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Ford Green Zone works magic with GPS to make your drive smarter, cleaner

For the most part, plug-in hybrids rely on the power stored in the battery until that charge is depleted. Unless the switch can be changed manually, it's only then that the cars fire up the internal combustion engine and begin using the fossil fuels on board. This is ideal, of course, when one's drive isn't long enough that the car needs to start sipping gasoline at all. On longer commutes, when it's certain that the route is longer than the car's all-electric range, this isn't necessarily the most efficient use of energy. Ford's Green Zone system is designed to save some of that juice for the parts of the drive that require slower speeds. Ford is working on a smart system, based on Nokia mapping technology, that uses GPS data to use both the electricity and conventional fuel more efficiently. Since battery power is less efficient at highway speeds, Ford's Green Zone system is designed to save some of that juice for the parts of the drive that require slower speeds, rather than just using up all the electrons right at the beginning of the drive. Using a website or the in-car navigation system, the driver can pinpoint the parts of the route, highlighted in green, where using battery power would be more effective, and set the car to automatically switch to electricity for those sections. Depending on the route, the car could automatically switch back and forth between the two power sources multiple times, particularly if the drive is a mix between city and highway driving. Of course, Green Zone will be go beyond that. The program is being developed to take traffic and road grade into account, details that allow the car to be make even smarter choices to improve efficiency. Ford even hopes to have Green Zone learn driver habits, and respond accordingly depending on who is driving the car. The system could control other features as well, such as anticipating corners and shifting the headlights to better illuminate the road ahead. Green Zone could also potentially use information from vehicle-to-vehicle networking to control functions in the car. The Green Zone system still has a few years before it will be ready to be put into production vehicles, but Ford is confident it will make its way onto the road eventually. As with other innovations that improve efficiency and make our vehicles smarter, we can expect to see similar technology from other manufacturers, until it becomes a regular part of driving in the future.

NHTSA closes Ford F-150 EcoBoost acceleration probe

Typically when we report on the findings of an investigation from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, it's because the government body has discovered a safety issue and prescribed a recall. In this case, however, NHTSA has closed an investigation into a reported performance deficit without ever getting to the recall stage.
The issue revolves around the Ford F-150 - specifically those equipped with the 3.5-liter EcoBoost engine - of which some 360,000 were built in the 2011, 2012 and 2013 model years. After receiving an initial 95 complaints, NHTSA opened an investigation last May - almost a year ago - into the reported issue of reduced engine power under hard acceleration. The agency has since received a total of 525 such complaints, and Ford itself reported receiving over 4,000.
Together, NHTSA and Ford determined that the problem resulted from cylinders misfiring, an issue itself stemming from water getting into the charge air cooler (CAC) mated to the turbochargers. In particularly humid or rainy conditions, water was found to get into the CAC, causing some of the cylinders to misfire, which in turn triggered the ECU to disable those cylinders in order to protect the catalytic converter from damage.

Ford family keeps special voting rights

Ford Motor Company has a dual-class stock structure of Class A and Class B shares. The roughly three billion Class A shares are for the general public like you and me, while the roughly 71 million Class B shares are all owned by the Ford family. Each Class A share gets the shareholder one vote, each Class B share is worth 16 votes, the result being that Common Stock holders control about 60 percent of the company while the Ford family controls 40 percent even though it holds far fewer shares. The only way that could ever change would be if the Fords sell their Class B shares, but even so, Class B shares revert to Class A when sold outside the family, so they'd have to sell a whole bunch of them.
A contingent of Class A shareholders think the dual-class system is unfair, and for the past few years a vote's been held during the annual shareholders meeting to end it. It has failed every time, as it just did again during the meeting held this week. A smidge over 33 percent voted to end the dual system, outvoted by the 67 percent who are happy with the way Ford is going - unsurprising in view of a corporate turnaround that will be part of business-class curricula for years to come.
On the sidelines, Ford elected Ellen R. Marram to the post of independent director, the first woman to hold the job. The former Tropicana CEO and 20-year Ford board member replaces retiring board member Irvine Hockaday who helped bring Alan Mulally to the CEO position.