SnitGTS

I know I have a long ways to go before I get my 600 mile tank, but it takes me 3-4 weeks to burn through a tank of gas. Here is my trip gauge this morning, should easily be in the mid-600's for this tank.

Congrats hoosierjtf! What is that 19 people with confirmed 600 mile tanks?

I can't believe you guys beat me to this, I was just going to post it!!!

Today on my way home I had a guy walking along the street in front of me decide because he couldn't hear a car coming I wasn't behind him and he just walked into the road. Luckily there was no cars coming the other way so I was able to swerve into the other lane and not have to slam on the breaks. I gave it a good honk as I was passing him to show my displeasure of his ignorance. Bet he'll never do that again!

I went from the maximum the car can hold, 13.5.

It happens all the time, I live in NJ and used to work at a gas station, they got busted for the same thing. Not many people get gas with a virtually empty tank where the pump being off 2.5% is that noticeable.

Normally when I start my drive to work I can get out to the main road in EV mode before the engine kicks in as I'm accelerating up a little hill to 40 mph. (probably like 250 feet of driving) That acceleration does wonders for warming up the car, my mpg drops a few tenths of a mile but not a full mpg like yesterday when the ICE was on in the parking lot! :drop: I like the idea of EV+, but EV+ seems to start out a lot further for me than you guys, I looked it up on Google Maps and it is 0.7 miles! I think what it is, the most fuel efficient way for me to get home is almost a V shape, EV+ kicks in at one end of the V and my apartment is at the other end. There is a shorter way where I'm only going about 0.4 miles in EV+, but that is going up a long hill and even max EV+ isn't enough to accelerate at all. Weird thing, I was at a light and I checked my trip odometer & miles to empty, 217 driven and 499 to go even after dropping to 51.1 mpg for the tank, no way in heck that's right! I'm on regular by the way, the 51.1 mpg is for my C-Maxes 2nd tank of gas ever. Edit: When I leave in the morning I drive the V as well, when I get to the other end of the V it is not uncommon for EV+ to come on and stay on until I'm a mile from home or more.

You guys are scaring the crap out of me, I read this thread right after I washed my car (including spraying right into the grill) and today it was raining real hard and I felt like I hit every puddle on the road! So far everything is fine but I've got my fingers crossed!

I had an interesting experience today... I got in my car to back out of my garage and as soon as I turned it out the car started, first time I've ever had it do that! The battery was extremely low though from the last trip, 1/2 mile in EV+ up my hill really drains it. Get out to shut the garage door (no power in the garage therefore manual open / close), sat there for a second thinking how funny it was for my car to be running, and when I get back in my mpg for the tank had dropped from 52.3 mpg to 51.2!!! I never recovered either, crappy raining day here in NJ and I probably drove about 50 miles and when I parked just now I'm right at 51 mpg for the tank again. What crap! I'm not sure I like EV+ mode anymore, I'd rather drive normal then end up with a really low battery at my destination... Sill on track for well above a 600 mile tank, but my miles driven & miles to empty are well under 700 at this point. What is Matt's record for a tank of gas? 725?

I had no idea there were other C-Maxes in NJ, I was beginning to think I was the only one! I'm northern jersey about 15 miles from NYC.

That's awesome Jus! Your regen miles are amazing! I don't think I've even hit 2 miles of regen in my 12-13 mile commute... I don't have any pictures of my commute home because the MPG is never as good, but I normally get 62-67 mpg going to work and 45-50 mpg coming home. My high going to work was 72.7 mpg and my low coming home was 37 mpg, ironically the 72.7 and 37 both came the first week I had the car. I changed my route too a little, I drive around a big hill I used to go up and over and I avoid a freeway coming home that I used to take. I still drive 50-55 mph for a good 7-8 miles both directions on a local highway, which is a gradual hill and explains the different mpg's going to work and coming home. Most of the rest of the commute is between 35-45 except for a mile stretch close to work where I take 25 mph side streets to avoid a main road with horrible traffic. My average for my 2nd tank of gas is holding steady at 52.3 mpg and my lifetime average is up to 45.8 mpg with about 750 miles on the car total. A little over 400 of the 750 miles are EV miles. I can't wait for my car to "break in"! Edit: I just checked my pictures, best regen I have is 3.9 miles on a 23 mile trip where 10 miles was a round trip to drop my girlfriend off at her job and my normal 13 mile commute. My straight commutes to work are all under 2.

