Ford C-Max Prepped To Take On The Prius

At its corporate headquarters in Dearborn, MI, the Ford Motor Company announced on June 9 that it would introduce its C-Max small crossover vehicle in 2012 as the foundation of a dedicated line of parallel hybrid and plug-in hybrid vehicles. The strategy closely resembles that of the Toyota Prius, the hybrid sedan that soon will be offered also as a plug-in hybrid, as well as in a wagon body style and potentially a compact hatchback.

The C-Max line will feature vehicles that are slightly larger than the Prius. They offer two rows of seating, for up to five passengers. Sales of a three-row, seven-passenger C-Max, which runs on gas only, will now be restricted to Europe. This marks a change in Ford's original plans for the C-Max line, which had called for the larger C-Max to be imported to the American market.

The C-Max gas-electric hybrid vehicle will be built for the North American market at the automaker's plant in Wayne, MI., along with the plug-in hybrid version, which is called the C-Max Energi. Both cars will receive lithium-ion batteries produced at the automaker's plant in Rawsonville, MI.

"The target is for fuel economy leadership," Mark Schirmer, a spokesman, said without divulging specific miles-per-gallon figures. "It will get better mileage than our current hybrid mileage leader, the Ford Fusion, which gets 41 m.p.g," he said.

When the company introduced the C-Max to American consumers at the Detroit auto show in January, the vehicle was expected to be available with a 2.5-liter 4-cylinder engine or Ford's 1.6-liter EcoBoost 4-cylinder. With the company committing exclusively to the hybrid and plug-in hybrid versions of the C-Max for the United States, it is not known whether American customers still will be offered a choice of engines.

"EcoBoost is in and of itself a pretty expensive technology, and we haven't confirmed combining that with the hybrid package," Schirmer said. A third vehicle, whose specs have not been announced yet, will be introduced soon, the brand said.

Ford sells about 35,000 hybrid vehicles in North America every year, Schirmer said. The goal is to triple that number by 2013 to 100,000.

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