Noah Harbinger

I'm talking about internal damage inside one or more of the cells. The amount of energy stored in a fully-charged Lithium Ion battery can be spectacular, if released in a short period of time, in an uncontrolled manner. The 787 was Mulally's baby, remember…

Me too! But everyone else I know swears the smaller red beetles are the June Bugs, and that the giant green ones are Fruit Beetles.

I would imagine the greatest risk would be the battery getting badly damaged and short-circuiting, resulting in a fire or explosion. I would not worry at all about the battery flying loose and physically impacting a passenger.

From your headline I assumed you were saying the Toyota brand outsold the Ford brand - which would have surprised me, since they have been a fair ways back this year. But Ford Motor Company vs. Toyota Motor Company, yeah, Lexus outsells Lincoln by enough to make up the gap.

OK this is just creepy: I saw TWO identical Candy Blue C-Max Hybrid SELs in ONE DAY - plus another one yesterday. I've been checking the license places, all three are different cars! Soon enough EVERY CAR WILL BE A CANDY BLUE C-MAX HYBRID SEL!

The turning radius does annoy me a fair bit, mainly when parking. I should go back to that "favorite/least favorite" thread and substitute that in. (Although the door handle creaking does bother me more often, it's less significant…)

Well, the battery's capacity naturally provides a limit for how long it can run with the engine off - whereas the Energi would be able to run much further.

I found an interesting simulation of a CVT hybrid transmission (albeit from the Prius, but the same principles apply). From that, you can extrapolate a) why all-electric drive is ever limited for any reason other than power demand exceeding available power, and b) what exactly this update entails. The manual describes it as "to protect the transmission hardware", and from this simulation it's clear that means the speed of the "generator" motor (the small motor connected to the Sun of the planetary gearset) would exceed a preset limit. So this update means one of a) Ford was overly conservative in determining that limit previously, b) The non-Energi was 'decontented' for marketing purposes on a feature where there was no actual reason to do so, or c) Ford is pushing the generator motor beyond what it was designed for be, to overcome fuel economy complaints… or some combination of all three.

WAIT A SECOND, are you telling me the Fusion's cruise control displays the set speed? The image from the first post:

I've got a CARB vehicle and ETIS shows the update for me.

If I understand correctly, it engages the friction brakes to replace the regenerative braking.

The high-voltage battery is physically disconnected from the car by a relay when the engine is not on, and the car is not in accessory mode. The 12-volt relay controls the circuitry necessary to reconnect the high-voltage battery when you want to begin driving. I believe this is done for safety reasons - if someone needed to work on the car, the high-voltage connection would be insanely lethal if connected.

I was actually informed that my office's ambient temperature was 78 - it is much higher than I would have guessed. But it is still comfortable.

What was her name again? Susana Barnum?

Ford cautions that you should not depend on the existence of any fuel reserve. I and probably every reasonable person join them in echoing that caution.

Although one's initial reaction might be that a higher temperature, like 78, might sound insanely high, AC at a higher temperature will feel cooler than outside air at that same temperature, because the humidity will be lower.

I bet dealers love having "Oh, well, YOU KNOW COMPUTERS" as an excuse for anything that goes wrong…

When I left my C-Max to get some lot damage repaired a mere week after buying it (I didn't notice it until after I'd signed on the dotted line), I got a Chevy Equinox for a rental. While there are some good things to be said about it, the shifting was painfully lurchy. Having a 6 speed transmission, it went through 4 shifts between 0 and 35 - I was beginning to dread stoplights. Also I will admit that I kept instinctively reached to push the start button every single time I got in. Remember, I had driven the C-Max for less than a week! It is certainly easy to get used to.

And not just Ford, but every mainline manufacturer is relying heavily on it. It's time to make the full 5-cycle test mandatory for every test vehicle.

I forget where, but one of the articles describing the update listed more aggressive use of grille shutters as one of the changes. Service managers are hired by the dealers, I've seen them vary from pure salespeople to individuals who know and can explain every detail. It's one of those things where the dealer can really change your experience for the good or the bad.

The adjustment factor is supposed to be based on some other vehicle, though - I wonder what vehicle they're using as the basis for the adjustment?

Once upon a time you used to literally shine UV light on solid-state memory to zero it out before updating it. The term Flash has stuck ever since, and been re-purposed for any solid-state writable memory.

I thought it was intuitive since that was exactly how my old physical-button radio worked. I still can't remember how I figured out how to move to an HD subchannel, fortunately I preset the ones I'm interested in back when I was figuring it out with the manual in front of me. Groove Salad (warning: it auto-downloads a .pls playlist file, so it might auto-play in your iTunes) is my main go-to station, it's carried on a subchannel of the local PBS station.

I use it to carry growlers back from breweries. They don't roll around in there :)

My understanding from a writeup I read of a the Volt (which has a similar system) is that with a plug-in hybrid, many more users will go days/weeks between uses of the gasoline engine, so it is more important to prevent the evaporation of some of the more volatile components of the gasoline, so that it will remain usable longer.