I couldn't say it better myself! I appreciate the Prius, even test drove one years ago before I settled on the Corolla, it was just too much of a compromise. (I got the Corolla because of where I was going was not the nicest place and I didn't want to care if something happened to it, I previously had a Celica that was all tricked out and I would have been furious if anything happened to it) I'm a car enthusiast, I wanted something that didn't cost a fortune, had a lot of tech, that was fun to drive, good power, and good mileage. Until the C-Max that didn't exist in a hybrid.

The left side screen where it says "EV" when the car is in electric mode changes to EV+. It's subtle so you may not notice it the first time it happens.

My EV+ is definitely about a half mile, as soon as I turn onto my street it comes on and that is just about a half mile away from my apartment.

You may have to hold the nozzle then pressing the trigger just enough to get the gas flowing. Not fun but it's better than having to reset it multiple times.

The first time I noticed my EV+ come up on the screen I was on a local highway on my way to work, about 5 miles from home. I was completely confused why it popped up there but a mile down the road it disappeared and I forgot about it. On my way home that day it came up in the exact same spot on the local highway but when I was headed in the other direction. I started to get annoyed because I felt like my gps might be way off. Turns out I was just driving passed the dealer where I bought the car and it was recognizing the dealer as a frequent stop! :hysterical: It continued to do it for the first few weeks I owned the car but eventually it did stop coming up EV+. Salsaguy, my EV+ comes on about a half mile from home and work.

I would say it is a combination of the pump and the car. I live in NJ where you cannot pump your own gas and I worked at a gas station for a couple years in high school. Our pumps would do that occasionally, but it typically happened on the same cars. (repeat customers) So the car is definitely part of the equation. The best thing to do is slow the pump down to prevent pressure from building up too fast. If the pump has a low setting then set it there, otherwise you may have to hold the nozzle.

Ah see, we're reading the same thing just looking at it differently. What you're saying is that losing the 7 mpg on a 47 mpg hybrid comes at a greater monetary cost to the owner than a 2 mpg drop in a 24 mpg non-hybrid. I get that, it makes sense, but it wasn't how I was looking at it. What I'm reading, is if you had a car that gets 24 mpg when you drive 'normal' and then there is a variable applied, (cold weather, aggressive driving, freeway speeds, etc...) the car loses some mpg's to that variable which in the example above is a 2 mpg drop to 22 mpg. Take the exact same situation with a hybrid car that gets 47 mpg when you drive 'normal', the same variable will have a greater affect on the hybrid and reduce your mpg by 7 to 40 mpg. So all things equal the hybrid takes the bigger hit because what makes a hybrid so efficient (EV driving & regenerative braking) is negated by the variable. The variables turn a hybrid into more of a regular car. If a regular car was driven by a hyper-miler and then by a nascar driver (for example) you might see a 10 mpg difference. If you did the same thing with a hybrid I bet you could see a 25-35 mpg difference! I'm totally guessing at what the differences in mpg are, I'm just using them to say a hybrid is much more sensitive to variables then a regular car, which is what I believe Wherly & Nair are saying.

