GaryM

Let me know how it goes at Galpin. I live up in Santa Clarita, but I bought the car down at Galpin and will bring it back there for at least the first few service visits. The Ford dealer up here does not give my any feeling of confidence. We bought a used car from them a few years back and they were awful. They also only had 9 C-Max's in stock when Galpin had over 100 at their storage lot. I have not scheduled anything yet, but I am closing in on the first scheduled service pretty quickly. I figured I will get a works service and the updates at about 5,000 miles. Gary

Since I started this thread, I have done a lot more driving in my C-Max over the passes here in So Cal. If I stay at the 2 bar point, it does charge, and depending on the grade, it will slow a bit. Obviously, if traffic warrants, I drive drive with the traffic, and doing that is not s bad as I would have expected. I was only 1/8 tank in, so the average was still changing fairly easy. Before I got to the pass, the tank average was at 45.8 mpg. It dropped to just about 40 mpg on the way up, staying close to 65 mph, going past 3 bars to do it. The battery was near full, running "High ICE" before I got to the climb. When I got to the peak in the pass (I-210 to I-14 for locals) the battery was down to about 2/3's and the tank average FE had dropped to 42.X, but now I had the big downhill run. I got to the right, slowed to 63 where mines drops into EV and let it coast, I had to ride the brake a few times to keep it slow enough to stay in EV. Before I reached the bottom, the battery was again already fully charged. It does seem to take a bit more past the top of the graph, about a mile worth of flat road at 40 mph. Just about the bottom of the hill is my exit. It is a 270 degree clover leaf, the C-Max handles it at 40 mph with no tire squeal, so I ride the brakes in regen to 40 and hit Eco Cruise. At the bottom of the hill, I was already back into the mid 44 MPG range, and now with a full battery. I have been able to drive in EV alone up to 5 miles from that point as it is nearly dead flat, 40 mph and even a little down grade, plus the over charge. When I finally had to fire up the ICE again, I glanced down and was at 46.3 mpg. As long as you do not race the IC engine hard on the hill climb, and then have to ride friction brakes, it does not really seem to matter how we climb the hill. It only seems to matter how well we can use the potential energy back out coming down the hill to get the energy back out that we put in from the gasoline on the way up. That being said, I got a bit hosed at the end of my last tank going to and from Acton out the I-14. It is just 15 miles, but climbing over 2000 feet on the way there, and my wife insisted the A/C stay running both ways. Again, I had the MPG average for the tank at nearly 47 brfore the climb, but the MPG fell under 42 on the way there, and this was down at only 1/4 tank left, so not much time left to recover it before I had to fill up. On the way back down, I topped the battery very early and the traffic mandated I stay in ICE mode. It was running at 55 mpg and more the whole way down, but it still only got the average MPG back to 45. That tank is my first and only Fuelly entry at 45.3 MPG. I sure hope this next tank is better, but my drive to/from work yesterday to start the tank did not do great. I am just under 45 right now.

Wow Scuba, you still have a 1/4 tank left, go for the 600 club.

