Ford is diving into the burgeoning social media world head first. Based on the success of its Fiesta Movement, the Blue Oval has decided to launch a new program called Fusion 41 – so named because of the Fusion Hybrid's 41 mile-per-gallon EPA estimate in the city and the fact that Ford is looking for 41 participants to take part in its new game.
A total of eight Fusion or Fusion Hybrid owners will be chosen from all applicants received based on their social media presence, and those drivers will each choose four friends or family members to join their team. Ford will then hand out assignments that must be completed with photo and video proof that is to be uploaded to the driver's Facebook profile. Ford is calling the program an "automotive relay race," whatever that means.
So, what's the incentive to participate? For starters, each team will be given a new Fusion for the challenge, and the winning team captain will have their own Fusion or Fusion Hybrid paid off by Ford. Not bad, eh? Plus, participating team members from the winning group will earn free gas for one full year. Want to know more? Click past the break for the press release and visit www.fusion41.com before November 6th to enter the contest.
There's no doubt about which automaker leads the hybrid vehicle race. Toyota – and particularly the Japanese automaker's Prius hybrid – outsells all other manufacturers combined. In total, Automotive News calculates that Toyota sold 144,351 hybrid vehicles in the first nine months of 2009, which actually represents a 28-percent drop from the previous year.
So far this year, Honda has come in second with its new Insight, but that position is currently in jeopardy. The 26,016 hybrid vehicles sold by Ford in the first nine months of the year represents an impressive 73-percent gain from last year. Honda has sold 29,958 hybrids so far in '09, representing a much smaller eight-percent increase. In both July and September, Ford actually sold more hybrids than Honda.
In other words, Ford, led by its Escape Hybrid and new-for-2010 Fusion Hybrid, is gaining on Honda at a very rapid pace. Moving on down the line, General Motors slots in at number four with 12,556 total hybrid so far this year and Nissan's 7,713 units make it the number five hybrid seller in the U.S.
![Act silly, get a Ford Fusion Hybrid [w/VIDEO]](http://www.niot.net/blog-images/act-silly-get-a-ford-fusion-hybrid-w-video.jpg)
Ford has already demonstrated strong, puppetmaster-like abilities with the whole Fiesta Agent thing. In exchange for agreeing to go on secretive "missions," a few dozen people were given a Ford Fiesta for six months this year (they're about due to give them back). Building from of that idea, comedian Mark Malkoff – yes, the guy who slept in an IKEA store for a week – is trying to collect the "Keys to the City" from as many cities as possible this month. Malkoff has convinced Ford to loan him a new Fusion hybrid while he travels around and performs a few stunts to earn those keys – including collecting all of the coins from a fountain in Fairfax, VA and cleaning up after the police horses in Harrisburg, PA.
Ford is feeling pretty good about its products right now, and the Blue Oval is spreading the word by doubling down with a multitude of new ads for print, web and TV. Ford's newest ads feature real Ford owners talking about features they like in their new vehicles. The 15-second spots highlight the company's new technologies featured in much of its 2009 and 2010 lineup including SYNC, Travel Link and even the second row refrigerator in the Ford Flex.
Hit the jump to watch Paul, Becky, Hayley, Kristen, Jonathon, Amie and Adam talk about their favorite new features. We're thinking it's a little annoying that everyone in the commercial is under 30 and Ford found it necessary to use the lame shaky camera bit to give the quick ads that viral YouTube look, but that seems to be all the rage these days. On the bright side, Becky loves her Fusion Hybrid so much that she can't help but mumble at the end.
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Recently, we had our third opportunity to drive the 2010 Ford Fusion Hybrid. Actually, the last go around was with a Mercury Milan Hybrid, but aside from a different nose and fanny, it is the same car. Even though we did a full review of the Milan, we asked Ford for another go around because of the difference in fuel efficiency compared to the first drive we did last December in California. We managed to achieve 43.1 mpg driving around Hollywood, beating the EPA city rating of 41. But back home in Michigan, a week of driving around Ann Arbor yielded only 29.4 mpg with the first several days actually barely managing to crack 27 mpg.
Why the big drop? It wasn't that we drove the Milan like a race car, although the Fusion and Milan do have some very nice dynamic properties. No, this was all about climate. While the temperatures in Hollywood were a very temperate mid-70s in December, six weeks later in Michigan, we were barely breaking out of the teens with overnight and early morning temps in the single-digit range. What we're about to say is heresy to the hybrid true believers, but hybrids are not the best solution for every driving condition.
