Geofencing sets behaviour for certain geographic areas. This can be as simple as alerting a fleet manager when a vehicle enters or leaves a depot, but for the PHEV Ford is planning to automatically engage the EV Now mode whenever the hybrid vehicle enters an area set as a zero emissions zone.
If you want to clean up the emissions around your yard, or anywhere else but are concerned the drivers won’t remember to press the button, the vehicle will be able to do this for them.
Using GPS tracking the vehicle can decipher if the vehicle is in a geofenced zone. Custom zones can be added once registered with an account (legislative zone cannot be deleted). The data is then downloaded to the cloud through a device via Wi-Fi (i.e. Modem) where it is stored for your data analysis needs.
A geofence is a virtual fence or a perimeter around a physical location. When a vehicle or object enters this area, something happens. Easy way to think about it a fence around your home, and if someone enters within the fence the security light comes on.
The geofence module installed on to the Transit Custom will store these data points:
The data is encrypted on the and is only accessible through the web portal or application.
The Transit Custom PHEV has Four driving modes.
EV Auto is the default setting, and the one the PHEV will be ready to use every time you start it. As the name suggests, it will automatically use the batteries and the petrol engine, as required. This means that in some high-demand situations – such as accelerating uphill with a heavy payload – the petrol engine will kick in to support the demands on the battery by the electric motor.
EV Now forces the van to use nothing but zero-emissions electric power motor until the batteries run out. You might select this manually for use in cities.
EV Later switches on the petrol engine in order to maintain whatever battery capacity is currently left so that you can use it, well, later. The usage example of this if you know you’ve got an emissions controlled zone coming up further on in your journey.
EV Charge uses the petrol engine to not just power the electric motor but also recharge the batteries – again in the name of building up zero-emissions capability to use later. The flip side to this is that it’s the least efficient way to use the petrol engine, so it consumes more fuel.
In addition to all of the above, the gear selector has an “L” setting in addition to the “D” (for Drive) setting. The difference being the L mode has a much more aggressive level of energy recuperation whenever you lift off the accelerator.
Using vehicle groups enable updates on a group level. Pushing new geofences onto a group a vehicles save time in vehicle management.