SnitGTS

I agree ceemax, I actually don't mind traffic anymore. (unless its insane traffic, but that's not too often)

Well here it is, my 600 mile tank entry! I was on a conference call when I was driving home from my day of golf and almost drove away without taking the picture! (that would have been lovely) I was really nervous the last couple miles, the tank was red and looked empty. I had to keep telling myself that I had at least 13 gallons... Anyway, I'm not going to go that low again unless I feel that I have a shot at a 700 mile tank. Edit: I ended up with a 101 on a par 74, first time I went golfing this year so I'm not complaining. Edit 2: The pump said I put in 12.42 gallons by the way.

I didn't say 76 owned all the top tier gas stations, I said they owned that website that he was referencing. If you go to the website and clicked on the 'history of top tier' link to the right it brought you to the 76 website. On that website they are saying how their gas is better than anyone else's, where to find a 76 station, and a video to 'ask a supermodel her opinion'. I was saying that I wouldn't trust anything on that website because it is owned 76, in a way they are hijacking the top tier brand. Edit: If you click on the link from this forum, click on the 'home' tab at the top to see the 'history of top tier' on the right.

I'm putting in for a reservation for the 600+ mile tank club, should be posting my first entry tomorrow night! I'm about 540 miles on my current tank and will be going on a 100 mile round trip tomorrow to play golf with some buddies, according to my miles to empty I should be able to make the trip with about 10 miles to spare. Pretty sure I won't push it that far but I should be well above 600. I'm at 51.6 mpg for the tank. Oh and I took my first extended 65 mph+ trip today, drove 31 miles on the highway with the AC on as needed and still got 43.0 mpg. I set eco cruise at 66 mph but traffic caused me to have to slow down and reset several times.

2nd fill up should be by next weekend, currently the tank is at 51.8 mpg but that is down from almost 53 mpg after a disastrous 33.6 mpg trip home through heavy traffic & rain last week. I hope to get it up over 52 mpg by the time I fill up but we'll see. The consistency thing is hard over 3-4 weeks of driving, my round trip to and from work is about 25 miles so it takes a long time to burn through a tank of gas. (I do 150-200 miles a week on average) Edit: This 2nd tank should easily get me in the 600+ mile tank club.

+3, from what I was reading, the PCM will retard the timing (and thus creating worse performance) only if the car is rated for premium gas in the first place and you put in regular, do you agree? Our cars are rated for regular, so this should never happen with regular gas.

First sentence under "Characteristics of Top Tier Gasoline" is: "Gasoline marketers agree when they sign on to Top Tier that all grades of gasoline that they sell must meet the Top Tier standards: their regular grade gasoline must be at least as good as their premium gasoline in terms of its ability to attain agreed-upon standards for clean engines." I'm wondering if maybe you are reading Premium gas as from a specific brand or brands? I'm talking about octane level, based upon my research yesterday you do not get better fuel economy with higher octane gas versus the regular 87 octane gas.

I would bet the pump is off, Jus & Matt have repeatedly said you can go up to 13 gallons burned with no problem, they should know as they have 30+ fill ups each.

Click on the "History of Top Tier" link to the right, you'll see that behind the top tier website is the gas company 76. They are hawking how their gas has more additives that will remove those nasty deposits and will show you where to find a 76 station near you. You can even watch a video and see what a supermodel thinks! (I'm not kidding!) Just my personal opinion, I wouldn't trust anything she or they say.

I know a lot of people are not hitting the EPA rated 47 mpg in real world driving, but based on how they conduct the EPA test 47 mpg might be conservative! The problems are the test does not represent how everyone drives and hybrids are much more sensitive to how you drive. (remember 2 mpg loss with a regular car = 7 mpg loss with a hybrid) You can't say that Ford gamed the system, my car would easily best the EPA test!!! If you want to talk about advertising then be fair, name one company who's advertising doesn't bend the truth or pick out specific metrics to gain an advantage over a competitor? Bottom line, they built a great car that is perfectly capable of reproducing the EPA results when you drive it in a similar manner to the EPA test. My results back this view up. My first tank was 48.9 mpg, second tank is currently at 51.8 mpg, I drive conservative but normal, I am not a hyper-miler! (although I admit I'm starting to get the bug) Your hyper-milers are Jus & Matt, who are getting 63 mpg & 59 mpg respectively with their techniques. Jus is getting 34% better fuel economy then the EPA rating and Matt is getting 25% better while dragging 300 pounds of extra equipment around everywhere he goes to boot!

