Jus-A-CMax

Welcome to the CMax family. Wait till summer when you roll down the windows and cruise in EV and put some nice music, all you hear is the music. I did this driving along Manhattan Beach - the noise from the sea, some nice slack guitar from Maxine, it very peaceful and no brrrrh, brrrrh, brrrh noise like a gas engine. Enjoy your CMax :)

An incorrectly applied 13b07 shows similarly bad MPGs - so OP, fill us in on the history of your CMax. The fix is to have the dealer look at it and they can re-apply. Remember, this update is really finicky - dealers have to use LAN vs Wifi to apply this update and a few owners here got these issues and they did not know about it initially. Wind plays a huge part, as I found out driving back from Vegas to LA in literally a sand storm (in parts), be lucky to eco cruise 38MPG like those Consumer Report boyz were reporting. I recently did a 200 mile round trip, 50MPG at 65 to 75 mph freeway speeds, P&G and eco-cruise. but 44MPG is about right for eco, no frills easy peasy driving at speed. I had 1 passenger and 2 sets of golf club as load this time :)

48F this morning. First warm up, takes about 400 yards and about 40-50 seconds 0 to about 25 mph in private road. Charging batts due to slopeage and engine so my SOC goes from 1/3 to 3/4 or 2/3, depending. I start in "D" and then drop it to "L", gas it to 20 mph and then go up to "D" after that. Drive in EV for about 5 sec on main road and then I hit the ICE once I get past the speed bumps and that trigger the 2nd warmup, takes about 10 to 15 seconds I sometimes may or may not trigger a 3rd cycle, that one takes about 10 seconds but if I tap the brakes, it will go back to EV. As for gas consumed, if it above 60F, I would use 0.03 before Maxine's ICE is up to running temp. Colder days, it may go to 0.04 and really cold days, it may go to 0.05-0.06. Overall, the lower the morning temp, the worse the MPG as even with 48F my once mighty 80+ MPG drive to work is now hovering around the mid to high 70s and I don't expect to get any better as the LA winter comes in and we go on the winter blend gas. I have a grill cover over the main large grill. Top and bottom vents remain open.

Even the high end car manufacturers is not immune to :spend: Monday cars, I had one from Jaguar. Trying paying that sort of money. If I had a negative attitude, I would not have bought 2 more Jaguars afterward but people are people - they wanna get mad. Now, I did have OUTSTANDING service from Galpin Jaguar throughout, even our 4th car - our :airquote: Found On Rubbish Dump CMax :flyaway: is a Galpin - goes to show what a huge difference a dealer can make to your attitude and where you buy from. Good luck to all the people trading back their cars, c'est la vie.

I did not have a hybrid until the CMax so I was completely unaware of road inclination - unless they were flat or steep, thats it. Its funny how atuned to the road you become once you really get into hypermiling and finding FE routes with lil or no traffic (even in LA, these roads do exists & if you're lucky, NO pot holes).

Welcome to the CMax family SPL Tech. Enjoy the quality refinements and as a former hybrid owner, my expectation would be to see you in the 600+ Miles CMax Club soon ;)

The CMax is super sensitive to any inclines, roads that look flat and are not - you can feel it in the car. It takes a while to adjust to but as I am a golfer, I've seen all optical illusions where the balls break up slope when optically it looks downhill, or flat when the ball tell you its definitely not with a big swerve...welcome to slopeage where you roll a BIG white metal object vs a teenie weenie one ;)

Grill covers help a ton in the cold and the only caution I have against the covers - don't go climbing steep, long grades. It will trigger the ICE overheat warning, even if the temp outside is 29F (I have done this climbing Sherman grade, north of Bishop, CA). There are 2 covers - one for the main and one for the lower and I did not cover the lower grill (kept the main grill cover) and I was able to climb fine. Its a compromise. If there are no long grades, then having full covers are not an issue. The grill covers can be self made, or just get them from ptjones.

So...Mrs.HannahWCU could be the next potential 600+ CMax Club member then, yeah ;) Congratz on the FE :rockon:

I had 44 for a while, 50 was way better imho. I don't see any loss in traction, even in the snow since I've driven to Mammoth many times at those psi, and at full load as well.

You'll luv the SEL (sorry to pwn SE owners)..and then when you really get to know the car to get the MPGs, you'll :flirt: the CMax. I regularly do 800s per tank, all city, in my SEL unless I drive some freeway. Oh. max the psi in the tires to squeeze out the MPGs, car rolls much better. Yeah, the ride quality is sacrificed a wee bit, but think of it as "sports mode"... :skateboard:

Thats pretty good for those speeds but I assume this is all eco-cruise? For me, highway is Los Angeles and speed varies between 40 and 55 (if I recall), I stuck to the speed limit or a tad above, I had traffic behind me since its single carriageway. For the Freeway, I varied between 60 to 68 because of P&G or I would throw it into eco-cruise if I knew I am up slope.

Its so funny....my wifey was here in my office when we read your post. She smiled at your post - she is a wonderful packer indeed.

