mercury

Ford's 100,000th hybrid SUV rolls off line at Kansas City plant

When Ford launched the Ford Escape and Mercury Mariner hybrids five years ago, the company hoped the SUVs would be a hit. Now, the vehicles remain the most fuel-efficient SUVs on the market. Yesterday, workers at Ford's Kansas City assembly plant celebrated a milestone as its 100,000th hybrid SUV rolled off the line.

The Ford Escape Hybrid SUV and Mercury Mariner Hybrid SUV deliver 34 mpg city driving, 31 mpg highway. The newest entries to Ford's hybrid lineup, the Fusion Hybrid and Milan Hybrid deliver 41 mpg city driving, 36 mpg highway, the most fuel-efficient midsize sedans … Read more

OWC ups the speed of its external Blu-ray recorder

Exactly five months after the introduction of the quad-interface, external 4x Blu-ray burner, Other World Computing on Tuesday announced its latest upgrade to the Mercury Pro Blu-ray, which will now burn Blu-ray Discs at up to 8x.

This speed translates into about 2GB per minutes, meaning you can finish a double-sided disc (50GB) in about 25 minutes. Other than Blu-ray Discs, the new drive also writes DVDs (all formats) at up to 16x and CDs at up to 40x. Of course, like all burners, it can play back any of the formats it can record.

The new external drive also … Read more

Six cars for your iPod

The days of keeping a library of tapes or CDs in your car are over. You walk around with an MP3 player, so why shouldn't you be able to use it in your car? Today's MP3 players can hold your entire music collection, so you don't have to decide which tunes to bring with you. Today's cars let you easily plug in an iPod or MP3 player and have full control over the device through voice command or the car's touch screen, and that's much safer than trying to manipulate the small controls on … Read more

Review: 2009 Mercury Mariner Hybrid

Just a year after it got an update, the Mercury Mariner Hybrid gets yet another update for 2009, but this one counts for a lot. Ford fits it with the best cabin tech available, which includes the excellent Sync system for integrating MP3 players and cell phones, along with Sirius Travel Link, giving you traffic information and gas prices right in the car. The Mariner Hybrid also gets a bigger gas engine than the previous model, but it doesn't bring the EPA mileage numbers down. During our testing, it didn't seem to make much difference either way.

Read the review. … Read more

Video: Ford's SmartGauge in motion

Ford's SmartGauge system is set to debut on the 2010 Ford Fusion Hybrid. We've seen what it looks like and what it can do. I have to say that the SmartGauge looks great in pictures, but it looks so much better in motion.

I wonder how much of this will translate directly into production. The interface is slick, but the "efficiency leaves" feature seems sort of gimmicky, where a simple mpg readout would suffice.

Ford gives hybrids green gauges

Earlier we reported on the 2010 Ford Fusion, with photos of the model update. Today we have news of the hybrid version of the Fusion and the 2010 Mercury Milan, due to hit dealers in the first quarter of 2009. Both cars get a new generation of the full hybrid system currently used in the Ford Escape Hybrid and Mercury Mariner Hybrid. Ford isn't giving out many details about this new hybrid system beyond the fact that it will get 5 mpg more than the Toyota Camry Hybrid. However, Ford has shown off the instrument cluster for the cars, a new concept in helping driver's learn about their cars and achieve maximum fuel economy.

We've long been fascinated by the power flow animations in current hybrid cars, which show when power is coming from the electric motor of gas engine. Ford takes this idea a step further, placing LCDs on either side of the speedometer. Similar to concept cars we've seen at many car shows, the LCDs can be configured to show different kinds of information. Ford breaks the different standard displays down like this:

Inform: Fuel level and battery charge status Enlighten: Adds electric vehicle mode indicator and tachometer Engage: Adds engine output power and battery output power Empower: Adds power to wheels, engine pull-up threshold and accessory power consumption… Read more

2010 Ford Fusion still looks like a multiblade razor

The new Ford Fusion has been revealed and guess what, it still looks like a multiblade razor.

The three-bar grill has expanded beyond the frame of the headlamps and now dominates the front end of the vehicle. While the headlamps themselves shrink in size and become more aggressive and horizontal in orientation. The lower grill loses its horizontal bars to become a gaping maw.

Under the hood, the Fusion (and by association, the Mercury Milan) receives three powerplant options. The first is a 2.5-liter four-cylinder engine that features fuel saving feature called Aggressive Deceleration Fuel Shut-off. Essentially, the system … Read more

CNET News Daily Podcast: Subway cards now easily hackable

Update October 8 at 9:47 a.m. PDT: Due to technical problems, only part of this podcast was available when it published. It's working now. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Public-transit riders around the world may have new concerns when boarding trains. A new joint report from European universities indicates that a certain kind of subway card used the world over is extremely susceptible to being hacked. CNET News senior writer Elinor Mills explains the process and what you can do to keep your personal information safe.

Too often feel that wave of regret the next morning after … Read more

eSATA comes to a pocket-size external hard drive

I asked for it a few blogs ago and now I've got it: the first pocket-size external hard drive that features an eSATA connection, the eSATA OWC Mercury On-The-Go. eSATA is the external interface for SATA, currently the most popular interface for internal hard drives.

A while ago, OWC introduced the world's largest small external had drive and has now become the first vendor to put eSATA on a compact external hard drive. The eSATA OWC Mercury On-The-Go also supports USB 2.0 and features a 320GB internal hard drive from Hitachi that spins at 7200rpm (as opposed … Read more