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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.

Ford bringing adaptive steering to the masses [w/video]

Within the next year, Ford will offer a brand-new adaptive steering system (unimaginatively dubbed "Ford Adaptive Steering"), and this week, the automaker invited us out to its proving grounds in Dearborn, MI to get a taste for how its new setup works. In function, Ford's system doesn't greatly differ from the majority of other adaptive steering units already on the market from companies like Audi or BMW, but consider this: Ford will be the first non-luxury automaker to offer this technology, and uniquely, the whole system fits inside the car's steering wheel.
Ford's engineers have worked hard to create a system that can be tacked on to the company's full lineup of cars, trucks and utility vehicles, and says that the adaptive steering will be uniquely tuned for each specific vehicle. The automaker will not confirm exactly which vehicle will launch with this technology, but for the purpose of our preview, we tested the technology in a 2014 Fusion - a vehicle with already-good behind-the-wheel feel, one that the company says best demonstrates its current steering efforts.

Motorweek goes retro with '80s hot hatch shootout

Motorweek's decades of history on television make it the perfect medium to look back into the automotive past and see how things are different now. It recently added old road test videos to its YouTube channel of the Acura NSX and Toyota Supra, as well as the Ferrari F40. For one of its newest flashback clips, Motorweek has exhumed an affordable five-car challenge of 1986's premiere hot hatches.
By today's standards, this is an eclectic field that features fondly remembered classics like the Volkswagen GTI 16-valve and Acura Integra. However, it also throws in some nearly forgotten contenders like the Dodge Colt Turbo and Ford Escort GT. The angular Toyota Corolla FX16 GT-S rounds out the group.
It's fascinating to watch Motorweek run the quintet through the slalom, down the drag strip and on various roads. What's most striking in this clip is the difference in the definition of a performance car between then and now. With its 16-valve, 1.8-liter four-cylinder, the GTI is the burliest of the contenders with 123 horsepower, but it still takes 8.8 seconds to reach 60 miles per hour. By today's standards, that would make it a plain-jane economy car, and not even a particularly quick one.