Alan Mulally told congress this today, "we are working on that also, but let me just share with you the Ford plan about that. Our No. 1 priority is to improve the internal combustion engine, and that's why the turbocharging, the direct fuel injection, we get a 20 percent improvement in fuel mileage and a 15 percent reduction in CO2, but we get that across all of the engines, across all the vehicles. Then we move to more electrification with the hybrids as you mentioned, and we are very excited that the next step after that will be full electrification. Now we're tied into the grids, and we really have moved to an energy independence solution."

Dang, where's an emoticon patting itself on the back when you need one! I guess when I'm through with the Voltour, I could sell it to Ford for a half-billion-or-so since they will be flush with cash shortly. Imagine how much R&D money I could save them, since it took GM a full billion to develop the EV-1 which has about the same performance as the Voltour at twice (or thrice?) the unit price. That's a hard number to set though, since they never actually sold one.

I'm still waiting on my hand-carved adaptor plate, and then I can design and install battery racks around the motor and transmission. I got my new A/C drier for the new A/C compressor, but I'm still waiting on my eBay A/C flush gun to remove the PAG.