I bought my C-max in January of this year and sometime in February the battery was dead one night after work. I did talk to the dealer, but thought it might be a fluke, so I didn't do anything. About two months after that it happened again, and this time it went strait to the dealer. They said they found a technical bulletin about "battery discharge" and that a simple computer upgrade would fix it. This time it was about three months inbetween, but it happened again. So it went strait back to the dealer again. They kept it for a week, and couldn't find anything, they pretty much were just hoping it would do it for them while they had it. They then told me that they couldn't do anything else unless it was given to them "in condition" as they call it, and said next time I needed to have it towed to them without jumpstarting. So I picked it up on a Friday, drove it to a weekend getaway, and then it wouldn't start Sunday night to go home. I figured this was good, we could finally resolve it, I arranged for it to be towed to the dealer, everything seemed fine. Then unfortunatly, to put it in neutral to winch it up on the trailer, the tow truck driver said it had to be jumped. I explained that would defeat the purpose for the tow, so we tried to just give it enough to put it in neutral without a full jump, but as soon as we hooked up the portable charger, the car came alive. I drove it to the dealer instead to complain some more, and they said there is a manual relese for the shifter, and pretty much blamed me for not knowing that, and said there is nothing they can do. So naturally I came to the good old interweb, and would like to point out that if you google "Ford C-max" then in the top 5 searches are "C-max dead battery" and "C-max battery issues." Thank you all for your suggestions, I have taken notes to demand that the dealer do some of the things other dealers are doing for you. I haven't read this forum all the way through, 42 pages is a little much, so I apologize if this is duplicated informagtion. I did see that not jumping it and instead having it towed to the dealer, but I didn't see anything about needing the manual release, so I wanted to mention that. I have also called the corporate customer relations line, and gotten a case number started. I told them that it has happened 4 times, and if this happenes again after they try and fix it, they will get a "notice of final repair" as a step in my state's lemon law process. I'll update if anything new develops.
