valkraider

Maybe it does. You have made a couple runs with a webcam. There is an infinite combination of variables which could exist, and you have tested maybe 5. It is entirely possible that speed is in fact used depending on the circumstances and that you just never matched those circumstances. Or possibly there is a glitch, where speed is *supposed* to be used but maybe is being ignored erroneously.

Since you mention "plug-in trips" I am assuming you have an Energi... (The mobile site privilege viewing doesn't show car model even if you have put it in your profile). The Energi is not rated at 47mpg. The Energi is rated: Combined: 43 MPG City: 44 MPG Highway: 41 MPG http://fueleconomy.gov/m/m.do?action=vehicles&id=33336

Yes, it can. It only takes different hardware, software, and wiring. That costs a couple thousand dollars. No one has ever said it wasn't possible. Just that it would not be worth it for the extra mile per gallon. You might spend $1000 to $2000 trying to make this work and void all your warranties and get an extra mile a day of electric range. Or you could spend the extra $5000 and get then Energi before the tax credits go away, and take $3751 off that for a net increase of $1300.

Hey now, some of the best places in the country are "inner city". It's where I prefer to live.

I think that was the point trying to be made. Hard to sense emotion in text. Everywhere has a bias (myself included). If Rupert Murdoch wants to spin stuff - it's his money. I would like people to know, however, that they do spin stuff. Just because FOX said it doesn't make it anymore reliable than if Huffington Post said it. Generally we should always consider the source. I only trust Jon Stewart. ;)

There is nothing to back up. The bias of News Corp. is well established. The point is that just as PlugInCars.com is biased in support of EVs, things produced by News Corp. are likely to be biased against EVs. It's a normal part of society and human nature. We should make every effort to look at more than one source to help get to the truth hidden beneath the bias. It does no one any good to stubbornly cling to politics. Instead lets rise above it and just be honest with eachother!

Probably not cheap or easy, at least to sell to public...

To be fair and honest, both my link and the one darrelld just posted are both to sites who cater to an EV audience. They both cite and link to their sources. While they are clearly biased and defensive - their math and their points stand on their own. The WSJ article could have been written asking important questions about how we can get cleaner and more efficient, and where we should be focusing our energy in. Instead the WSJ article framed it in a way which was clearly not interested in progress - but rather intended more as link-bait for both outraged EV enthusiasts and anti-EV readers. Here is the truth: Electricity and its storage+transmission is getting cleaner and more renewable, at a rapid pace. The ability to utilize it for transportation is advancing incredibly fast. Petroleum is getting harder, more expensive, and more environmentally risky to find while the petroleum and internal combustion technology is certainly improving but it's also very mature so is improving at a much lower rate than grid powered vehicles. Interestingly, this weekend while wandering in Portland I found a garage which was on the register of historic places. It was originally "Rose City Electric Automobile Garage". It is one of the two first car dealerships built in Portland. It sold and serviced electric vehicles back in 1910. It was built at its location because two DC powered streetcar lines intersected there and the garage had ample John power DC electricity. We abandoned electric vehicles shortly thereafter. Along with streetcars. (There is a theory of conspiracy between Goodyear, Standard Oil, and General Motors). Imagine where we would be if we had 100 years of refining and developing the electric vehicle instead of the petroleum powered vehicles...

I'm just being a smart-ass. ;) The Energi is essentially the Hybrid with a "second battery". :)

-double post, ignore this-

If it was truly inexpensive, simple and easy, Ford would do it - sell it as an accessory for 300% markup - and spin it as some sort of PR. But it's not. Kits to "add a charger" to the regular Prius (which didn't even have LiIon batteries) cost several thousands of dollars and involve some serious hacking. All in all - if it "seems simple" but wasn't done there was probably a reason the OEM didn't do it in the first place. All OEMs want bragging rights so there has to be a reason it wasn't incorporated to begin with.

I was not even drafting and one time a semi drove over a road gator (rubber from a blowout) and it flew up into the air. I was a ways back and had enough time to hit my brakes. I was in a VW New beetle and it took out my lower grille and fog lights. If I had been drafting it probably would have gone through the windhshield, and if I had been drafting on my motorcycle I would have been dead. When behind a semi you can't see the road ahead. Even if you never hit the semi, you could hit misc. road debris. I have come across chairs, window air conditioners, bicycles, car parts, and all other kinds of debris that I steered around safely - because I could see them...

There is a second battery option!

I agree they should have easier configuration options, even if its for a minority of consumers. For example - I would have liked them to at least offer the HID headlights and LED lighting packages like they have in the European C-Max. I know they would be expensive on top of an already expensive car - but why not at least offer them? But I do have this question: What does leather have to do with hot sun? Plastic heats up just as much. I have lived in Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, Texas, New Mexico, and California. Plenty of leather in those places. I have family in Arizona, and have worked on contract in Georgia and Missouri. Plenty of heat in those places too. Heck, most convertible vehicles I have owned were equipped with leather (my last one was black leather - and that was Mississippi). I have never heard of a person complaining about a leather steering wheel due to heat. They *all* suck in the heat. :) Here is my own personal thoughts on the leather steering wheel and vegan issue. I am fairly far from vegan. I consider vegetables to be what food eats. I also feel (personal opinion) that vegans tend to be overly political about their choices. I find irony in the fact that there is a problem with a leather steering wheel but not a problem with an entire supply chain for automobiles and gasoline which devastates entire Eco-systems. It's bad to have a leather steering wheel but OK to drive a car? Makes no sense to me. But that's all personal choice, and we all have different rows to hoe. But there is no reason Ford shouldn't make the options available - they should sell as many cars as they can... I am not sure I consider it a "major" fail though...

