Ford working on F150 hybrid

Hannibal wrote:

valhalla360 wrote:
You need to clarify Hybrid vs Plug In Hybrid

They are much different animals.
- A standard hybrid, still has a relatively small battery and typically pulls power for a few seconds at a time before quickly being recharged.
- A plug in hybrid, will pull more power and for much longer durations, so it needs a bigger battery bank and will spend more time drawn down.

My non plug-in Prius will run about 1.5-2.0 miles at 30~mph on battery with the engine off. It will sit with the a/c on and radio playing for a long time before starting the engine to recharge. Some hybrids run the engine any time the car is "on" and use the battery to assist the gas engine. At traffic lights, mine shuts off while decelerating and will stay off until I accelerate again. Coasting and decelerating also recharges through dynamic braking. Some short trips report over 100mpg while other short trips report 35~mpg depending on state of charge when I start it. The hybrid battery won't charge over 80% nor under 20% for longevity. It lives a relatively easy life.

Very cool. Thanks for posting. The Prius is always on our list for when the time comes to replace the smart cars. We haven'tneeded four seats for awhile but one of our two vehicles will probably have 4 seats next time around. The smart cars are going on 10 years old and show no signs of giving up so it will be awhile but when the time comes the plug in Prius is one of the cars on the list along with the leaf. Meantime we'll just keep running the little smart diesels. Hard to argue with 60ish mpg combined.