TheXym

I drove from Montrose to Reading and back yesterday, almost entirely on highway. Kept the highway eco cruise at 67 whenever possible and ended up with 47.6 mpg for the round trip (almost 300 miles since I had a side trip to see my parents on the way back).

Cool. I'm not a big fan of baseball but my dad is a huge Phillies fan and took me to the 1980 and 1983 World Series so I have a soft spot for them.

Hmm... A Shelby C-max GT350? That would be interesting. (My father in law has a '65 Shelby which is a SWEET ride). Sounds like something for the photoshop wizards, lol.

The winter package has heated seats which helps tremendously as far as personal warmth goes. The 1-1.5 mile mark seems about right as far as getting the temp up for the EV to kick in, but grill covers should help with that. My lifetime average dropped to about 37.8 after the winter, about 14000 total miles. It was at 42.1 before the winter hit. Your commute is long enough that the engine will warm up enough to get the EV to kick in for most of it, whereas mine I may get .2-.3 miles of EV out of the approx. 2 mile trip. If the school wasn't at the top of a long slope, I'd get more. The Energi wasn't an option for me due to there being no garage on my property and no real room to build one. I think your mileage will be better than mine. Since it started warming up in April, I reset one of the trip odometers and it is at 44.8 for the last roughly 8300 miles. Part of the drop was my wife using it semiregularly and NOT driving it like a hybrid, but she has gotten much better when she thinks about it since mid July so there shouldn't be as much dropoff. Lifetime is up to 41.2, and I have 2 600 mile tanks since May. Detroit, huh? HUGE Wings fan here. :)

Great point about the non-paved roads, Laurel. I agree with the deep snow, hence my point about the clearance. If it's too deep I stay home, but I'm right in town and stay off the unpaved roads normally. The "ranch" terrain is much different than the in town and main roads to the bigger cities. OP, you mentioned you go from the suburbs to the city. How is the winter road maintenance?

I'm in northeast PA, close to the NY border. The mileage took a big hit in the winter, due to the lack of engine warm up time, and the significant decrease in longer trips. My work commute is too short to really get it warmed up. (Though grill covers will help). We had our worst winter this past year (14 snow days where I teach). I can say the Cmax is pretty darn good in the snow as long as it isn't too deep that your ground clearance is insufficient. The traction control was great. I went out a couple times to test the car to prepare myself in case of a bad situation and I couldn't get it to fishtail when I tried. In terms of climbing, I think the higher torque of the EV mode helps. My older vehicles, I needed some momentum to make the turn up my hill if it was icy and untreated, thr Cmax was no problems. I'm just over 23K miles and no problems other than the standard Ford recalls. It's a 2013 SE with the winter package and the power lift and ambient lights and backup sensors.

Sounds like she's "getting" the C-max. :). Hopefully it wasn't a fluke.

Give her time. Eventually she may come around. My wife obliterated the mileage on quite a few tanks for me, but being persistent and supportive seems to be working. The other day (first real trip since my 634 tank), she had an 80 mile run at 46.2 mpg, so try to be positive and maybe show a few pointers. :)

Congrats! Great job, 54.5 is huge!

I went approx. 40 miles today after the miles to empty read zero. As long as you pay attention to the fuel used (assuming you filled up completely when you got gas and reset the trip meter), and remember the Cmax has a 13.5 gallon tank, you should be ok. I ended up with approx. 12.75 gallons used after the zero miles remaining excursion this morning. I have also noticed the fluctuations in miles remaining, especially when I've finished a very long EV run (2+ miles uninterrupted) and concur that it uses the histogram to estimate.

I'm considering the grill covers, but since my house does not have a garage, I don't think the pan and block heaters will work for me (the only outside outlet on the house is on the side opposite my driveway).

I just finished off my second 600+ tank. The first was back in May, and I attached the pic in that post, but I'll do it here as well. That was approx May 20th. Today I just set a new personal best, and my wife seems to have started trying to hypermile a bit more. I mentioned this in the high mpg thread, but she had it last night and maintained the mileage at 49.6 at the time for about a 15 mile trip. I'm glad I warned her about the low mileage remaining, but not to worry due to the size of the tank. It got home with 5 miles left. I dropped her off at work on the way to leaving my hometown of Montrose (where there are 4 Cmaxes, not bad for a small town of about 1500) to the church where I'm music director in Tunkhannock (23.2 miles one way). I normally get in the low 60's on the way down, and the low 40's coming back. Today I hit 89.2 (I didn't think to snap a pic of it) on the way down, due to being able to slow up enough and stay in EV mode on some climbs that normally burn gas due to being stuck behind water trucks. I made the full round trip with room to spare, though I'll confess to having about a 1/2 gallon of gas in a small gas can just in case (I was going to top it off for the lawnmower when I filled up to take full advantage of the gas discount I'd earned from groceries). Over the course of this tank, a trip to Vestal, NY was only 55 mpg instead of my typical 62-66 due to pushing the speed a bit so my wife could make an appointment after getting out of work late. I surprised myself on a couple trips, getting much better than I'd expected. Thanks to Jus-a-Cmax for his tips. I recently read the one about using some battery to accelerate faster if you have a high battery SOC to burn less gas, and I think that made the difference. The car is a stock 2013 SE. Fuel was 87 octane, 10% ethanol. Since it started warming up in PA in April, I reset one of the trip mileages, and that's at 44.7 over 8400+ miles. Lifetime is at 41.1 (winter killed me here, it was the worst yet, 14 snow days from teaching! The mileage bottomed out at approx 37.2). My work drive is approx. 2 miles one way, which I'm sure doesn't help in the winter since the engine doesn't warm up. I guess this makes my C-max a lemon too, lol,

I just finished off my best tank to date, but I had it peak at 50.0 mpg after I was able to get an 89.2 mpg run to Tunkhannock from my hometown of Montrose (both towns in PA). For once the water trucks actually helped me by allowing me to slow up on the hills enough to stay in EV mode for multiple climbs that normally required some gas burning (I typically get in the low 60's on the way there, low 40's on the way back). The drive from my house to the church where I am the music director is 23.2 miles one way. When I left this morning, I dropped my wife off at work, and she was worried since she had used it the night before (and actually hypermiled it, maintaining the tank avg at 49.6) and saw the mileage remaining was in single digits, but I had warned her about it and said the tank capacity was fine, and I'd topped off when I'd done the last fill up. Leaving town was 6 miles remaining, and I made it back from the round trip before refilling. :rockon:

I bought the Ford extended warranty w/tires and rims in 7/13. No big problems yet, but I've replaced a tire already (there was a screw in the road). I figure with the horrible shape of the roads around here due to the gas trucks (I live in the NE PA Marcellus Shale area) taking over roads that weren't built to handle the volume of traffic and the weight of large numbers of oversized vehicles the tires/rims alone are going to offset the cost.