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Fastest Mobile Networks 2013
PCMag drove more than 20,000 miles to test AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless. Here's
what we found.
By Sascha Segan
June 17, 2013
34 Comments
It's Electric! Driving Ford's High-Tech Cars
Phones weren't the only tech we carried on our Fastest Mobile Networks
journey. Our nine drivers covered more than 20,000 miles in three hightech Ford vehicles, two C-Max Energis and a Fusion Energi, all lent to us
by Ford for this project.
Contents
Fastest Mobile
Networks 2013
Regional and
National Winners
Different Carriers,
Different Strength
How We Tested
4G: Beyond Speed
It's Electric! Driving
Ford's High-Tech
Cars
Atlanta, GA
Austin, TX
Baltimore, MD
Boston, MA
Charlotte, NC
Chicago, IL
Dallas, TX
Denver, CO
Detroit, MI
The cars were all plug-in hybrids with built-in batteries and Ford's latest
big-screen MyFord Touch entertainment and navigation system. They
even have an API. Connect your car to a smartphone and you can harvest
telemetry data using Ford's OpenXC API—everything from steering
wheel angle to windshield-wiper status.
A few demo projects have used the API to implement a rear-view camera
and new hardware gauges, but having seen the spreadsheet of data Ford
sent me afterwards, I have some concerns about privacy.
Ford gave me a spreadsheet of the cars' GPS locations, fuel efficiency,
regenerative braking status, and a "driver score" for each trip. That's the
back end of a gamified user interface that challenges the driver to
increase his fuel efficiency, with a graphic of leaves to the right of the
speedometer which appear to grow when you're driving in an eco-friendly
manner.
Houston, TX
Indianapolis, IN
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"Every time you brake, it tells you how much of the energy you recovered in doing so. This
was a big motivator for me, but it only displayed the final percentage when the car came to a
complete stop. I only noticed that the car gave me a final "score" at the end of each drive
fairly late in the trip, but I did get a kick out of seeing my total MPG. It claimed 51.9 mpg at
one point," PCMag.com analyst Max Eddy said.
But the implications for anyone driving a car from a corporate fleet, or for that matter
driving a family vehicle, is that whoever owns the car can monitor pretty much everything
you do in the driver's seat. On one level, it's perfectly sensible that the owner of the car
should know exactly what the driver is up to. On another, it means that if you aren't the
owner, Big Brother may be watching when you stop for coffee.
Pulling the Plug
Our drivers generally really liked the performance of Ford's hybrid cars, although we were
pretty quickly reminded of the limits of a plug-in hybrid.
Cars charge slowly. If you're buying a plug-in hybrid, you're probably doing it for a short
daily commute within the battery's 21-mile electric range. You aren't expecting to reap
major electric savings on long road trips.
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We drove out with cards from the Blink and ChargePoint charger networks, and our drivers
were able to find chargers in many of our cities. There are quite a few out there. But this
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3. were able to find chargers in many of our cities. There are quite a few out there. But this
isn't like gassing up your vehicle—charging for fifteen minutes, or even an hour, doesn't do
much at all. (We got four minutes of driving on a 30-minute charge in St. Louis.) It's clear
that these hybrids need to be tucked in at night in a garage, not powered up during your
power lunch. Otherwise, buying the regular hybrid versions will get you almost the same
fuel economy for thousands less.
Beyond that, though, I heard plenty of compliments on the cars' ride from the drivers.
Here's Lead Analyst Jamie Lendino, who heads our automotive coverage and drove the
Fusion Energi:
"The fact that the car shifts in EV mode at speeds up to 85mph is significant; no other
hybrid, plug-in or not, does that, unless you count the Volt's somewhat different approach to
electric versus gas power. Also, transitions between gas and electric have a very slight
shutter, but it's extremely quick, and the shutter isn't as bad as on some hybrid cars. And
you can use the A/C at idle at stoplights, unlike the (non-plug-in) Honda Insight hybrid. The
Fusion is sufficiently fast, but flooring it sometimes takes several beats for the continuously
variable transmission (CVT) to respond, and it sounds like a broken clutch when it
accelerates hard. It's not a sports sedan, but it's damn impressive tech."
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