Ford Fusion EV/Hybrid (20 miles EV, 38 mpg gasoline/hybrid), using average commuters 50 mile per day round trip commute would get 65 mpg daily.
The Ford Fusion Energi is a nice car. It still doesn't go as far as it should. I doubt it actually sells as many units as even the Chevrolet Volt, which has a good bit more fully electric range, and still trails the Toyota Prius in overall range. Heck,
according to Inside EVs, they both trail the Tesla Model S in sales this year.
So hybrids can make a big contribution to the goal of reducing oil use.
Their contribution can and should be bigger. As it is, they just manage to improve modern vehicles, which are overweight and oversized, to the rough fuel economy that was possible in smaller vehicles two or three decades ago. 25 years ago it seemed that companies such as Honda were on a path to build cars with 70+ MPG within 10-to-15 years. Adding hybrid technology to those designs would have put those over 100 MPG. Instead, the techniques Honda used to build a Midsize car that simultaneously met the CARB Zero Harmful Emissions, EPA CAFE, and NHTSA Crash Test standards were all made illegal. The result is that unless you have a hybrid, or a dangerously small three wheeler vehicle
(AKA Weirdmobile), nothing with a gasoline motor has a hope of exceeding 50 MPG.
Increasing the EV capability of the hybrids will further reduce it so, for those who won't buy full EV for time/range issues, hybrids are a big help to meeting our national goals.
If someone were to build a Midsize plugin hybrid with a real, usable 100 mile fully electric range, and a 15 gallon fuel tank, all would be well. No one does it because they know it would outsell everything else on the planet. And, as is always the case, once anyone gets a car with any fully electric range, all they want is
MORE fully electric range.
Increasing and extending the tax credit form of subsidy is something we should do.
Dude. Still
NOT a subsidy.
Doing it similar to earned income tax credit for lower income people is a good idea also.
There were 18 traditional automobile manufacturers that sold at least 300,000 units in the United States during 2015. That is well over 5.4 million cars, and nearly 17.5 million new vehicles were sold that year. Yet not even 1% of that amount, 116,099 cars
(or 0.66%), were plugins of any type. And if you count only the fully electric vehicles, it is well under that amount.
So, how's this for an idea... Those companies that are actually building a substantial number of electric vehicles, anything over 5% of their fleet... Get to extend their eligible vehicle count by the number of plugins that each other company falls below 5% each year. That way, you know the program has worked when only a minority of manufacturers is below 5%.
So, for instance... The Chrysler Brand moved 324,846 vehicles last year. If maybe 0.6% of those were EVs, that would come to 1,949 compliance cars... If they had built 5% of their cars as fully electric/plugin hybrid, that would have been 16,242 cars. That is a difference of 14,293 cars. Since Tesla Motors is the only company that offered more than 5% of their cars as plugins, they would be allowed to have 14,293 of the cars they sold in the US to --
NOT -- count toward the 200,000 limit per manufacturer. Heck, even if the cutoff were only 1% or 2%, it would effectively extend Tesla's eligibility by a wide margin. Naturally, as each company met the threshold, the pool of
'extra' eligible cars would be diminished, split between those that met the mark.