I have been playing around a bit too to see how much power is still efficient. It is a bit funny how certain points use energy from the battery while other points are charging the battery. I have not completely figured out what is making this decision. I thought I had it figured out, but then it changed it's mine again on me. If I am not in a hurry, I like to roll it up to at least 10 mph in EV mode, then just roll it up to the second bar to stay with most "normal" traffic here. At the second bar, most of the time, it is charging the battery while accelerating. If I push it to the 2.3 bar area, then it goes to discharge and seems to stay there, but once in a while, I still see it go to charge, all on basically flat ground, and with the SOC graph in about the same place too. But I am really seeing that as long as you do not throw away energy, it does not matter a whole lot. All of our energy is coming from the gasoline, being burned by the engine. Your right foot and the computer decide where the energy is going to go. It can accelerate the car, which changes the gasoline chemical energy into kinetic energy of motion. It can push the car up a hill, this turns the chemical energy into potential energy, stored in the weight at a height. Or it can turn a generator and charge a battery, turning the chemical energy into a stored charge in the battery, a form of chemical energy as well. As long as the engine is not too far out of it's efficiency window, these conversions are all pretty efficient, and the energy can come back out of all of them too. The momentum of the kinetic energy in the car moving is slowly turned into latent heat through the friction of the car's moving parts, the air rushing around the body, and the tires rolling on the ground. Some of it can also be captured back with the regen braking or coasting up a hill to make it into potential energy too. Driving back down a hill brings the potential energy back into kinetic energy by accelerating the car across the ground. All in all, the only real place you throw energy away into heat is when you must resort to the friction brakes. putting the energy of the moving car directly into heat you can never get back. Doing the long light stops will always be the best, but there are those times, you just have to scrub off the speed. Gotta hate those short yellows with photo cop red light cameras. I have to jam the brakes coming to one at least once a day. Actually saw a 25% brake score, YUCK!! On the flip side, I had a bit of fun with a guy driving a Hummer H3. After I out pulled him twice from a start, he rolled down his window and we talked a bit. We "Staged" at another red light and he went for it. I rolled into the power, and again, pulled out over 2 car lengths on him before 50 mph and he had nothing left. He could not believe I get 45+ mpg, and even on that drive with those runs, I still got 44.3 mpg when I turned off the key. Thanks for driving a hybrid, indeed.

Here is my first entry, but I know I will do better. I had to short fill, but I held out to after 500 miles so I could get in. I do not have the new PCM firmware yet, so no EV above 62 and over half of this was highway over 65. The real killer was driving out to Acton and back, it is about 2000 foot of climb over 15 miles, getting mid 20 mpg chugging up, and on the way back, the batteries are topped out 1/4 way down, and we had the A/C blasting too. It dropped from 46.5 average to about 44 on that drive, I got it back up to 45.3 in just 20 more miles of driving careful with the A/C off. 503.2 miles 199.3 miles EV 11.10 gallons 45.3 MPG

YES! very much so, I feel a lot more all electric torque under EV+ if my battery is above 60% or so. I was a bit surprised how hard it pulled doing the left turn into my development, I figured it must have fired the ICE, but it had not, it was just EV+. I had to try it a few more times to be sure. It would be wonderful to have that available for a few seconds each start when the battery is near full, but no, just when close to home.

I just ran my vin number on Etis. It shows I am due for 3 service actions 12M02 SYNC update 13B07 Powertrain calibration 13C02 Headliner head impact protection No letter from Ford yet, but I guess I will be getting one eventually. I was figuring I will see if they can do these at my first oil change. I am at 3600 miles now. I will probably bring it in before 6000 for the first change Does the headliner change effect the headroom left in the car?

