Ford bails on hybrid promise

Ford CEO Bill Ford Jr. is backing away from his much-publicized commitment to produce 250,000 hybrid vehicles a year by the end of the decade, reports the Detroit News. The company now intends to pursue a broader environmental strategy that focuses more on other alternative-fuel vehicles, according to the newspaper. "What I didn't foresee at the time was how rapidly other technologies would evolve," Bill Ford wrote in the e-mail to employees. "Now, I am convinced that the objective we had set earlier to build capacity for 250,000 hybrids at the end of the decade is too narrow to achieve our larger goals of substantially improving fuel economy and CO2 performance." Ford said the automaker will now focus more on other fuels like ethanol, clean diesel and bio-diesel, as well as advanced engine and powertrain technologies like fuel cells.