valkraider

Our latch broke completely. I would take it in and get it checked...

Today dealer service rep said "I'm beginning to not like your CMax" and I replied: "and you don't even have to make payments on it!"

But the clock in the MFT is not accurate and can get reset by system events. So setting it via the GPS at a predefined intervals such as at vehicle start and once a day - will keep it correct.

The right way to do it is have a couple settings: Automatically Apply Daylight Savings Time [ON] [OFF] Automatically adjust time zone using GPS [ON] [OFF] I do this for a living, I get paid decent money to build systems - time zones, daylight savings times, and GPS have been figured out for decades now... You have to work hard to screw it up!

But if I have to manually set it then its not set by GPS and can get off... The whole point of having it set by GPS is it should always be accurate. Only Ford, I swear - this is like a tragic comedy. No point in GPS time at all if its wrong.

I have a good extended warranty from Ford as well. We'll see if I keep the car long enough to need it...

I have not used IE in a decade or more.

Updated mine. Used Firefox on a Mac to download, no problems. Update was successful and took about 20 minutes. Upload confirmation to Ford was successful. My Energi did the install without needing to be in "drive" mode - maybe because it was plugged in it knew it could stay on. It did make me take out my USB drive with music on it before it would process the install. I have two annoying glitches in the 3.6 system: 1. I can't get it to handle daylight savings time. When set to GPS time it is an hour off. In 2013 we still have trouble with daylight savings time in software? WTF? 2. I can't put in my WiFi password because the keyboard gets greyed out after 10 characters or so. My WiFi password is like 40 characters so I can't connect to WiFi at home (not a big deal since I don't really know what the WiFi connection does for us - Energi models have their own AT&T 3G modem so if I have AT&T signal the car can talk without needing WiFi - but it's a stupid bug that I have no idea how it makes it past the first unit test let alone into production code)

I've bought 16 autos and 6 motorcycles since 1990. I know how this all works. ;) Yes, the dealers have an impact. Not my problem to solve: it says Ford on the sign, it says Ford on their shirts and hats, it says Ford on my repair ticket, Ford on my loan, and Ford on my car.

Oh well. Win some lose some...

And before anyone jumps on me saying I'm just anti-Ford go look at my posting history here. Initially I was a huge advocate for this car, and defended it quite vigorously. Even beyond this website - on other forums and EV blogs and elsewhere. It's the 9 months of broken stuff and dealership nightmares which has burned me.

I can't recommend anyone buy this car. We have about 15k miles and 9 months of ownership. Add another problem with this car... Our hatch latch broke. We knew exactly what happened because we pushed the button, it shut then clicked shut like normal then during the normal little grinding noise as the hatch tightens itself there was a loud bang, and then the hatch indicator light indicated the hatch was not shut. Upon inspection, the hatch was *latched* but it never tightened itself so the car knew it wasn't shut *enough*. Additionally it now rattled real bad - clearly not shut all the way. So we went to the dealer that evening and I made them write up a ticket with acknowledgement that they saw the problem first-hand, we explained what we heard, and we scheduled a repair appointment for a day it two later. They took the car for a day, and when we got the car back the open hatch light was off - but the work order listed the fix as "adjusted hatch". Here comes the fight. Again. Effing Ford, I never should have bought this POs with such crappy customer service backing it. So now we are driving around, the hatch rattles like its just barely hanging on - but hey, the indicator light is off so it must be OK. Any time we are on an incline the hatch won't shut all the way and the open hatch light stays on for a few cycles of open and close on level ground. The hatch sounds like its going to fall off. I call the dealership, let them know what's up, and we have a hard time getting a good appointment (I am going back to the dealer where we bought the car which is 20 miles across the city and very hard to get to during rush hour - but the nearby dealer is the one we had a terrible time with for the 3.5.1 update so we are not going back there). I dropped the car off 4 days ago. Two days ago I got a call saying they "couldn't duplicate the problem". Standard dealership lingo for "customers are idiots and we are lazy". I asked them if they had tried it on an incline. They investigate and sure enough - nope, they hadn't. But they claim they have no hills nearby so they don't know how to test. Then they decide to try it jacking up the front of the car. A day goes by. They finally call me back and I am guessing they were able to duplicate it because they ordered a new hatch latch and a new cover plate (why the cover plate? Did they break the cover while troubleshooting?). So it's still there being worked on. On a side note, ironically the *new* and *revolutionary* part of the car is the drive train - which has been performing well. It is the rest of the car built around the drive train which appears to be crap. Which is funny because I expected to have problems with the EV/Hybrid part being an early adopter. Apparently Ford hasn't figured out 12v systems, door panels, latches, and infotainment yet - not to mention the dealerships haven't figured out that this is how they lose customers for life. Our second and most assuredly our last Ford product. It's gonna be Tesla and VWAG from here on out...

There are no laws yet - but city council is working on them. There aren't any in Oregon code either.

