At this year’s CES, Ford had a big presence as it always has. Ford had a number of vehicles on display including the Ford Fusion Energi and the Ford Focus Electric. However,one of the more interesting items from Ford is an in car application to help drivers make better use of their battery range in their hybrid electric vehicles.
Although Florence says technology still a few years away, Ford was showing off how drivers use the application. Drivers can designate electric only green zones on map via their computer. These green zones became when the vehicle would switch from running the gasoline engine to using only the electric driving mode. This allows drivers set up their neighborhood as a green zone so that on a commute home, your hybrid would optimize the use of gasoline engine and electric motor to make sure that by the time you cross the threshold of your green zone, there would be enough charge to cruise into your driveway on battery power alone.
Green zones are totally customizable by the user. It sounds very similar to Microsoft’s Avoid Ghetto feature that keeps young drivers out of dangerous areas.