Ever since computers started controlling ignition timing, there has been a debate about octane and performance/economy/etc. Before the computer was there, you had to dial in the timing to not knock too bad on whatever fuel you used. Some older cars even had an "octane" knob on the distributor. I used a fully programmable ECU in my turbo conversion on a 1983 Toyota Celica. It was fairly radical for the time, with 9.0 compression and 13 psi of boost. Pumping a real 300+ hp out of 2.4 litres with just one cam and 8 valves. Ignition timing was CRITICAL. and it HAD to run 93 or better octane. Even going to the west coast 91 pinged it so hard I ruin the rings. And that was with backing the timing down and lowering the boost to 11 psi, it would not go lower without a different wastegate. It did have a knock sensor, and I dialed it in to retard timing up to 15 degrees if it kept "hearing" knock. When I tuned it on 93 octane, I dialed it in so the knock retard would just hit 2 degrees. This made it so you barely ever heard even a single ping, but the ECU heard it and dropped that timing within a rotation of the crank. I did a couple hundred hours of data logging to get it right, and it paid off big time. That beast of a car would run 0-60 in under 5 seconds, and it also got 28.5 MPG. So, what does this have to do with the C-Max???? Back the, my programmable ECU was an 8 bit processor running at 2 Mhz, with my couple hundred hours of data logging to dial it in. Todays ECU's have 32 bit processors running in the Ghz range, many times more memory, and the factories spends THOUSANDS of hours dialing in the base maps and very elaborate learning routines that I could not have come close to back in the mid 90's. What does that mean? These ECU's are what make it possible to run 12:1 and higher compression ratios on regular gasoline. Even back in the 90's the factory computers were quite good, and would set an error code if the knock sensor did not show any knock. The base maps do run close to the limits, and not just at full throttle, in fact, the maximum timing advance is under part throttle light load. At higher loads, the timing backs off a lot. Every fuel has a certain burn rate. The ideal timing is when the burn creates the maximum cylinder pressure without detonating with the crank at the correct angle to turn that pressure into torque. Getting it right at light load is where highway fuel economy comes into play. Have the spark a few degrees late, and you lose torque, so you need to burn more fuel for a given amount of power. Even my 2004 Camry 4 banger would ping a tick once in a while at part throttle, going up an incline in 5th gear is one example. Pushing the throttle a bit more, it would stop immediately, because the map had to retard timing at the higher load. All modern ECU's walk a fine line to get the most out of the fuel. In most cases, part throttle efficiency can increase a bit with higher octane fuel, but there is a flip side. Rarely will the increase cover the cost difference. The additives can also reduce the energy a little nulling any economy increase from the greater possible timing advance. Some engines actually run better with a faster burn rate (long stroke and wankel come to mind). Atkinson cycle is a bit of an odd ball. I really do not know how it effects the true cylinder pressure. It obviously creates less compression pressure, but since it still does have the longer expansion, I am sure the timing is still very picky if not more so. I have never tuned one, so I do not know how the burn rate of the fuel will effect it. I have only run regular so far in my C-Max and I have been getting very good mileage, with my last 2 tanks running very close to 46 MPG. If I do decide to try premium, I will have to run at least 2 full tanks through to make sure the learning routines in the ECU can correct for the change. Just going to a different brand took a good 120 miles before my mileage was back to "normal". When I filled up at 7-Eleven instead of my normal Chevron, my MPG went from nearly 47 at the end of the previous tank to 43 for the first 1/8 tank plus with the same driving. But now at the 1/2 tank mark of this same tank, my average is back up to 45.9 with close to 48 on my last few trips. It certainly takes the ECU a bit of time to optimize the fuel in the tank. Just one tank of premium will not tell you much. And switching up and back with never tell you anything. Cheap gas that advertises higher amounts of detergent sure sounds like a bad thing to me. Detergent does not contain energy, it is displacing fuel for soap. I would much rather have clean gasoline and a little detergent to just keep the injectors and valves clean. Would you wash your clothes in mud by just using twice the laundry detergent? "Top Tier" gas vs "Premium" gas is a different discussion. High quality 87 octane is better than 94 octane crap. My fuel ups in the C-Max are so far apart, it is tough to try to test multiple fuels. I will try a few tanks of Shell as that was what my Camry ran best on. Chevron is just the most convenient on my way home and also has a $0.20 per gallon discount when I use my Von's club card. Shell has the same deal if I went to Ralph's, but I do not shop there enough. I have used Sam's club gas in my Camry with decent results, so I may try them as well. Arco was BAD, to the point I would not even try a second tank to let the car try to learn it. The car would surge an buck even while on cruise control on a flat highway. My MPG dropped far more than the cost savings. I only will use them if I can't find any other station and my distance to empty is ZERO.

Take it to the dealer. If it has not been too long, the powertrain computer may have stored a DTC and freeze frame data they can pull and see what it did. It sounds like the computer did not boot up properly. Shutting it off and back on was a re-boot.

