The 2010 Ford Fusion Hybrid earned the inaugural Hermance Vehicle Efficiency Award at the Chicago Auto Show. The award is named for the late Dave Hermance, the legendary engineer and vocal proponent of hybrid-electric vehicles who died in 2006 at the age of 59 when his experimental plane crashed in the Pacific Ocean.
The Hermance award, which is given by BermanWorks, the media company behind HybridCars.com, honors new North American vehicles that best represent the vision of practical efficiency and risk-taking – two qualities the engineering wizard and avid pilot cherished. The voting committee recognized Fusion Hybrid for “setting a whole new benchmark” for mainstream hybrid-electric vehicles.
“The word that most evokes the design and engineering accomplishment seen in the Ford Fusion Hybrid is integration,” the Hermance Committee said in its official statement. “Any remnants of dissonance in joining the yin of gasoline with the yang of electricity – whether for the feel of regenerative braking or the twinge of motor-generator and engine transitions – have been erased. The result is a product that is indeed a feat of seamless fusion, one that truly creates a new paradigm for how hybrid cars should drive.”
The Hermance committee went on to praise Fusion Hybrid’s “no compromise” drivability and functionality as well as its SmartGauge™ with EcoGuide human-machine interface. Its independent members also predicted that the Fusion Hybrid will “stand the test of time as a product that, years from now, will mark the beginning of when hybrids became transparent in terms of how they operate.”
The committee concluded that Dave Hermance himself would approve of Ford’s accomplishment with the Fusion Hybrid, “marrying a seamless, sophisticated hybrid powertrain to a highly competitive product, positioned solidly in the middle of the mainstream market.”
