valkraider

I can't stand heat. I'll keep the cold. :)

Cost. LED are expensive. They have a lot of money sunk into the C-Max hybrid and Energi platform. All the R&D and tooling, etc etc. To keep the price competitive with other products on the market they trimmed costs wherever possible. I bet there are LED versions on the first model refresh. I wish they had offered them as available options, I would have paid for them...

I have read about people with proximity keys who have gotten stranded. Say a wife or friend gives someone a ride to work and the someone has the key. They get out and go in to work while the other person without the key drives off in the car thinking all is OK until they stop somewhere else and are then stranded because the key is back with the person at work...

If his desk is close enough to the car, he can drive the car all day anywhere he wants until the gas runs out. Once the car is started it doesn't require the key until you turn it off again. Although I would hope it would give you a warning. Maybe I will play with it tomorrow and see how it plays out...

First thing I do is disconnect that speaker and if the car complains wire an equivalent resistor in line so it thinks there is a speaker there. Stupidest law ever. Legislated noise pollution...

It's not a sound for blind people. If so then it would only protect blind people every now and then and only for 30 seconds after starting the vehicle. Also, if it was for blind people then what would be the point of making the noise when the car is in Park, not moving, and in the case of my Energi - plugged in to the wall?

Actually, it will take several months to get a Model S. They are not even expected to get through their Pre-orders until late spring, early summer.

Apple maps has worked just fine for me. I do get annoyed by the two finger rotate 3D tendency... I prefer Google Maps app as well. Bing maps is actually one of my favorite things Microsoft does (Bing is also my default search engine). I wish they made an app. Google has a good 6 year mapping head start on Apple and the advantage of a desktop version where they get practice too. I bet Apple releases a desktop version of maps. My biggest complaint is I have submitted corrections for some local place names at least 30 times but they never get updated. I didn't say Apple could do no wrong. I said MyFordTouch is typical Microsoft crap. I am not alone. I didn't invent that idea. Ford reliability is taking a beating because of it. Long long before I ever bought my Ford....

Yeah, my wife always hated the van. Until she wanted to move junk. ;) It was a 2008. Very nice, also very long. Just too much vehicle for our daily uses...

Adair, Your font selection makes your posts hard to read on a phone...

I had almost the opposite experience of that "The Street" article... I found the volt slow, noisy, and rough. The plastics were hard and annoying. The engine was overly buzzy. The car felt very cramped. That's why I chose the Ford. I have not experienced what they call the herky jerky low speeds, and I have 900 all electric miles on my Energi. Also - they spend a couple paragraphs blaming the Energi because they are incapable of using menus. You set a shortcut to a radio station simply be tuning to the radio station then holding the preset you want to set for about a second. It beeps and the preset is set. Almost every car I have had for a decade has worked similar to this, across several manufacturers. How hard is that? He chides the leaf&vine display, but never bothered to change it? I do agree, it is strange Ford won't allow you to see the lifetime values except when you turn off the car. The menus can be set to display all kinds of information. It seems like they took the default and then complained the whole time. Also, our fuel economy is much higher than theirs - and it is winter time here, I think it has only been over 50 once since we got the car and it has been below 40 for a few weeks now. This past week 27 to 34. My economy isn't superb but it's better than theirs... All in all we just didn't like the Volt. To each their own....

Direct links to the manual do not work. You have to go the motor craft site and use the drop downs to select the car, then the manual can be downloaded.

Averaging 32 in a 2009 Venza would be pretty impressive: http://fueleconomy.gov/feg/PowerSearch.do?action=noform&path=1&year1=2009&year2=2009&make=Toyota&model=Venza&srchtyp=ymm

Interface: I am not complaining about the design, I am complaining about its efficiency and usability. For example, why does the currently playing track info not show up in the Entertainment quadrant while in the home screen? Make the Sirius logos smaller Anderson justified then put the track info there. Ironically the current track info shows up in the bottom left entertainment button when I am in the phone or NAV or climate screens - but is nowhere to be found while in the home screen... Why does the entire climate quadrant just show the temp setting? Why not show the fan speed and direction settings... When I am in the NAV screen the phone name in the top left phone button is all messed up, the text and the signal strength indicator are overlaid on top of each other. In the audio settings under the "occupancy mode" there are three buttons "Driver", "All Seats", and "Rear". Only the first two work, the "Rear" button is non-functional (not visually disabled though - it just doesn't respond to being pressed). A lot of wordings don't clearly describe what is being set. All around there could be more clear labeling or context sensitive help available. Under wireless Internet settings when trying to connect to my home access point the password entry keyboard randomly works or doesn't work. There are other quirks I could find if I wanted to go on and on.... My XBox has similar strange oddities. It's frustrating because the products are otherwise good products...

Our Dodge grand caravan was below EPA rating as well. It was EPA 17/22 and we got about 15/17. True highway speeds (above 70) we got 15 or less. It was like driving a brick. In my VW TDIs I could exceed EPA but it when driving the way they do in the EPA test. If I drove the way we drive normally I would be pretty consistently below EPA. My truck gets 75% of EPA numbers, even worse with the city numbers usually.

Who needs to be an apple fanboy to recognize the well documented crap which is MFT - and says "powered by Microsoft". Microsoft auto has always been crap. Even if they do get stability up - the interface is ridiculously poorly designed. I love my XBOX but its incredibly hard to do some things which are simple on every platform. Sony and Nintendo make it easy to take my money, Microsoft makes me jump through hoops. I have been working in IT since 1991. I know Microsoft products well. Currently I am involved with an incredibly painful project upgrading enterprise Microsoft products - and one of our most painful points is the Microsoft consultants themselves. Microsoft has been terrible for almost every point of my career. Although Windows 7 is the best Windows they have ever made. I wish Windows 8 and windows phone 8 didn't suck so bad because the market needs someone other than Apple and Google to be a significant player just for competition sake. I did not make up the problems with MFT. It says powered by Microsoft. If they don't want to be blamed they should take their name off the product. Ford already gets blame, as can be seen by reliability and satisfaction ratings the past 2 years since MFT debuted.

Also? The forum "search" sometimes works wonders. Or maybe browsing a bit too. Almost all the darn questions have been answered.

MFT is crap, typical Microsoft. Hopefully it will get better but for now we are plagued with these problems... I keep a reboot stick in my console: http://outofmytouch.com/reboot.html

I learned something while playing with tuners for my truck. I burned more fuel playing with and testing the tunes than I will ever save with the slight increases in fuel economy...

DRLs with normal lights can suck as much as 1% of the fuel economy of a vehicle. The way around that is energy efficient LED lights, but those are more costly. I think that Ford is trying to remain cost competitive within the hybrid/PHEV market so they have had to cut as many price corners as possible to save money to pay for the expensive R&D and electrical components.

DRLs waste fuel, especially in electrified vehicles. Since Ford left out LEDs to save money I bet they left out DRLs to save fuel.

Cars are not sealed tight enough that we would pass out or die... Otherwise people would die when sitting in parked cars. No, vent mode allows the airflow from driving to push air. At 70mph it can be as strong as having the fan on. Around town it is just enough fresh air to prevent window fogging... :) Older cars had actual vents that would open, often in the floorboard or side panel behind the firewall.

In Portland, OR and surrounding area: Courtesy Ford in east Portland, 123nd & Halsey I have not had as good a buying experience anywhere else with any manufacturer. Talk to Ben Humphries... Tell him you read about it here...