Zoomi Life

Unimpressed with the marketing blitz of Honda and Toyota’s hypermiling challenges, Ford set out to hold one of its own.  The 2010 Ford Fusion Hybrid issued a 1,000 mile challenge.  While I’m a big fan of the Insight and the great mileage it showed in real-world demonstrations, their hypermiling challenge was as rigged as the Toyota one was.  Ford, on the other hand, seems to have been serious about making it realistic.

The challenge included city driving, highway driving, hills, etc. in and around Washington, D.C. and Virginia.  Over thirty traffic lights, and a total of just over 1,000 miles in circuit, the challenge was to take the Fusion hybrid as far as possible on one tank.

A team made up of NASCAR’s Carl Edwards, Wayne Gerdes, and some engineers took the challenge seriously and used several eco-driving techniques (accelerating smoothly, anticipating signals, etc.) and got a total of 1,445.7 miles for their efforts.  All on one tank of gas (about 17 gallons).  That worked out to 81.5mpg!

Pretty impressive.  With those numbers, I would think that the average driver should be able to achieve 60+ in this car.  Watch the video below for a short look at the challenge:

Source: Ford