The Ford Fusion Energi. Credit: Ford

Ford unveiled its new Fusion Energi plug-in hybrid at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit this week. It didn't say much about the car, except that it will get something like 100 miles per gallon equivalent (MPGe), which is better than the Chevrolet Volt or the upcoming Toyota Prius plug-in, and that it will go on sale toward the end of this year.

Of course, 100 miles per gallon equivalent sounds impressive. Unfortunately, the MPGe figure is not very meaningful. It's useful as a way of comparing the efficiency of cars when they are operating in electric mode, but for a plug-in hybrid, which can run part time on gasoline, it doesn't tell drivers what they really want to know: how much gas the car will use and how much it will cost to operate.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency definition, MPGe is meant to describe the efficiency of the vehicle when operating using electricity alone, which in a plug-in hybrid is typically only a relatively short range—the Chevrolet Volt can go about 35 miles on the electricity stored in its battery. MPGe refers to how many miles the car can go on an amount of electricity equivalent to a gallon of gasoline.

Based on the figure of 100 MPGe, we know that the Fusion Energi will be slightly more efficient in electric mode than the Volt (93 MPGe) and the all-electric Leaf (99 MPGe).

But drivers need to know how far the car can go on electricity and under what conditions the gas engine will come on, to figure out how much gas they'd use. The Chevrolet Volt can go 35 miles on battery power before using the gas engine. The upcoming Toyota plug-in Prius will only get about a dozen miles on a charge. If your commute is 30 miles round trip, you could get away without using any gasoline with the Volt, but not with the Prius. If your commute is much longer than the Volt electric range, you may want to consider the Prius, which gets 49 miles per gallon after the electricity is gone, rather than 37 miles per gallon for the Volt.

So we don't know how far the Fusion Energi will go on battery power. We don't even know if it will be able to achieve highway speeds on electricity alone. And there's no way for drivers to know how much gas it would use, or whether it would make more or less sense to buy than its competitors.

GM Volt Ranks 13th Among Green Vehicles

There are 12 cars being sold today that are better for the environment than GM's Volt, a much-touted electric car with a 40-mile electric range and a gas engine for longer trips. The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy put the Honda Civic GX, which is powered by natural gas, at the top of its list of the greenest cars of 2011. Not surprisingly, hybrids such as the Toyota Prius and Nissan's electric Leaf also ranked high (the Leaf ranked second). But small, gasoline powered cars, such as the Honda Insight and the Chevrolet Cruze (which costs half as much as the Volt) also did better than the Volt. From the New York Times:

In fact, seven of the vehicles on the list use only gasoline engines.

How can this be? The council uses a novel, holistic method of calculating the slippery notion of greenness, one that expands on the fuel-efficiency and tailpipe-emissions considerations made by the Environmental Protection Agency.

The criteria include emissions from power plants used to charge vehicles and energy used to make the cars.

To Make EVs Affordable, Lease the Battery

Electric vehicles are either very expensive (think Tesla Roadster) or have a short range (think Nissan Leaf, which isn't exactly cheap) because batteries are expensive. It will take years to drive down costs. Meanwhile, a new report suggests that cutting the battery out of the car price tag could make EVs more attractive. From Earth2Tech:

The solution, Accenture suggests, is "disaggregating" battery costs from the car, usually via leasing either the car or the battery itself. Not only would that bring down vehicle costs, but it would help deal with thorny warranty issues, given EV batteries will likely end up having a lifespan of 10 years or less.

Automakers would have to arrange those battery financing terms on their own, or they could partner with a player like Better Place, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based startup with plans for developing battery swapping stations around the world.

Joule Unlimited Says it Can Make 15,000 Gallons of Fuel on an Acre of Land

A biofuel company has published a paper in which it claims its technology can produce 5 to 50 times more fuel per acre than other biofuels processes. Green Car Congress summarizes:

Joule's process, called Helioculture, combines an engineered cyanobacterial organism supplemented with a product pathway and secretion system to produce and secrete a fungible alkane diesel product continuously in a SolarConverter designed to efficiently and economically collect and convert photonic energy. The process is closed and uses industrial waste CO₂ at concentrations 50-100 times higher than atmospheric.

The plug-in Prius. Credit: NAIAS

Nissan and GM have been at the center of attention when it comes to electric vehicles, with the first sales of the Chevrolet Volt and Nissan Leaf last month, but now Ford and Toyota are weighing in.

At the Consumer Electronics Show last week and the North American International Auto Show in Detroit this week, Ford has officially unveiled the electric Ford Focus, which will go on sale late this year, along with new hybrid and plug-in hybrid vehicles, which will go on sale next year. The plug-in hybrid will travel farther than a conventional hybrid under electric power alone, but Ford isn't saying how far.

In Detroit Toyota revealed its plans for a family of Prius hybrid vehicles, which includes a plug-in version of the car (due next year), a larger version of the Prius (Prius v, on sale later this year) and a smaller one (Prius c concept).

Toyota's plan to stick with the successful Prius platform could be wise, as we argue here. These cars (including the plug-in version) use smaller batteries than the Leaf or the Volt, which makes them cheaper.

BYD, the Chinese automaker made famous by an investment from Warren Buffet, says it plans to start selling electric cars in the United States next year, after failing to deliver on a promise to sell the vehicle last year.