...lol, the Energi would give my wifey packing fits...its bad enuf the final kitchen sink would not fit, but to drop the bathtub would be shocker... :lol: I am sooo dead :flyaway:

Cool, a fellow SoCal Max driver. Yeah, going up is bear but its oh so sweet to come down in EV and full batts. Santa Ynez is a really nice area, luv the scenery and winery.

SDM - thats the wifey, she knows how to pack. I'm jus the driver... ;)

My wife and I decided to go camping in the Santa Ynez valley with a group of friends. This is the 1st time we have taken Maxine (our CMax) to the camp ground. Prior to this, the Jaguar with the Yakima Box on the top had the job. Loading up Maxine, we found that it had a little less (about a large bag) smaller storage space than the 2007 Jaguar VandenPlas with the large Yakima box. While the wifey was clearly dissapointed she could not take that final kitchen sink ;) ...thank goodness she never reads my posts.... :dance: it was still amazing a wee car like the CMax has -jus about- as much room as a luxurious long wheel base limousine with an extra large storage box. So we packed Maxine to the hilt... The drive to the camp ground was freeway and highways. Maxine is a STELLAR city girl, her MPGs are high. However, its been a while (well, last winter really) that we really stressed Maxine with a full load and freeway conditions. Getting to the camp ground was about 100 miles one way. 118 freeway down to Simi, cut through the Los Angeles Highway along the agricultural farmlands to Ventura and then take the 101 Freewy north and then at Santa Barbara, cut north up through the San Marco Pass and down to the camp ground. I did pretty good MPGs (57.4MPGs over 87 miles) from our house to McDees at Santa Barbara, had a brief pitstop for the wifey and I got some McDee fries. Then the dreaded climb over the San Marcos Pass, got tailed by a CHP for a wee while and then CalTrans had road work where they made the road into a single lane. I hated this, as it was up hill and a ton of cars behind me - all eager to race up the hill...thank you CalTrans...and finally got to the camp ground with 51.1MPG over 101 miles. Burnt a ton of gas climbing. Luckily, the wifey managed to avoid pressing the all time MPG killer....the AC. Thank you weather for the cool mid morning drive. Got to the camp ground, and we unloaded and set up the Taj Mahal. Here are some pics of Maxine fully loaded: Parked in front of our Coleman Taj Mahal: Some fine Tri Tip for dinner with friends: What is camping without a nice log fire? We more or less stayed around the camp ground but I did get a chance to drive around the area with some horse failities and dirt road. Saw some NICE sunsets and cool mountains... The weekend, like all weekends, was jus WAY TOO SHORT and soon it was time to head home. This time, the temps were mid 80s and the AC was on all the way home...climb up San Marcos Pass again but thankfully, CalTrans was not there. This was the final MPG and miles when I pulled into the garage: I sux. ...but the sad part was that 1/3 of my tank was gone and all I had left was tbe boring drive to work. But as our CMax Hypermiling Family know, MPGs are fun...and my personal challenge this time was to see how much I could squeeze out of the remaining 2/3 tank which was all city driving and I finished with this: Ok...not quite 800 mile tank but thats almost impossible with 1/3 of the tank all gone. However, I was surprised by the 778 miles as my calculations predicted a 750-760 tank....but Maxine is full of suprises to finish at 778 to the Costco gas. Amazing how lil she drinks gas.... :victory: So, it is possible to go camping, drive the freeway, use AC, go climb Pass, back to the work driving and stil post a huge tank in a car rated as 40MPG combined. Would anyone like some jam with that Toast, anyone? :)

Get her to watch Dr.Who ala TARDIS :rockon:

ok guys - friendly reminder to get back to the original topic at hand but feel free to start a new thread or piggy back off an existing thread on negative split mode discussions....:)

wait - r u saying in the energi it is not recharging the larger battery to its full capacity when downhilling? I always thought that the energi had a huge advantage when downhilling a super long grade to build & store more charge than a regular CMax. also in a negative split mode, the cmax is supersensitive to the slope of the road and will charge or use the batts on what, to the eye, appears to be a perfectly flat road. it was also so much better and higher in the ice high mpg mode aka negative split mode, when the limiter was on at 64mph. the 13b07 change to push the EV to 85mph seems to reduce the effectiveness of the ice high mpg, based on what i am seeing.

..try a Matrix boyz. I had one of those while Maxine was in the shop Nov-Dec 2013. That lil matrix could only manage 300 a mile tank, thats with hypermiling it. Handled like crap, gutless but what do u expect from a $25 a day car rental. Glad I was able to get Maxine back.

I just saw the ad...not bad, not bad. Then I hear the CMax does 522 EPA miles....huh..... ;) God, I :flirt: this car :rockon:

Fully loaded?!? No way in hell can I get that high going up the hill to Mammoth with that long elevation change over the trip. Coming back I can score > 50 MPG at load since I seem to average 46MPG overall for the round trip (and I score 38-40 MPG average going up). Thats the thing, these MPG numbers needs to be put in context as there are big influences to the final MPG numbers - both internal ala load/AC and external such as elevation, traffic.

AE, AE, AE....u need some sl*ppin...c'mon.....now you need to change your dead battery poll vote from zero to: 1. ;)

Nope, I thought of that and I verified GPS with the S4, it was working. Thus far, everything is back to normal.