pretty amazing how the auto engineers have managed to provide the same feel in driving to a car with a totally different power train. This feels like a normal car; the Smart Electric, by contrast, felt like an extremely powerful golf cart, but it doesn't have an engine. My wife was second guessing herself about getting rid of the Taurus SHO, but she won't miss the $200+ monthly fuel bills. Gas is near to $4 a gallon here. We'll put about 15,000 miles per year on her Fusion Energi, and maybe close to 10K on the other.
Most of that Consumer Reports article is all common sense stuff. I've been telling people to use regular gas for a long time. On any car with a computer controlled engine management system (like the last 20 years or so?) shouldn't make a difference except in HP. If you plan on a run on a dyno, go ahead and fill with premium. I cannot believe, after just coming from a 1,500 mile road trip, how many people drive at full highway speed with the windows open! I couldn't stand the noise! (and yes I wear earplugs when I drive the Pagoda for extended highway runs!) I'd have to believe a trailer or one of those hitch-mount platforms is better than a roof rack!
Started making plans (that was the electrician) for installing the level 2 charge station; this will be a 220V charger which works in 2.5 hours instead of 7. There's a little bit of work involved there starting at the service entrance, but should be complete by the end of July.
