About 25% of people who buy those vehicles order the bag-in-belt option, Ford says.
Ford says it was already working on similar technology and the EPA's breakthrough will help it along.
"I can honestly say that I trust him with my life, " Ford says.
Ford says regardless of what Kerkorian does, it will stay focused on its efforts to turn the company around.
But Ford says 10, 000 Focus owners defect to other brands each year because it doesn't offer an attractive step-up model.
In all, Ford says 1 million cars will be produced off the same small car architecture and many parts will be shared.
Ford says the quick decision is an example of the kind of bold risk taking now in vogue at the struggling carmaker.
Many of the issues that Ford says caught it by surprise--gas and commodity prices, for example--were high and volatile from the outset.
With more money research could be carried out into a symptoms database for GPs and new therapies to treat drug-resistant tumours, Ford says.
With four new engine choices, the new pickups will get up to 20 percent better gas mileage than the 2010 models, Ford says.
Environmental concerns, Ford says, have made people more thoughtful about their purchases, while the recession has led to a decline in conspicuous consumption.
The Sync system comes standard in all Lincoln vehicles, Ford says.
If you believe what Ford says, that tipping point is now.
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Ford says reverting to familiar brands makes sense in today's hypercompetitive market, where the explosion of models makes it difficult to build awareness for new nameplates.
While that still sounds expensive, compared to the five cents per kilowatt Ford pays to buy energy off the power grid, it's worth it, Ford says.
And the air quality around the plant ought to improve, too, Ford says, because the roof will trap dust, absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen into the environment.
But reaching a sensible valuation of the two marques, which Ford says must be sold together because their operations have become so tightly integrated, is not proving easy.
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Ford says fuel economy is now the top purchase consideration for car buyers and that customers are excited about having an alternative to the top-selling Toyota Prius hybrid.
"PEP will show individuals that someone cares, " Mr Ford says.
Now, Ford says she's coming back to the perfect situation in New York, surrounded by familiar faces from her Detroit days in coach Bill Laimbeer and some former teammates.
The marquee green car for the show was the Fusion Energi, a production-intent plug-in hybrid with, Ford says, a combined fuel economy of over 100 MPGe (a measure of gasoline-gallon energy equivalence).
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Pricing on the plug-in Fusion Energi, which Ford says will be the most efficient mid-sized car on the market at 100 mpg equivalent, will be announced closer to its launch date early next year.
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Its patented fumes-to-fuel technology, co-developed with the Detroit Edison unit of DTE Energy (nyse: DTE - news - people ), could be worth millions in energy savings and licensing fees, Ford says.
Ford says it's trying to encourage more gas stations to carry E85 and the energy bill offers a tax credit to stations that put in E85 pumps, but even the ethanol lobby admits that these efforts are not enough to bring E85 closer to most consumers.
The shift away from SUVs has been "quite breathtaking, " says Ford, who says his company underestimated how quickly sales of its Explorer and Expedition SUVs would deteriorate.
"He made his vision clear: There is one plan, one team, one Ford, " says J Mays, Ford's group vice president of global design.
Kevin Yee, administrator of cardiology at Henry Ford, says managing images was becoming a logistical nightmare when the hospital decided to test the cloud system in 2011.
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Joe Bakaj, an engineer at Ford, says that even American buyers of the company's F-150 pickups, who would normally scoff at anything with less than a V8 engine, are switching to a new V6 version that performs at least as well but drinks less fuel.
Richard Segarra, director of research for Ford, says several home builders, including Toll, still pass the quantitative model he uses, but that when the next issue comes out at the end of the month, there's a chance that some of the builders will no longer qualify as buys.
Raj Nair, Ford's vice president for engineering, says Ford is confident that it has conducted the EPA tests properly on all its vehicles.
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