It's been that way for us in every car we have owned since they started making them seal up tight. It's also noticeable with sunroofs that open. Certain positions cause cavitation in the cabin air that hurts. Cracking another window helps immensely... It gets rid of the pressure.

We have a rule, there can never be only one window open. The air pressure fluctuation hurts my head.... :) Always have to at least crack a second window.

Plug-in Cars .com has a good article about the controversy over the numbers

The long tail is unknown yet because the cars are so new. But if after a Leaf battery has driven 150,000 miles it is taken out and then used for another 10 years as a way to store solar or wind power or used as an UPS unit for a small business, then we reduce that carbon footprint even more. A battery with 60% of its original capacity is not too good for a car but still holds a lot of juice. Consider the relatively small Energi battery. It is 7.6Kw. It could still hold 5Kw after its life in a car. That's like an hour or two of the average American household... We could put banks of old EV batteries in the bases of windmills to absorb excess production and then provide the juice in times of reduced production, reducing the fluctuations of wind power. We could take 10 old Energi batteries and make a bank roughly the size of a freezer that could store solar electricity from all day and use it all night allowing houses to operate completely off grid... Lots of possibilities....

I wonder why they didn't just use the same 4 button panel but with a blank for park-assist. Very strange. There are some strange UI choices in these cars. For example - why is there a "doors are locked" indicator light on the MFT physical controls that looks like a button but isn't a button? These oddities abound in the C-max...

In the Energi (at least the SEL with MFM and park assist) the button is on the center console, below the climate controls. Second button from the right, has what looks like a "P" sneezing on a traffic cone, with the word "OFF". That disables the parking sensors. From left to right mine goes: Passenger Airbag indicator (looks like a button but isn't - it's just a light) EV mode button Rear defrost button (Empty gap) Fuel door button Auto Park assist button Parking sensor disable button Rear hatch button

cablesforless.com

It's like a half a mile. Who is moving at interstate speeds half a mile from their house?

I'm not giving EVs a free pass. Just saying that one study does not a fact make. ;) Everything we produce has serious impacts, and we should absolutely understand them. But overly politicizing the issue with titles like "green cars dirty little secret" helps nothing. It's sensationalist journalism designed to sell to a population contingent who is already on the defensive about the perceived threats to their way of life. Change can be scary to some. Yes, battery production does use raw materials. So does gasoline production. The actual numbers are harder to nail down.

But those numbers are debatable. Not everyone who has studied it agree. I found at least three studies which dispute the one the original poster is talking about. That's my point. The studies will say whatever you want them to...

At the risk of feeding the troll: I see your one study and raise you a few more studies which say the opposite. First, since you didn't link to the article - here it is: http://m.us.wsj.com/articles/a/SB10001424127887324128504578346913994914472 Now - for differing studies and articles: http://m.good.is/posts/so-are-electric-cars-better-batteries-and-all/ http://www.treehugger.com/cars/life-cycle-analysis-of-electric-car-shows-battery-has-only-minor-impact.html http://www.treehugger.com/cars/life-cycle-analysis-compares-footprint-of-gas-and-electric-passenger-cars.html http://m.inhabitat.com/inhabitat/#!/entry/life-cycle-assessment-proves-electric-vehicles-are-a-cleaner-choice,509c30d3d7fc7b567050a9d9 (A couple of those links reference a single study but come at it with different angles) So, here is actually an article which references the same study as the WSJ article mentioned by the original post: http://m.theglobeandmail.com/globe-drive/green-driving/news-and-notes/are-electric-vehicles-bad-for-the-environment/article4618416/ There are some good insights in there. For example, the manufacture of advanced batteries is improving every day and in comparison to the automobile is really a young industry. So the impact of battery production stands to continually get more efficient as the industry matures while the internal combustion industry has had 100 years of maturation. Or for example the fact that our electrical grid is getting cleaner and more efficient every year. Internal combustion burns petroleum every mile no matter what, but every incremental improvement to our electrical grid instantly makes every single electric car cleaner and more efficient. Or the fact that batteries can be used long after they are no longer in the car, and work is just beginning to make use of old EV batteries which can't power a car but could still be used to store wind or solar energy, or as a business or home UPS, or for emergency systems. Or the fact that battery recycling is getting more and more efficient and cleaner every day? Or the fact that no one in the petroleum industry likes to admit that simply refining a gallon of gasoline consumes the same amount of electricity as driving an electric car 12 to 15 miles? Now consider the fact that electricity is produced domestically, regionally, and locally. That is a big difference too. So no one has a true 100% handle on the numbers exactly. We could toss figures back and forth all day. But comparing a mature 100 year old industry to a young brand new industry is tough. There is a lot of room for growth and improvement in battery tech, and not everyone agrees on the hard numbers anyway. So yeah - that should be enough to kick off some debate. :)