When applicants were first being interviewed to replace Bill Ford as the top man in the Blue Oval Office, we wonder what exactly the process included. It turns out that in addition to being a pretty good salesman, Alan Mulally is also adept at making house calls. The FoMoCo CEO personally phoned Michael Snapper, a lawyer hailing from Grand Rapids, Michigan, to thank him for purchasing a Ford Fusion Hybrid over a Toyota Prius. To put this into perspective, could you imagine getting a personal call from Honda's Takeo Fukui, personally thanking you for purchasing a Honda over a Harley? Or from Steve Jobs, congratulating you for choosing an iPod in lieu of a Zune? Ridiculous, no? If this seems like nothing more than a publicity stunt, well, it's exactly that. Regardless, Ford is a company that can use all the positive pub it can get right now, and a phone call from the very top of the company symbolically sets an example that customer service is among the highest of priorities for the automaker – from the top down.
In the market for a fuel-sipping mid-size sedan? Now, and for a limited time only, buyers of the 2010 Ford Fusion Hybrid will be eligible for the $3,400 federal tax credit for hybrid vehicles. Late last year, Ford hit the magic 60,000 limit on individual hybrid sales that's been imposed by the Feds, so the tax credit for all of the Blue Oval's hybrid machines will be halved beginning on April 1st. Beginning in October, the credit will again be cut in half to $850 and the entire amount will be gone starting January 1st of 2010. Tax credit or not, the 2010 Fusion Hybrid's EPA rating of 41 mpg city and 36 mpg highway bests the Toyota Camry Hybrid by a whopping eight mpg in the city and two mpg on the highway. For what it's worth, hybrid tax credits for Toyota (and Honda, for that matter) have already expired.
Despite all the clamor about how hybrids are going to save the planet, cure cancer, facilitate the second coming, etc., sales of battery-pack-mobiles are down nearly ten percent for 2008. At the beginning of 2008, it looked like hybrids were going to have their best year ever, driven by high fuel prices and a recessive economy. That recession, however,has caused consumers to cut way back, leading to dramatic drop in fuel prices, killing much of the argument for a hybrid's price premium. Consumers shy away from hybrids when fuel dips below $3.50 per gallon, and the incessant clang of news stories about expensive fuel also dries up, causing the issue of fuel efficiency to fall from consciousness. Toyota is still the hybrid sales king, with 241,000 units shifted in 2008. Honda managed to ring up 31,000 sales, and Ford came in third with nearly 20,000 vehicles sold. While nearly every automaker offering hybrids is down (Nissan actually saw a 5 percent increase, and General Motors garnered a whopping 179 percent jump thanks to its 2008 introductions), Ford was hardest hit, with a 22 percent drop. Some might say "we told you so" about the way things have played out - by the time everyone got on board with more efficient offerings, the bottom has fallen out of the price of fuel - and others might use the sales figures to agitate for a gas tax to stimulate the purchase of fuel efficient vehicles.
Sure, the 2010 Ford Fusion Hybrid may have a base price that's more expensive than a Toyota Camry Hybrid ($27,270 vs. $26,150), but you get oh so much more. Aside from more interesting styling and a trick LCD display called SmartGauge, Ford Fusion Hybrid owners will be able to travel 41 miles in the city for every gallon of gas they use. So says the Environmental Protection Agency, which has finally released official fuel economy numbers for Ford's most miserly vehicle. The 2010 Fusion Hybrid's official rating of 41 mpg city and 36 mpg highway bests the Toyota Camry Hybrid by 8 mpg and 2 mpg, respectively. Ford points out that it even beats the smaller Honda Civic Hybrid by 1 mpg in the city. Credit goes to Ford and its engineers who developed the Fusion Hybrid's new hybrid drivetrain, which is based on the same one used in the Ford Escape Hybrid but features many advances like smaller and lighter nickel-metal hydride batteries and the ability to run up to 47 mph on electric power alone. That last ability alone raises the bar substantially for hybrids and puts the Fusion Hybrid in a class of its own... for now. The next-generation Toyota Prius will debut in January at the 2009 Detroit Auto Show, and we expect the Toyota Camry Hybrid to benefit greatly from adopting its new Synergy Drive hybrid drivetrain.
Last month at the LA Auto Show, Ford finally took the wraps off its refreshed 2010 Fusion and this week we returned to LA to actually drive it. For a car meant to compete in the heart of the highest volume segment in the U.S. market, Ford chose a rather surprising way to show it off. This is after all a segment long dominated by cars that typically have more in common with a Kenmore refrigerator than a Corvette.
We kicked off the festivities with a mileage challenge through downtown Beverly Hills and Hollywood in the Fusion Hybrid, but then things got really interesting. The Toyota Camry and Honda Accord have seemingly been the top selling cars in America since they supplanted the Model T early in the last century. After a similar number of decades of soulless, unattractive and unreliable alternatives, U.S. automakers have been battling back in recent years with mixed success. Since the Fusion debuted in 2006, it has earned a reputation of being among the most fun to drive offerings in the segment, as well as having quality on par with the Japanese brands. For 2010, the crew in Dearborn have focused on enhancing what was already good and getting best in class in efficiency with more style. Read on to find out if they succeeded.