In theory, the amount of fuel burned should be very accurately known by the engine computer. Modern EFI fuel injectors work by flowing a very precise amount of fuel per second that the valve is open. They are pulsed for a few milliseconds for each engine cycle. Some engines fire all injectors every rotation, others fire each injector right before the intake stroke. Some newer engines inject directly into the cylinder, but it looks like the C-Max engine still injects into the intake port before the intake valve. So if an injector flows 120 cc/min of fuel, and it is open for 4 minutes in an hour of driving, it injected 480 cc of fuel in that hour. It is all math. These numbers are not guess work, at 2000 rpm, the engine turns one time in 30 ms and it takes about a 2 ms pulse to feed the fuel at cruise load. so the injector is open only 1/15 of the time. that is 4 minutes per hour. There is some small variance in the injectors and the fuel pressure, which will also change the flow rate, but it should hold very constant in any given car. Any variance is corrected for in the engine computer by checking the exhaust gas mixture. All of the ECU's I have worked on use a short term and long term fuel trim to adjust the mixture to account for injector variance as well as the energy content of fuel. Pure gasoline versus gasoline with 10% ethanol will require a different amount of fuel for the same engine load point. The big question is if Ford bothers to calibrate each car to read out the true flow rate of the injectors installed?? My guess is they do not bother as the design of modern fuel injectors is very accurate and if they fall out of range in testing, they will be rejected and not installed in a production car. Very few cars can tune each cylinder individually, so this makes it critical that the 4 injectors all match very closely to each other. It seems to me it would be easier for Ford to make sure all injectors are close enough to work in any random set than to pick sets of 4 that match. That would minimize how far off the true flow is from the calculated ideal.

Just yesterday, I had the bar graph top out with about a half mile of down hill left. I felt no change in the braking and the little regen spinning arrow kept going as well as the up arrow above the battery bar graph. I agree it will not go to 100 % of the true battery capacity, but it sure seems to go a bit past the 70% which is the top of the bar graph. I say this because once I did get to flat ground, I drove in EV mode over a half mile before the first pixel dropped off the top of the bar graph. The other times it just topped out before the bottom of the hill, it was a pixel down in a block on the same route. The difference this time was my drive up the hill was charging more due to traffic pattern, I could not keep it discharging, it kept going to the up arrow on me. Even on the very same stretch of road, it does not always do the same thing. I thought I had figured out the pattern, but then it changes again. On different slopes of up hill, I see it go from using battery to help climb, to neutral, no charge or discharge, and many times it will be in charge as I am climbing the hill. I thought I had found if I go a little slower into the hill and then slightly accelerate while climbing, it would go to discharge, using the battery to help climb and leave the battery lower on the bar graph when I got to the top to start my decent, but the last 2 days it did not work, and it charged. It fully topped out again today, but not by as much, I only made it 3 blocks before the first pixel row dropped off the battery SOC bar graph. I guess that is about as close as I can get to topping out the battery consistently on this route. In an SAE article about the C-Max batteries, I found something interesting. The Hybrid and the Energi versions are not just different amp hour capacity, but also different voltage. That would explain to me more about the top speed difference in electric mode. The Hybrid is 76 cells in series and the Energi is 84 cells in series. These are lithium-ion (nickel-manganese-cobalt oxide) cells which have a nominal voltage of 3.6 per cell for a pack voltage of 273.6 volts for the hybrid and 302.4 volts in the Energi. Given the same volt to speed ratio, if the Energi could do 85, it should still mean the hybrid would be able to do 76 or so. The 62 mph was obviously programmed in, and as we now know, the software can push it up higher.

I am not a Ford engineer, but I am an engineer with a very technical background. I have been observing the behavior of my car since I got it and I have a good grasp of what it is doing and I am really learning how to drive it to make the most of it in my situation. This poor MPG when the IC engine fires up is "normal" with how the C-Max seems to work. When you are running in EV mode, you are getting infinite MPG but all of the energy has to come from the gasoline at some point. It turns out that piston engines are much more efficient with a fair amount of load on the crank. An idling engine is wasting all the fuel just turning the internal drag of the engine. Up to some point, the more power the engine is making, the more efficient it is as the losses from internal drag do not increase much at all with the increase in load. So, what Ford seems to have done in the C-Max is to let you run the batteries down more than most other Hybrids, and then it works the engine harder into the generator to push charge into the HV battery while working the engine in a very efficient load point. The instant MPG while it is doing this does look bad, but when you average that fuel burn with the EV running it comes out very close to the 47 MPG rating.

I will try to post my next tank, I have not been under 500 miles on a tank yet. My last tank was 558 miles and the average on the dash Trip 1 was just over 46 mpg. I think I might be a tick lower this tank, I am at about 250 miles so far, still well above the 1/2 tank mark and the average MPG is at 45.5 right now.

