LUXURY HYBRID SUV DOES IT ALL AND DOES IT WELL, TOO
I love plug-in hybrids. I love pretty much everything about them.
I like that they offer the ultimate in convenience, plugging in at home to extend range electrically while offering the rapidity of gasoline refuelling on the highway. I like driving emissions-free for anywhere from 20 to 50 kilometres — depending on the model, your driving habits and, more importantly, the weather — every morning.
I like the costs saved, the CO2 not emitted, and the silence — especially first thing in the morning. I even like the performance; PHEVS are the performance monsters of the hybrid set.
The upcoming Toyota RAV4 Prime, for instance, is promised to be Toyota’s fastest, most powerful sport ute yet.
All of the above also applies to Lincoln’s new Grand Touring version of its mid-size Aviator, making it perhaps the best vehicle Ford’s luxury has produced in the past 20 years. I’ve already raved about the Aviator’s good looks — inside and out — the luxuriousness of its cabin and the Sync 3 man-machine interface an exemplar of intuitive design. I said the Aviator had the best interior in SUVS and its digital features are “smart.”
I see no reason to modify those views with the Grand Touring version, which adds a healthy helping of lithium-ion and a permanent-magnet synchronous motor to the equation.
With that aside, I’ll stick to what’s different about the Grand Touring compared with the “base” version, namely the 13.6 kilowatt-hour battery and the addition of an electric motor.
Essentially, the Grand Touring takes Ford’s 3.0-litre 400-horsepower/415 pound-feet Ecoboost
V6 and supplements it with a 101-hp/221 lb-ft electric motor. Since these aren’t quite additive, the Grand Touring’s grand total is 494 hp and 634 lb-ft of torque.
If you’re getting the idea that Lincoln’s theory of plugging in has more to do with jetting away from a stoplight than passing pumps, welcome to the club. The first impression is that despite its substantial avoirdupois —
350 kilograms heavier than the already hefty standard Aviator, the electrified SUV crushes the scales at 2,578 kg — the Grand Touring is still something of a stoplight bandit, scooting to 100 km/h in under six seconds.
Once moving, there’s a feeling of relentlessness that you can only get from combining the mid-range boost of twin turbochargers with the low-end grunt of an electric motor.
Instagram your new-found “green” enviro-friendliness all you want, but we all know you bought it for the throttle response. Truly remarkable.
As for fuel saved and emissions reduced, that’s going to depend on how far you drive. If, as I did in my first week with the Grand Touring, you put in big miles on a daily basis, the extra weight somewhat offsets the benefits of electrification. My tester averaged about 10.7 L/100 km which, while not quite frugal, is almost exactly the 10.3 L/100 km Transport Canada rates the Aviator for when driving on gasoline alone.
It also compares favourably with the 11.8 the non-hybrid aviator is rated for.
On the other hand, if you keep your daily commute under 30 km or so — our tester managed to drive “electrically” 987 of its 2,552 km — the Grand Touring will run emissions free right up to 130 km/h. The only downside is that the Gran Touring maxes out at Level 2 charging, which means the fastest you can charge it is a little less than four hours.
On a typical 110 Volt circuit, count on doubling that.
Another bit of frustration is the predicted EV kilometres.
Sometimes a full charge promised just 20 km of “Pure EV” motoring. Other times it was 30 or a little more. In almost all cases, however, the battery lasted exactly 32 km.
The numbers bounced all over the place; 15 km would become 18 with one application of brakes on a long off-ramp. Other times, a couple of kilometres would suddenly disappear from the readout, only to be reclaimed five minutes later.
It was like Lincoln’s own little roulette of range anxiety. Ford’s engineers need to work on a smoothing algorithm for more reliable predictions.
Nonetheless, it’s fairly easy to motor along silently in the electrified Aviator.
In my second week of testing, I went for days without hearing the twin turbos whistling their gas-sucking tune other than a brief wake-up-the-air-conditioning-system puff on startup.
In the end, it is this Dr. Jekylland-mr. Hyde duality that is the main reason to buy the Grand Touring Aviator. It can go fast, or it can drive electrically.
Hopefully in the future we can have longer-range PHEVS that can do both.