I've not once turned on the heat in my car, never needed it as its been mostly warm here. The few days that it was a little chilly in the morning I used the heated seats. That's exactly why I got the winter package with the heated seats, so I don't have to use the climate controls to warm me up and save some gas. I figure in the winter I will warm the car up to 50 then use the heated seats to keep me warm, I prefer it to be a little cool anyway. If you thought I meant to keep the car's cabin warm in my previous post, I didn't mean that. The day I 'managed' 33.6 mpg, between the cool temperature, the rain, and the fact I didn't move much for 30 minutes (and not using the ICE at all) that the car's temperature might have dropped below where it needs to be and that it might have run the engine both to charge the battery and to keep the car itself warm.

Jus, I didn't mean any disrespect, just you and Matt are getting the best mileage of anyone I know and you both use premium. I do not trust any individual website or organization, everyone has their biases, but not one site I found was in favor of premium over regular for fuel economy. By all means, if you want to keep using premium it is your decision what you put in your car. I was convinced that premium would give me better mileage from reading different posts from different people in this forum, because of that I even posted that I thought using premium helped someone get better mileage. I still may try it for a tank or two to see if it does anything for me, but it seems there is a consensus against it. Even the ecomodder website does not mention premium in its 65+ ways to get better fuel economy. http://ecomodder.com/forum/fuel-economy-mpg-modifications.php I am not particular to a specific brand, I get gas at a couple different gas stations depending on where I am when I need gas. My current tank that I'm getting 51.8 mpg with I used Exxon regular. As I've only filled up once that's all my C-Max has seen, but I also fill up at a Shell and a Hess. I've always calculated my mpg when I fill up and I've never noticed a major difference with any of my previous cars, it will be interesting to see what happens with different brands with the C-Max. Edit: I am always skeptical when organizations make claims about something being better than something else. The best way to qualify their opinion, in my opinion, is to see who funded the study. Amazing how people find results in favor of one thing or another if they are being paid by someone who has a horse in the race. That's why when there was a consensus against premium giving you better fuel economy in these websites, I was surprised. Big oil has a lot of money, you would think they would have funded a study or two to dirty the water on whether the more expensive gas is better for fuel economy. Jus and Matt, can you try running regular gas for a tank and see what happens? (totally up to you of course) If you guys see a drop in your mileage then I guess these websites could be wrong.

So I've been looking up different things I can do to improve my fuel economy without going crazy, I figured since both Jus & Matt use Premium gas that it would be an easy way to get 5% better fuel economy. Well, everything I'm reading is saying the opposite! It was amazing how they all disagreed with each other on things like windows down versus AC on, clean air filter, over-inflating tires, when to fill up, etc..., but they all agreed premium gas does not help! So stop buying it!!! :spend: http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine/2012/08/debunking-fuel-economy-myths/index.htm http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/In-Gear/2012/0627/Myth-busters-Consumer-Reports-takes-on-alleged-gas-saving-tips http://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0098-saving-money-gas http://www.cartalk.com/content/premium-vs-regular-0 http://www.forbes.com/2008/04/22/cars-mpg-gas-forbeslife-cx_jm_0422cars_slide_4.html http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2007/05/30/how-to-improve-your-gas-mileage-23-top-tips-for-better-fuel-economy/ http://www.thedailygreen.com/living-green/blogs/cars-transportation/how-to-get-better-gas-mileage-broken-0519 Edit: Just adding a few more websites. http://auto.howstuffworks.com/fuel-efficiency/fuel-economy/how-to-get-better-fuel-economy1.htm http://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0211/9-easy-ways-to-increase-your-gas-mileage.aspx http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2007/05/30/how-to-improve-your-gas-mileage-23-top-tips-for-better-fuel-economy/

I was looking for simple aero-mods online today and I came across the ecomodder website. They have a 65+ vehicle mod page with various things you can do from simple to extreme to get better fuel economy, the gas pods weren't there so I'm wondering if they are debunked? (or just missing...) http://ecomodder.com/forum/fuel-economy-mpg-modifications.php

I used to travel to NYC often, I live about 15 minutes from the city in NJ, and I guarantee that not a single taxi driver is driving for fuel efficiency! I'm pretty sure there are no more aggressive drivers anywhere in the world than the taxi drivers in NYC. I haven't been in NYC since I got my C-Max, and she will never see the city! If I ever have to go in now I will take public transportation. I never cared before when I had my Corolla, but I sure as heck care now!

They offered the warranty to me but it was over $2,000, can't remember what the exact cost was, but it was a lot. The guy asked us 3 times, each time lowering the cost from the previous time. I think it started at $2,900, he dropped it to $2,500, then it was in the lower 2's, maybe $2,200 like KAL Cmax said. I figure the majority of things that will need to get repaired in the first 100k miles are typical wear and tear items that the warranty wouldn't cover anyway, so that was an awful lot of money to put down up front betting something would go wrong with the car. Even the wear and tear items on the C-Max should last a lot longer than a typical car. We barely use the friction brakes because of regeneration, oil changes are every 10,000 miles, heck even getting gas is a once a month occurrence for me! (used to be almost a weekly event!) Edit: I have yet to fill up this month and I still have a quarter tank!

