I am writing today to announce the closure of the Michigan Messenger. After four years of operation in Michigan, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news into a single site, The American Independent at Americanindependent.com. This is part of a shift in strategy, towards new forms [...]
An abstinence-only presentation provided to numerous school districts in Calhoun and Eaton Counties in October of this year provided false and misleading information to students about HIV, experts allege.
Two county registers of deeds filed a class action lawsuit Monday on behalf of Michigan’s 83 counties alleging that the Mortgage Electronic Registration Services owes millions of dollars in property title transfer taxes.
Despite evidence of the impact of mercury on children and public health, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette last month joined with 24 other state attorneys general in filing a lawsuit to scuttle new EPA regulations that would reduce mercury emissions from power plants.
In order to meet the challenge of raising the average fuel efficiency of its vehicle fleet more than 10 mpg by 2016, Ford announced a plan to implement more electric and hybrid vehicles and smaller but more powerful gasoline engines into most of its models over the next few years. The rise in fuel efficiency standards has been newly mandated by the federal government. Automotive News reports.
The automaker also plans to offer an electric or hybrid model on its next-generation global mid-sized vehicle platform. The model or models have not been announced. That platform will be used for such vehicles as the 2013 Ford Fusion, Mercury Milan and Lincoln MKS sedans.
For the 2010 model year, Ford added full hybrids for the Ford Fusion and Mercury Milan sedans, joining the Ford Escape and Mercury Mariner hybrid crossovers. Additional hybrid models will be offered.
A full hybrid vehicle is one that can run for short distances on electric power only, with the gas engine kicking in when the battery is drained to a certain level. A plug-in hybrid is one that can be recharged by plugging them into a socket rather than by the vehicle’s engine, which further reduces the use of gas. Ford also plans to produce a fully electric van with a range of 100 miles on a single charge.
But those will all likely involve relatively low-selling vehicles. The real boost in its average fuel efficiency will come from implementing different versions of its EcoBoost engine in its best-selling vehicles. The EcoBoost engine uses direct fuel injection and turbocharging to get more power out of a smaller engine and thus reduce the use of gasoline.
Ford’s plan includes replacing 8-cylinder engines with 6-cylinder ones and replacing 6-cylinder engines with smaller 4-cylinder ones, increasing the MPG of nearly all of its vehicles. They’re even contemplating a 4-cylinder option for the F-150 truck. The plan is to double the number of vehicles with the smaller 4-cylinder engines and reduce the use of gas-guzzling larger engines.
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