Engineering a ‘MAVERICK’ HYBRID TRANSMISSION

Ford Powertrain engineers marry their new in-house electric machine with the proven HF45 transmission - under aggressive vehicle program timing.

Ford's 2022 Maverick combines many practical attributes that earned the new compact pickup its North American Truck of the Year title, among them a standard hybrid powertrain which delivers a 42-mpg city (37 mpg combined) EPA fuel economy rating. MCA (Maverick) program chief Chris Mazur called the truck's aggressive $20,000 base price “a rallying cry” and a “wildly audacious goal” for the development team. Their work included integrating and validating a new Ford-designed electric machine into the two-motor HF45 hybrid transmission, on what engineers describe as “a dramatically accelerated” timetable.

“The biggest challenge for us was time,” Manny Barberena, the hybrid powertrain supervisor, told SAE Media. “Go-fast programs make engineers nervous, but we were able to overcome it by being efficient” - taking the learnings, development and base calibration from the Escape Hybrid powertrain that was basically carried over and applying it to Maverick. “It really minimized the amount of re-development,” he said. “We did have to do some tuning to make things work properly with this new transmission but it sure saved a lot of time in going from Escape to this program on the common C2 architecture. It enabled us to hit the ground running.”