valkraider

Update: just got the response from Ford. Request denied, and they are sorry but there is nothing they can do about this. I knew buying a Ford would bite me in the ass. I just knew it.

I have initiated a buy-back / replacement process. My issue has been open at the dealership over 5 months. Ford's response every month has been "nothing we can do until the update" but the update never comes. This is plain and simple, Ford refusing to fix the vehicle - which is grounds for lemon law in most states. All I want are the problems fixed. Thus far they refuse to do so. The updated software has existed since last year for almost all the cars Ford makes and has existed since late February for the C-Max. So if they won't patch it they need to replace it.

I get significantly more than 40mpg average in my Energi. I usually am around 46mpg when I burn gasoline. Fuel economy will vary based on driving style and weather. No one really needs a 240v charger for the Energi, it will charge to full in 6 hours. A full charge has been measured - it takes about 8kwh to charge from empty. See the Energi forums for more accurate info. I charge a lot for free and also charge a lot when out and about so I get significantly more than 20 miles per day on EV. Also due to our mountains the larger Energi battery allows me to recoup many more regen miles than possible with the hybrid. I have 6800 miles on the car since December 20. 4500 of them have been EV, 1200 of those due to regen, so 3300 EV miles from the plug.

Dark leather seats in a car maintain the resale value of a car better than any other single option. (I worked as an analyst in Automotive Data for three years prior to this past December) Don't ask me why. It's just what the numbers say. I think cloth or light color leather show wear & tear worse - but that's just my guess.

I couldn't make this up if I tried. I was plugging in at a grocery store tonight and a fellow asked me how much money I spend on electricity. We chatted for a moment and he said that he and his wife were buying a Volt. They looked at the C-max and Fusion Energi models but read about myFordTouch and decided not to go with the Fords because the bad reputation of MFT. I swear it's the *only* thing i dislike about the car! It's a really good car with such a maddingly frustrating interface with the user...

Arkansas oil spill When there is a solar spill it's called "a nice day". (When there is a wind spill we call it "New Mexico")

Privacy glass cannot be an option. The c-max is classified as a "passenger vehicle" and as such has to meet the restrictions for tint. If it had been classified as a "wagon" or "utility vehicle" then they could offer privacy glass from the factory.

My fuelly numbers were awesome until I started skiing.

Lowbar: to be that ignorant is a sin. You never answered my question, but instead dodged it and spouted off magical mumbo jumbo. Can we drill for oil in your yard? One step further, lets drill for, extract, and refine the oil right at your house - if it's so environmentally friendly. Or do you just like destroying someone else's soil, water, air, and over-all health? Also - explain to me how we can "disagree" about the mathematical fact that oil is fungible? Arizona: why does job growth have to be in a finite and dirty energy source? Why can't we grow jobs in renewable and cleaner energy? Lets save the oil for durable plastic production and stop burning it out our tailpipes or wasting it on disposable crap... Did you see the news about the electricity producing bacteria? If we dumped 400billlion dollars a year into domestic renewables we would be off oil in a decade. Also - American soldiers don't die securing wind turbines in the great planes or solar farms in the southwest... I don't have a Valkyrie. I sold it 10 years ago, but wish I had kept it. Best bike ever. The bike in my profile pic is a Triumph. As soon as someone builds a good electric cruiser I will ride it too... :)

I have found that people who say they aren't something often times are. Especially if its followed with a "but".

There is no environmentally conscious way to drill for oil. If you think there is, may we drill in your yard? Also - oil is fungible. It doesn't matter where the drilling occurs, the only way to solve the problem is to stop using it all together.

I love it. Especially when sitting in back. It makes driving in cities, mountains, or forests much better. We took a few hour drive up and down the Columbia Gorge and I, sitting in back, saw things I never had seen before since I could look through the roof! Normally I am focusing on driving or I can't see because I'm in the back seat. :)

I'm so glad to be back out west... :)

I need to head down there and check it out. It was your pics and info which I used to get my chains. Next year I will have some studless traction tires and forgo the hassle...

That's Timberline on Mt. Hood. No, it's not me - I took the pic. I am a skier. :) I was back up today. I bought a spring pass but I am getting my ski legs back in shape - I had been away from the mountains for a couple years while living in the south... I used to get a pass every year to a couple of the ski areas here on Hood - but I had a two season gap. I missed the mountain... Here was my day yesterday when that picture was taken.

