Report: Next-gen Ford Fusion Hybrid to get up to 48 mpg city

2010 Ford Fusion Hybrid – Click above for high-res image gallery

While Ford is busy busting its you know what to prep its next-gen CD4 vehicles – the Ford Fusion and Lincoln MKZ here in the States and the Ford Mondeo in other markets – for launch, the team of Blue Oval engineers assigned to development of the next-gen Ford Fusion Hybrid is reportedly hard at work reducing the gas-electric's fuel consumption.

A report from Ford Inside News suggests that the Fusion Hybrid's updated powertrain, which will most likely features Ford's fuel-saving e-CVT trans, will bump the vehicle's fuel economy rating all the way up to 47 or 48 miles per gallon city, a healthy increase over the 2011 Fusion Hybrid's 41 mpg city rating. Since the Lincoln MKZ Hybrid will make use of the same hardware, this means that the gas-electric MKZ is almost sure to have an identical mpg rating.

We suspect that the next-gen Ford Fusion Hybrid will launch in early 2012, with the debut of the Lincoln MKZ Hybrid likely pushed back until at least mid-2012.