Great article! I have a question though, since the Energi gets to go up to 85 mph in EV mode, what is the drop off in mpg for it as it approaches 85 mph? The following excerpt from the article is very telling why a hybrid is so greatly affected by speed. "What happens when you start driving faster? Both hybrids and standard cars require about the same amount of additional power to run at higher speeds. But on the hybrid, the extra power can’t be supplied by the electric motor because most hybrid power­trains don’t operate at high speeds, and there is less energy to recover through regenerative braking on the highway. So the hybrid’s extra speed comes primarily from its internal-combustion engine. In theory, then, if a base Fusion needs 38.5 gallons to drive 1000 miles at test-cycle speeds (1000 miles/26 mpg EPA combined), and a Fusion hybrid needs 21.3 gallons (1000 miles/47 mpg EPA combined), what happens when the speed rises enough to require 20 percent more energy? We can assume that the nonhybrid’s consumption will increase by 20 percent—7.7 gallons—reducing its mileage to 21.6 mpg, a 17-percent drop. The hybrid’s consumption increases by about the same number of gallons, because the hybrid’s electric powertrain largely checks out at higher speeds, resulting in the engine shouldering more of the load. Thus, as a hybrid goes faster, it works its gasoline engine proportionately harder relative to the gas engine in the regular car. In our hypothetical example, the hybrid mileage falls to 34.5 mpg—a much larger, 27-percent reduction. Even if these numbers are rough estimates, you can see how real-world driving can reduce a hybrid’s fuel efficiency by a greater amount. Drive a hybrid more aggressively in the city and the same thing happens. During harder acceleration, most of the extra power comes from the internal-combustion engine because the boost provided by the electric motor is limited. Furthermore, during hard braking, the hybrid benefits from only so much regeneration energy before its system capability is exceeded. In cold weather, there are similar effects, compounded by the fact that batteries store less energy when they’re cold. Also, the hybrid system doesn’t shut down the engine as often because its heat is needed to warm the car’s cabin."

Try setting the pump on the lowest setting, so that it's pumping slower. It's pressure that kicks off the pump, the slower pump speeds don't build up the pressure as much. I live in NJ and for a couple years in high school I had a job pumping gas, whenever a pump would pre-maturely click off on a car I would set it on the lowest setting and usually that would work.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'afford', but what you are saying is exactly why I found the comment in the article so interesting. "falling 2-mpg short in a car that's rated at 24 mpg is roughly the same, in terms of extra fuel consumed, as falling 7-mpg short in a car rated at 47 mpg." So yes, according to the article this is the norm for a hybrid. Edit: For context I'm adding the whole paragraph that I took the above sentence from. "There's also the age-old but often overlooked disclaimer: your mileage does vary. "If you drive 75 mph instead of 65, you would lose about 7 mpg in our new Fusion Hybrid," says Raj Nair, Ford's global product chief, adding that cool weather and break-in miles similarly affect observed economy. Wehrly quips that he's fielded calls from angry drivers wondering why they didn't achieve the ratings while towing trailers. This variance is more obvious in high-mpg cars due to the fact that mileage is inversely related to fuel consumed. That means falling 2-mpg short in a car that's rated at 24 mpg is roughly the same, in terms of extra fuel consumed, as falling 7-mpg short in a car rated at 47 mpg. Of course, neither math nor context play as well on billboard advertisements as a big number."

plus 3, what speeds are you driving on the freeway? I think Arizona has an 85 mph speed limit on some freeways, I'm sure most are 65-75 mph though. The EPA test for highway only goes up to 60 mph, which I agree is not accurate for how people drive on 'freeways' today but it is similar to my drive to work which I almost never go above 55 mph, and my current tank I'm at 52.3 mpg. Outside of driving modestly I do nothing that you can call 'hyper-miling'. Higher speeds make a hybrid like the C-Max effectively a regular car since it can't utilize EV mode much above 62 mph and regular cars get high 30's to 40 mpg on the freeway, the Prius models suffer a similar drop off at speed. The chart below has been making the rounds, but it shows that at speeds up to 60 mph in real world driving the C-Max was able to achieve mpg better than the 47 city & highway rating that Ford gives the car. For the record, I think the current city & highway ratings should be replaced by a chart similar to this but with a thick line to show the upper and lower thresholds for mpg for each speed from 5 to 85 mph, that way an owner will know what they can expect in real world driving.

+3, just throwing this out there, does your normal commute have a lot of highway driving? Based on your data, you are about 2 mpg short of the highway rating of all of your previous cars (based on the fuelly averages). According to the hypothetical in the article this is the equivalent of the 7 mpg lower you are seeing in the hybrid.