Downtown Portland

Actually, our plan is to ride this CMax out until the Model X arrives hopefully in 2014. By then the supercharger network will be almost nationwide as well as public level2 charging available more places outside of the EV states** - and then we will won't need the H part of the PHEV. ;) If we can get a public charger at the ski resorts the AWD Model X will be fully functional! **For example: we have neighborhoods in Portland with more public chargers than most states (some states don't have any as of this post). I have more *free* public chargers around me than Albuquerque has public chargers *period*.

I'm here. I am just incredibly disenfranchised with Ford and Ford products right now. :( 3.5.1 is more stable. Still glitchy and has some strange UI anomalies but much better than it was - and has not locked up or crashed since the update. However MyFordMobile lost my car as a result of the MFT update and Ford can't figure out why it won't add back. Also my hatch broke last week, and we took it to the dealer we bought from - not the dealer who botched the MFT deal... Unfortunately the dealer we bought from is 20 miles away all the way across town so it's hard to get there during business hours. Sadly, however, they didn't *fix* the broken hatch, they simply adjusted the bumpers until the "open hatch" light went off. The latch itself is still broken and so we'll have to go back again. I want my Jetta TDI back. Despite the good PHEV power train, this car has just been a purely unsatisfying ownership experience. A $35k annoyance. The Ford experiment hasn't been good. Which is sad because there is potential here, if Ford could just act like they care.

And our C-Max listed for $38k. :)

There are Audis for not much more than the C-max. I love Audi, if they had a PHEV Inwouldnt even have considered the C-Max.

You don't like being in Massachusetts?

Lets see how they handle this before I give the name of the dealer. Shit happens. Lets see if they make it right. I just got another call, from a much humbled service advisor - who promises it's done and done - in his words - "done right this time". And I had already contacted Ford Corporate on Friday morning - BEFORE the "faked" update receipt debacle. So if I get any response I will add that in...

Haha, so here is what happened. Aside from maybe the infrastructure problems with the over-the-net update, I had (have?) a huge problem with the dealer. Firstly, the dealer didn't listen to me at all about the difficulties - and waited to start my car until 5 hours after we dropped it off. That explains the first night stay (also they never called us at all, so I had no warning and as such left my wife and daughter stranded in different aces waiting for a husband/father who would not be coming). Day two they had the car half a day, called me in and I got the SD error. They took the car back in the shop, I went back to work. They called me back a couple hours later and said it was fixed. I go in and sure enough it's not giving me the SD error. Want to know why? BECAUSE THEY NEVER DID THE UPDATE. The reason it had the SD error was they put an A4 nav card in the car, but the MFT was still at 3.1.3. Their "fix" was to put an A3 nav card back in the car so the old MFT would stop complaining. I was furious. I had a work log and receipt which stated they had done the update - but was looking at the original 3.1.3 screens. I got out of the car and had them call the manager (this was Friday afternoon and he had already left for the day). I refused to move until he came in. At this point I need to note that I am a contractor in my current job and I lose a lot of money when I have to leave, I am non exempt and lose hourly wages. So far dealing with this dealership issue alone has cost me over $200 in wages. Several minutes later he (the manager) comes screeching into the parking lot, jumps out of his truck and angrily walks up to me. We have a lengthy debate about customer service. Which devolves fairly quickly and he keeps telling me how his dealership is not Ford and he doesn't want me as a customer. He threatens to kick me off his lot and call the police. FINALLY I convince him to take my paperwork back - the paperwork which says the update was completed - and talk with the tech and see what was done. 5 minutes later he comes back, meek and quiet. He apologizes profusely, and acknowledges his tech never did the work and lied in the paperwork. He also caught the service advisor in this one as well. He gets a different guy on it, he says he is going to personally watch and quality control the entire process. He took me in his personal vehicle (a Nissan - not a Ford) to the car rental place. Had them give me an upgraded rental, wave all deposits, and pay for all of my gas. He said he would personally be dealing with me in the future and again was profusely apologizing the entire time. Lets are how this plays out. It looks like Ford *and* this dealership are great big balls of FAIL... But maybe the manager will make it right... We will see.

Your lights were turned off because they probably didn't want them on while in the garage drawing voltage from the computer system. They need to idle the motor a bit in the garage and also probably do a test drive. That would explain the 9 miles and the lost fuel economy.

My update has been a massive failure. Car is still at the dealer, gonna be at least 3 days (5 counting weekend). The tech claims the problem with this update is that it is an online update which streams live from ford over the Internet. If *anything* happens they have to *at least* restart (possibly more if it fails at the wrong time). They said they have had problems with Ford servers too, which don't help the situation. That said I am not exactly confident in the tech or the dealer because they have not exactly been doing a super job nor have they been exactly honest with me - so take their info in the context that they may be making excuses for their own issues.

That last one is my road trip car, for when I need to go farther than the Energi battery can take me...