The new Ford Fusion Energi plug-in hybrid boasts 108 MPGe (miles per gallon of gas equivalent). Impressive. But what is equally impressive in this little car is the big data. 25 Gigabytes of data hourly, to be exact.
According to TorqueNews, Aaron Turpen reported that the car “has more than 145 actuators, 4,716 signals, and 74 sensors to monitor the perimeter around the car as well as the car’s functions and driver responses. These sensors produce more than 25 gigabytes of data hourly from more than 70 on-board computers that analyze it in real-time.”
Mr. Turpen interviewed Chief Technology Officer Paul Mascarenas at Ford about what’s to come in this new era of hybrid. Ford is looking at sensors, machine learning, and big data as the future. You wouldn’t expect that your car would be connected to the cloud (as in cloud computing), but that’s what Ford is working on next. Ford SYNC and similar technologies will make greater connectivity possible. Perhaps we’ll see Google using the Ford Fusion Energi in its next wave of driverless cars.
Ford claims that customers can save as much as $ 6850 in fuel costs over five years. The company predicted that it would sell over 19,000 hybrid and electric vehicles during Q4 2012 making it the best quarter for hybrids ever. However, the company has not confirmed those estimates yet.
Read more: TJ McCue, Forbes
