Detroit auto show has electric atmosphere

Ford, meanwhile, applied an electric-heavy design to its new Fusion hybrid, which the automaker is showing this year in Detroit. The car is aimed to compete more directly against the Toyota’s Camry hybrid rather than the Prius.

The hybrid Focus features a 2.5-liter four-cylinder engine designed to give the car muscle on the highway, but its city-centric electric drive system is so efficient that its regenerative braking system recovers 94 percent of available energy, according to Praveen Cherian, Ford’s hybrid project leader.

As a result, Ford claims the Fusion hybrid can go more than 700 miles on a tank of gas in city driving conditions.

Why is the Fusion hybrid’s drive system so efficient? It’s critical to size the hardware correctly, said Cherian. With the right hardware in place, software programmers spend countless late nights perfecting its operation.

“It comes down to calibration smarts,” he explained. “With all of these power conversions and losses, the [companies] who succeed are the ones that minimize the losses.”

Hybrid technology might not be here forever. It is a “bridge” technology meant to help consumers move from gasoline to electric power in a world where there is no electric infrastructure yet in place, said Smith of Edmunds.com.

“How long that bridge will be remains to be seen,” he added.

Ultimately, pure battery-run electric cars and fuel cell cars should displace hybrids, once the necessary infrastructures are in place to support them, Smith said. Ford announced plans to sell a pure battery electric van to commercial customers in 2011, and it promises to offer a car to retail consumers in 2012.

However, electric vehicles running on batteries will be marginal for some time because of limited range and opportunities to recharge them.

Tesla showed its battery-powered roadster in Detroit, but it costs just over $100,000 so is not a practical solution for the near future. Exotic carmaker Fisker Automotive and two Chinese car manufacturers — Brilliance and BYD — also showed electric cars that seem unlikely to have a dramatic effect on mainstream consumers. 

Even Chrysler resorted to offering some solutions that are not terribly practical, showing an all-electric two-seater based on the same Lotus platform as the Tesla. For now, it seems, car consumers must still dream of a future unshackled from the vagaries of gas prices.

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