Well, they told you wrong - not uncommon for dealers. :) But if you want to get technical it's actually many small batteries wired together for both the hybrid and the Energi (in our case I believe it is a complex arrangement of both series & parallel) - all managed by a special battery management system. All those small individual batteries are mounted together into a single large fairly armored box. The computer controls it so that a charge level above a certain point and the car acts like the Energi with a "big battery" and a charge level below a certain point and the car acts like the hybrid with the "small battery".

1. Model - Energi SEL 2. Lifetime Total Miles Driven - 5230.4 3. Lifetime EV miles driven - 3509.9 4. Percentage drive EV to total - 67.1% 5. Lifetime Regen miles - 901.2 6. Lifetime mpg - 68.2 7. Lifetime brake score - 95% 8. All full lifetime figures - no resets (I took possession at 22miles on odo) We have several road trips and ski season eating in to our EV percentage. :)

My point is that it needs to be considering when thinking about costs. So when considering the price of an Energi, and the cost of fuel and break-even periods - I think it is important to consider the full costs. We can't continue to hide the costs of our decisions. Securing the oil supply chain has a definite cost to the tax-payer. So does environmental remediation. Americans are sheltered from considering those numbers but instead focus on only the retail price of gas at the pump. Every mile driven on electricity reduces those external costs. Even the dirtiest coal powered electricity has less of an environmental impact than petroleum. Electricity generated by solar, or wind, or geothermal has almost no national security costs compared to petroleum. Electricity produced by coal or natural gas also has almost no national security price tag. Nuclear power commands a small national security price tag. Petroleum carries a massive national security cost. That's all I am saying. We can pay for occupations in the Middle East, or we can pay for a bigger battery in the car. I am not creating an ideological or political issue - more a financial one. Everything costs money. If we had to pay the full price of what gasoline actually costs us - we would be paying easily $10 a gallon if not more. But conservatively lets just say that there is a 25% cost to securing and cleaning up the petroleum supply lines. Gasoline goes up almost a dollar a gallon then. Does that make any sense?

But electricity is sourced and produced domestically. Gasoline is not. I and many of my friends and family are veterans. Very few soldiers are injured defending electricity generation.

I have spent full weekends in the car. My only complaints: No good place to put my phone. MyFordTouch sucks. The second complaint should be improved by the new version of MFT now shipping on cars from the factory. It's comfortable and roomy. I have even spent a whole day riding in the back seat. They are really comfy. My Energi is rated at 43mpg combined when in non-electric mode and I regularly exceed that. The best part about my Energi is most every day I never burn gasoline. Only really road trips! :)

Why do you need the "added cost of a charging station"? The car comes with a charger. With the $3751 credit, our Energi was barely more than the Hybrid model. That's not out of the realm of possibility. Before I started skiing every weekend and throwing in some 400 mile trips - I was in the high 80s, low 90s. Without those road trips I would be breaking 100. And gas is only getting more expensive. There are more and more charging stations around too...

I have not had any problems with Nav - mine was built in November. But I also don't use it a ton so I may not be a perfect reference. MFT is so crappy to use that I ignore it unless I really need something...

There's someone using Windows 8?

Again, I don't want to discourage anyone from tinkering and certainly I don't want to seem overly harsh. I just find it highly unlikely that hobbyists with a webcam and a scan gauge we can outsmart a dedicated team of engineers working for years on a power train and performing tests in hundreds of environments with thousands of scenarios using millions of dollars in specialized monitoring equipment with full complete access into every sensor and its source code. There is a reason Ford didn't put a cheap piece of plastic over the front to increase MPG. With bragging rights and lawsuits and all of the related stuff - if it was truly that simple they would have done it. In fact - cheap plastic whatnots are EXACTLY how auto makers like to try and squeeze more dollars of profit out of a car. You honestly think the engineers didn't consider aerodynamics or engine temperature in their design and testing? My bet is that there is a glitch or anomaly which is reducing the effectiveness of the active shutters which may be improved in future models or possibly in current models with software upgrades. Especially as they get more and more data in from real world use.