It’s been a while since we last heard about Ford’s plans for intelligent hybrid and electric-vehicle charging, but now the motoring giant has picked up Microsoft to help out. Microsoft Hohm sounds like it should be a Buddhist-themed April Fools prank, but it’s apparently a new energy monitoring system that will help balance load across the power grid and make for more efficient, cheaper recharges. There’s also a Windows Phone 7app – complete with a homescreen widget – planned, which could remotely inform you when your car is charging, what its battery status is and how long there is left until it’s completely topped up.
The first vehicle expected to take advantage of Hohm is the Focus Electric, though that’s not expected until sometime in 2011. It will be followed by a plug-in hybrid and two further next-gen hybrids in 2012, as well as other existing Ford, Mercury and Lincoln models on sale and in the pipeline.
Apparently recent research found that 42-percent of people said they planned to buy a hybrid or electric vehicle in the next two years, though that figure sounds a little bit ambitious to us. Hohm itself is already available online, and can be used to track domestic power consumption in the US (though not of electric vehicles).