True, but even in the dead of winter our garage is at minimum 50 degrees f, that's about what it's been here the past month or two in the morning and it takes less than a minute for the car to warm up. Dead of winter here the temps go down to 10-15 degrees f and below, I haven't had the car in winter so I'm not sure how much longer the car will take to warm up. With the cold having such an affect on mileage I would think this matters.

Jus, when you P&G, do you go up to the 3rd bar when you pulse at all speeds or is that only for 65 mph? You really only glide for 3 seconds? (I just read your review, can you tell?) Seems very aggressive (for a hyper-miler) to go up to the 3rd bar and only getting a few seconds of glide before you pulse again. I don't typically P&G yet, I do in some places like hills (pulse up and start the glide right before I reach the peak), but not on flat ground. I've only ever gone to the 2nd bar to pulse and then my glides are typically a lot longer, maybe 5-15 seconds depending on terain. I'm not always in re-gen mode when I'm gliding, I try to keep it in EV mode. In my day to day work commute I never top 50 mph so maybe your 3rd bar P&G technique isn't for me.

I can understand wanting to get the car warmed up quickly, but when the car is sitting in my parking lot no matter how efficiently the engine is charging the battery I'm not moving and therefore mpg for the tank dives faster than if the engine is less efficiently charging the battery and I'm moving. That's just my observation from a month and a half of owning the car. Something similar happened to me the other day when I was driving home from work and I 'managed' to get 33.6 mpg on my commute (normally around 45 mpg). It was raining hard and there was a section of my commute where the traffic was so bad that I never moved more than a car length or two at a time, the battery was low to start with and eventually it drained to the point that it ran the ICE a couple times for a few minutes to charge it / keep the car warm. I was sitting there watching my mpg drop and there was nothing I could do. It never drops that much when the ICE is running when I'm moving. I think for the most part EV+ is a worthwhile idea, but for me and my driving conditions it *sometimes* drains the battery too much for its own good. (this has happened twice to me in 6 weeks)

I've commented on this in other posts, but my EV+ seems to turn on a lot sooner than others. If I'm coming home from work, I'm coming down a road that is almost parallel to my road, the roads connect in a V. EV+ kicks in at one end of the V and my apartment is at the other end, the total distance is 0.7 miles that way. When I come home the other way, it turns on about 0.4 miles from my apartment but this route is all uphill. I prefer the V route because there is a downhill component at the end and I end up with more battery left, it's when I come home the other way that the battery can be almost fully depleted. If I had to guess, I would say I need at least 1/4 to 1/3 battery charge to make it to the road before the ICE kicks on. When it starts warming up in the parking lot I lose significantly higher mpg than if I'm on the road when it's warming up.

I tend to agree with the OP, a couple times now I've come home and the battery was almost depleted by EV+ which caused the car to start the ICE as soon as I turned it on the next morning. This would be fine if I was immediately on the road, but I have to back out of my garage, get out of my car and shut the garage door, then get back in the car and get going. Normally this doesn't take too long, but the first time this happened I thought it was so funny that the car was running I sat there and listened to it for a few seconds, by the time I got in the car my trip mpg dropped by a full mpg! It took weeks to get that mpg back! When I have more battery in the morning I can get out onto the road before the ICE starts, so I'm also accelerating while the car is warming up. I still lose a tenths of a mpg or two, but not the full mpg that I lost when the car was sitting in my parking lot! I haven't turned it off yet, but I have thought about it.

Based on what I've read the C-Max is very susceptible to cold weather, so my guess would be weather is the major factor with the premium gas being a secondary factor. I don't think 3.5.1 could have much of any effect on your mileage. Your 21 fill ups with a max in the low 500's means you are probably around 10-12,000 miles, so your car should be broken in now which is probably helping a little as well. Have you changed your driving habits at all?

Has anyone noticed if this warm up period is shorter in the winter if the car is kept in a garage? (thus it should be relatively warm versus outside temps)

I 'managed' to get a 33.6 mpg trip on my 12.5 mile trip home from work this week when I normally get about 45 mpg, even driving conservatively. It was raining pretty hard and there was really bad traffic in one section, I happened to get stuck in the traffic with a low battery and because the traffic was so bad I never got up fast enough to get any regeneration, and the car ended up running the ICE for a couple minutes two separate times while I was sitting in traffic to charge the battery. Needless to say it was a miserable trip home, normally takes me 30 minutes but took well over an hour.