Leaderboard

The car is not a sportcar but the torque is very nice. Hybrids are primarily set up to coast - so smoothly accelerate up to speed, then back off the accelerator a little bit but keep a steady pressure on the throttle .. on flat land you will see the car switch over to EV mode and coast round like a big electric golf cart for "in town" driving .. With low rolling resistance tires it is possible to get 40MPG without working very hard. The battery capacity isn't very big so you may not be able to go along on EV alone for too long, but I suppose the idea is to even out the RPM on the gas engine and provide a bit of power boost - so it's more like a V6 even though it has a fuel efficient 4 cylinder engine. Hybrid brakes are also typically more sensitive because there are two different braking systems - regenerative braking which shunts friction energy from brakes back into battery and traditional hydraulic brakes to provide more stopping power when necessary. So you can also coast on the brakes to provide an energy boost back into the battery and it won't wear down the brake pads that much because light braking is handled by regenerative system. So Hybrids are great for stop and go traffic. If you choose to use any of these techniques be mindful of traffic around you .. I do practice some of them, but never to the extent where I hypermile and hold up traffic.

The CMax not only accumulates leaves but also salt / dust under the hood. I had to add insulation foam to reduce the amount of salt/dust under the hood.