My highway drive to/from work has many hills, up and down all different grades from very subtle to quite steep. I set the Eco Cruise to about 70 mph. The first 3-4 miles I get very poor MPG in the low 20 range with the battery showing charge. At the start of the highway drive, I am typically under 60% and have been as low as 20%, so this state can last even longer. Once the battery gets up to the 80% area, I see the MPG start to climb and bounce around. On a dead level road (hard to find in So Cal) it seems to sir just over 50 MPG to maintain 65-70 mph. I am running the tires at 45-48 psi which is helping here. As the grade changes, I see the battery go from charging to nothing to discharging. It seems to try and keep the gasoline usage fairly constant and use some electric boost to climb slight hills and then draw some from the cars momentum to recharge the battery when you go down the next hill. I see it go into the perfect zen no charge state fairly often, but due to the hills, it can't stay there long. OHHHMMMMM Resistance is the enemy, it is the cause of most of the energy loss between the battery and motor.

From what I have read, it sounds like all that is needed is a fairly small amount of 12 volt power to wake up the computers. I think I will have to try my amp probe and see how much current it pulls from the 12 volt battery when you "start" the car. Once the system is powered up, the DC-DC converter should take over and supply all the 12 volt power needed from the HV battery. I have a jump starter pack with a 17 AH gel pack in it. That can start a conventional engine without a problem, it is probably total overkill for "starting" a C-Max hybrid with a dead 12 volt battery. The 7 AH gel packs used in a computer UPS unit will probably be enough to fire up the electronics. They are much smaller and lighter to carry around. It could even be setup to charge off the accessory power socket with isolation so it won't be sucked down when the car is off.

I have not tried it on my C-Max yet, but on previous cars, namely my 1983 Celica autocross race car, I would put the jack at the balance point. In that car, it was just barely in front of half the wheel base. The C-Max is a bit more nose heavy, so I would guess about a foot in front of middle of the wheel base. To reduce stress on the car, I had a foot long 2x4 with a slot in it that I would place over the body seam and put a floor jack on that, it easily lifted both tires without hurting anything. I have also run mismatched tires on the same axle, both front and rear on cars with ABS and traction control and it has not been a problem. As for ABS, when you roll straight with no acceleration or deceleration, it sees the different speeds and uses that for the base. I tried it on ice and the ABS worked fine. I would assume the traction control does something similar. Worst case would be less accurate control when you do lose traction, but let's face it, if you were driving on a mini spare, you will be taking it easy anyways. The only cars that have an issue with different tire diameters for even low speed careful driving are mechanical limited slip systems. Any speed difference at all will cause the clutches to be constantly slipping and getting hot and even wearing, let alone the pull it will cause, even just coasting. I had an Eagle Talon AWD, it's "mini spare" looked like a frisbie. full diameter, but only 4 inches wide. The different diameter can cause a slight pull under braking, but if you are getting a strong pull, it is more likely an offset problem. The center of the tire is not the same distance from the center of the steering pivot compared to the tire on the other side. There is normally some offset, but since the two sides match, the torque induced in the steering is cancelled when the offsets match. even perfect diameter can cause a strong pull under braking if the offset is off even a half inch. But again, we are talking an emergency spare to get you to a tire shop. Drive a bit slower and carefully with more following distance while on the mini spare. That should be the rule any time and in any car when on a mismatched tire.

My C-Max has started going into EV+ near my home, but it is different depending on what direction I come from. It also will not go into EV+ unless I start from far enough away. I go to the Vons store down the street and it will not go EV+ on the way back home, even though the point it comes on is between the store and my home. It has not added my office yet, but it must be close, I think it said 11 visits? I got stuck on Jury Duty, so I have not been in my office most of this week when it started seeing my home. I have mixed feelings about EV+ right now. When I really use it on the way home and pull the HV Batt down to under 1/4 inch of the batt bar, it can barely get out of my driveway before it has to fire the ICE up. Without using the EV+ I can get down the 2 blocks and not fire the ICE until I have to merge into traffic on the main street. For short trips it seems to be hurting overall. On longer drives, not as much of a difference, hard to tell until I get more miles on it.

