Michael, isn`t this cheating? - or are there degrees of cheating?
Well, George, yes--there are different degrees of cheating, of course! If you get $1.00 extra in change at a restaurant and don't report it, you've cheated the restaurant. If your broker is engaged in an elaborate fraud in which he takes a $1,000,000 from you or any number of people, that's more substantial so of course there are degrees...
But you are talking about Ford, and I surely don't think there was any intent to defraud the EPA (it was their mandated testing) or customers. Here's the story on that. The window sticker, or "Monroney" as it is called, must contain the EPA mileage ratings, and the usual source of these ratings is the EPA mileage test that is done under very standardized conditions, in a laboratory/dynamometer, and off the streets. On PEVs, this mileage rating can be vastly different, and with two cars, and a full year of experience with both, I can tell you that the mileage is
wildly different depending on temperature, and the driver's use of climate control. Batteries must be heated in the cold weather; the use of A/C in the summer and heat in the winter affects the mileage in a measure not seen in traditional fuel vehicles. At a full charge, and 68 degrees ambient temperature, with no climate control in use, my range on the Ford Fusion Energy PEV is 18-22 miles. That will drop to as low as 10 by use of climate control, or if the temperature goes up or down. The car does not like it cold, nor hot. That's the reality of a battery--and I don't think this is peculiar to Ford. Heating and cooling take a lot of energy, and that comes from the same source as the motive power.
Now--onto the sticker. Ford's Monroney for the Fusion Energi (that's the two cars I have, others are included) reflected the EPA testing procedure. However for the reasons noted in the paragraph above, real world conditions were somewhat less. This generated complaints, which had Ford re-visiting the test procedure and process. Ford revised the sticker, and it wasn't by a whole lot: in my case, the sticker on one car went from 43mpg/100MPGe/21 mile range down to 38/88/19. Lease customers received a $525 payment; those who bought the cars received an $850 payment. Details were covered on the press release; pay particular attention to the engineering detail about TRLHP and the wind tunnel. Note also that they didn't revise conventional fueled vehicle ratings as these were unaffected by the engineering models. The PEVs and EVs require different standards to come close to reality.
https://social.ford.com/wp-content/docs/fe_press_release.pdfNote that by the time we got our second car, the Monroney had been regenerated with the latter set of numbers--and thus no goodwill payment. We didn't complain, nor did we sign any paperwork, or fill out any forms. They sent a check to the dealer who turned around and sent the money to us. That simple. We were not complaining since there was a spectacular lease deal in the first place--about half the cost of a gas power model--and all this stuff about mileage ratings wasn't going to affect our lease. It was just too good to pass up.
By the way, for what its worth, our combined mileage ratings on these cars according to the built in computer is in the 83-85 range. When on electricity alone, it is 100MPGe+; when on gas alone as on a long trip, about 38mpg...but the boot has barely enough room for groceries let alone something as simple as a bag of golf clubs. It's all batteries!
Another interesting article:
http://europe.autonews.com/article/20150927/ANE/150929837/bosch-warned-vw-about-illegal-software-use-in-diesel-cars-report-says
