The greenest member of the automaker's midsize sedan family, the 2013 Ford Fusion Energi has now begun rolling into the automaker's 900+ EV-certified showrooms. It offers the most fuel-efficient take to date of the automaker's smartly styled midsize sedan, but like all plug-in players, that frugality does come at both a price and a cost. A recent encounter with a top-line Titanium-spec version provided some insight regarding the plusses and minuses involved in making one your daily driver.
A view from the curb
If you like the look of the basic 2013 Ford Fusion, you'll feel right at home in the new Energi variant. Save for unique alloy wheels and an external charge port, there's little visible exterior differentiation. Like the Hybrid, it too boasts active grille shutters and full underbody fairings that enhance its wind-cheating prowess. Inside, only subtle tweaks set the Energi apart from a standard Fusion. The most prominent differences are its Hybrid-style dedicated dash display that provides information on various battery usage/regenerative aspects of the system, plus mode buttons on the console that allow a driver to select how and when the gas/electric power sources will be used.
The power within
The Fusion Energi is fitted with the same drivetrain found in Ford's C-MAX Energi crossover: a naturally aspirated 141-horsepower/2.0-liter 4-cylinder Atkinson cycle gasoline engine teamed with the automaker's PowerSplit eCVT automatic transmission that incorporates a 118-horsepower electric motor/generator system. Like the C-MAX, this combo develops 188 horsepower in sustained mode or 195 ponies in deplete mode when you start out with a fully charged battery pack and can propel the car using either or both power sources. As for torque, the engine makes 129 lb-ft while the traction motor/generator develops 117 lb-ft.
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