I know there is certainly some variance in the pumps and the auto shut off, that is why I try to be consistent when calculating mileage. Here in California, they do have the Dept. of Agriculture go around and do random check of the pump accuracy. The fines are quite big if they are too far out of spec. I think they can't short you by more than 5% but they can give you more by 10%, of course, which side are most stations going to be on?? That being said... I am not even 100 miles into the tank of 7-Eleven gas, and it is already showing, much worse mileage on the dash. I bet it has much more alcohol in it than the Chevron gas I normally use. My favorite in my Camry was always Shell, but they are just not as convenient to get into on my drive to or from work. But in the Camry, it was well worth the little extra distance as the mileage on the Shell was enough better to easily make up for it, and it was also usually a tick cheaper per gallon. The C-Max seems to like the Chevron, but I have not done 2 to 3 tanks in a row of Shell to prove it out. A single fill never works out s it could be a half gallon difference in the tank due to the shut off system tripping earlier or later. I think this was a big part of why the 7-Eleven fill was much less fuel. It also showed that my distance to empty was a bit low right from the start, even before my average started falling. It is looking like 500 miles may be tight on this tank. It was almost 560 on the last one.

I just had to fill up again. This has been my best tank yet on the dashboard, coming in at 558 miles, 12.1 gallons burned, 46.2 mpg. All of my previous fill ups were at Chevron with the Vons card $0.20 per gallon discount. I think they may have nudged their pump accuracy a bit to make up that 20 cents though. Each fill at Chevron took 7% more gas than the dash reported, but this time I was running low so I just filled up at the 7-Eleven station on my way home. I was not even watching the pump, let it hit the stop, then rounded up to a nice round figure. It is possible it did not quite fill it as full, but the gauge still went 2 pixels above the F line on the gas gauge. But it only took 11.76 gallons which works out to 47.4 MPG for an entire tank of all kinds of driving. That even includes 4 sorta drag races to 50 mph against a Hummer H3, and yes, I pulled away every time. The Hummer owner was shocked to see the Hybrid badge and we talked a bit. I may have sold another C-Max for Ford. All in all, I think i am siding with the dashboard being quite accurate. I think both stations were a little off, one high and one low. I will try to remember and use the same pump to fill it next time to get an accurate fill up fuel used as the auto shut off could vary a bit. Needless to say, my vote still stands. This thing really does seem to get 47 MPG without being an eco nut driver. This past tank had a bit of everything, over 120 miles of EV, over 20 miles of regen, freeway running at over 70 mph, stop and go traffic, city driving, and plenty of hills that needed the engine to climb. I revved it well past the first yellow line ever time I got on the freeway, and never upset others in traffic either.

On a few of my trips, I have a very long downhill section and I see the SoC bar graph top out, even filling the extra bump on the top of the battery, and it will still show the "^" charging indicator above the battery SoC bar graph. It would be interesting to have your scan tool watch and see if it really is still putting a bit more into the battery in that situation. It certainly still felt like regen braking and gave a good regen score when I did have to stop at the bottom of the hill. My scan tool only gives trouble codes and if the car is ready for an emissions test, so I can't look at that data.

I have not changed the "Home Light" setting from factory. I will look in the manual and see how to check/change it. I think it is pretty short though, as most times the lights are out fairly quick, and always right away when I do hit the lock button on the remote.

I have had 2 more fill ups since my last MPG post and my C-Max SE Hybrid is not at almost 3,000 miles. I have had several freeway round trips average out over 47 mpg on the dash readout. I have no issues with the rated MPG. On each fill up, I am still seeing a 7% discrepancy though. The car is actually using 7% more fuel than the readout states. So my current tank with just over 300 miles so far (just hit the 1/2 mark) is showing 45.9 mpg which when I fill up will calculate out to about 42.7 mpg and I am not babying the car. I have run the engine right to the yellow line to accelerate onto the freeway and got caught by a light many times and had to brake harder, scoring below 50% a few times, so I know the car will do better. The real mileage killer though is the dreaded short trip. I had to do several drives under 2 miles and unless you can go fully electric, it will not score better than 30 mpg. On one 4 mile trip though, it was dead cold before going there, and I got a fair 35 mpg. The car only sat 10 minutes, so it was still warm with over 50% in the HV battery. I got 86 mpg on the return trip, and this was basically level ground at 50 mph, so it was able to go electric most of the way. I do not call it cheating at all, as the battery level was still as high if not higher after the drive. That works out to a city MPG average of 49.8, even with my 7% error (it takes 7% more fuel to fill than the dash says I used) it is a real 46.3 mpg. On a longer trip I have had my round trips average well over 50 mpg indicated, several times. The real fun one is taking my kids to Tae Kwon Do. It is UP hill to get there, so I get a bad 25 mpg going, but I get over 200 mpg back, unless I get caught at lights. I did even get one run of full electric 999.9 mpg. With a little down hill help, I have topped 5 miles in EV mode. The C-Max is a very different beast from the Prius. The performance of the C-Max does make it very easy to burn more fuel if you drive it harder. In the Prius, you have to work to drive it hard enough to make it suck more fuel. I did a few trips in my wife's Prius C the other day, and the dash really get's mad at you if you even try to stay with any traffic flow. It was pegged at "POWER" on the energy usage meter, and I was less than 1/2 down on the accelerator and the traffic went running away from me, and the car gave me a 5% acceleration score. OUCH!! bad driver! Of course, one of my normal round trip in the C did show 61 mpg on the dash. It is a much smaller lighter car on skinny tires and only 75% of the engine size, so I would EXPECT it to do that much better than the Max. The funny thing is, after a full tank, my average in the C-Max is better than my wife is getting in her Prius C. Admittedly, I do drive a bit more "Eco" than my wife in day to day traffic.

I am just at 3,000 miles and have not had any battery issue yet, but I did notice something odd. I had a few things to take in from the car, so I did not have a hand free for the key. I was able to close the doors and brought all my stuff in the house. I went back out to lock the car and noticed the corner marker lights were still lit. I decided to leave it unlocked to see, and it had to be over 15 minutes before I finally gave in and clicked the remote lock, and sure enough, the lights went off in a few seconds. Most times when I park, I see the marker lights go out shortly after the last door is closed, so this is not normal. If someone parked in a garage and didn't lock the car, it would not take long for the marker lights to draw the battery down flat.

Living in southern California, I have to drive over a lot of hills. I asked this in existing threads, but I have not gotten any answers to it. Is there any good trick anyone has found to keep the C-Max from trying to charge the battery when climbing a long hill? On many trip I have to go over 2 mountain passes with close to 1,000 feet of climb and then descend.I have tried getting to the hill with both high and low charge in the HV battery, but once on the climb, it seems to ALWAYS work the IC engine very hard and charge the battery when it should be using electric to help climb the hill and deplete the battery. I want to get to the top of the hill with the lowest possible battery, because I know I will be on the down hill for a while and every time now it tops up the battery at only half way down and I have to start using engine or friction braking to maintain legal speed. When I do not have traffic around me, I have been able to use a sort of pulse and glide to make it use ICE + EV to give me acceleration up the hill, but it still goes into charge, slowing the car during the uphill glide. I want free wheel glide and battery assist to climb the hill. It would be nice to have a button like the Chevy Volt to make it use battery power. Having it only use the throttle seems to work very well on ost flatter roads, but it really does not understand steeper hills very well at all. I am still on my 6th tank since I bought the car. I get well over 400 miles and the gauge is still between 1/8 and 1/4 when I fill up. Early in the tank the distance to empty added to my trip since fill adds up to just over 600 miles, but it falls to about 550 or so when I get to 1/4 tank remaining. The fuel consumed is low by 7%, meaning I am actually burning 7% more than the screen says, assuming the 2 gas stations I use are accurate, and since they both agreed, I tend to trust that more then the dash readout. My current trip is just over 46 mpg, factor in the 7% more fuel actually burned and I am at a real 43 mpg for over 250 miles of mixed highway / city driving. Not too bad, but I think I could do even better with a good hill technique. Gary

My car was built in Feb. Sat at the dealer a while and got 120 miles of test drives on it before I bought it 3 weeks ago. Is there any way to tell what version it is running now? Do I have the 1.0 or can I tell if it has the 3.5.1 update?