mikekoz

I think getting a battery charger is a good idea, even if I need a new battery now. I have looked at a bunch on Amazon. Do you, or anybody out there, have any suggestions? Is one any better than the other?

I looked in our glove box and came up empty. I also logged into my Ford account online and did not find any record there, so I am guessing the electrical problems the car was having last year were fixed without replacing the battery. I also found a few videos on YouTube where people had the same problem. Right before it happens, the audio system flakes out. That has happened to me every time this has happened. Some say that this is a problem with the ACM and to pull fuse 79. Apparently, when this happens and the car is turned off, the ACM still draws power from the 12V battery and drains the battery. I had to pull that fuse and another a few times to get the audio system working again, but never realized that the ACM would do this.

We have a 2013 Cmax Energi. The Sync version has not been upgraded on the car in several years. I do not even know if there is an available update. The car can connect to our home wifi, although it seems to have a limit on the length of your wifi password. I would have to do a temp change to our router password to connect the car. My question is, can I even update Sync this way? I do not want to go through the trouble if this is not going to work anyway!

Thanks everybody. I am also going to call them tomorrow to see if they have a record of replacing the battery. I have looked everywhere, but do not see any receipt or paperwork for a battery. Will this charge the battery? I use this to jump start the car. You cannot see them, but it has two jumper cables attached to it on the other end. My guess is no as it has a battery built into it, and it would run down long before 12 hours, if that is what is needed to fully charge the car battery.

We have a 2013 Cmax Energi that is about 6 years old. We bought it while Ford was closing out the 2013's and got a pretty good deal on it. When all this Covid crap started, I stopped driving it and it stayed in the driveway for over 3 months. Last month when I started driving to work a few days a week, the first time I went to start the car it was dead as a doorknob! This has happened a few times, but normally after I jump start it, then drive it a bit, everything returns to normal. I just figured it was dead because I had not driven or started it in 3 months. Last week when I was going to take it to work, it was dead again. I connected our portable charger to it to jump the battery, and it started. I only let it run for about 5 minutes or so as it was really hot outside, and did not drive it. After I disconnected the battery, it went dead again. This morning I went out and the car was dead again, and I put a multitester to the terminals under the hood where I attach the jumper cables to, and it registered 2.1V. After jumping and starting the car, I drive it for about a mile or so, and after turning off the engine, the battery tested at 12.6V. The car started and the electronics seemed to work afterwards also. I will see how it is later today, but my big question is, is our 12V battery going bad? We thought we had it replaced last year, but we cannot find the receipt. Last year we had an issue where the car was dead almost every time I went to start it, and even when it did start, some of the electronics in the car like the audio system and electric windows did not work correctly. I saw on another post how to get to the battery, but apparently to get the date on the battery it has to be removed, and I just do not feel comfortable doing that. Any ideas???

I cannot get into the technical specs of my battery, just the real life effects of age. When our Cmax was 2 years old and under, the car would go 15-24 miles on electric power. The battery gauge on the dash would show 18-24 miles after a fill charge depending on the temperature outside. Now, after owning the car for six years, the gauge will show 8 to 11 miles, and in reality, gets less. I would say the battery craps out after about 6-10 miles. Ford said if the battery goes, they are about $13,000 to replace, which is about half of what we paid for the car, so it would total it. The car still runs great and Ford said it is possible the car would still operate on gas only if the battery completely went out. The cars warranty has expired, but I am not sure how the battery warranty works. I think they told us it was seven years, but not sure if it is 7 years or after so many miles like the rest of the car.

I think maybe this update is supposed to be installed by the dealer!

I just did a search and found the same info you did, so what I downloaded will not work. Does anybody have a link to version 3.10?

I did receive that notification in the mail, but the link it gave me did not have the software there, or I could not find it.

Here is the link I used: https://owner.ford.com/support.html#/categories Supposed to be an update to Sync3. I would assume if the software was not compatible with the vehicle, one would get a message during install stating so! Or maybe not and my audio system goes POOF! ? I just went there logged in under my account, choose my Cmax, and downloaded the files and instructions. I will try the trick with the fuse!

We currently have a 2013 Cmax Energi with no navigation. Over the past few weeks, when playing music using a USB thumb drive or hard drive, I get some sort of error flashing on the screen (Comes up and leaves too quick to read), then the system shuts off, reboots, says it is doing scheduled maintenance, then works OK for about 10-15 minutes before it does it all again. I do not have the problem if nothing is plugged into the USB ports and I am playing the CD player or radio. I just downloaded software update 5.11 and will install it this eve and hope it fixes the the problem, but have any of you seen this? Thanks! Edit: I am going to assume this version should work with our car since the webpage had me put in the vehicle type and year after I logged into Syncmyride! ?

It has about 65500 miles on it. I think the battery warranty is 7 years, so we actually may have a few more years on it now that I think of it. We bought the car in May of 2014.

We have a 2013 Energi. The battery did great until it was just over a year and a half old. The battery capacity started dropping quickly since then. At first I was able to drive 2500 to 3000 miles between fill ups. My avg MPG was about 246! It has been dropping like a rock ever since. The car is about 5 years old now, and my MPG is showing as 108. That is not the only reason for the MPG drop on the dash as I do not fully charge it any more on some nights. The big difference is seen on my route to work, which is the same every day. I only get about 10-12 miles now on all battery when I used to get 18-22. Ford says the battery is not defective so they will not replace it. It will be out of warranty after about 4500 more miles so I hope the Energi can run on just gas. We cannot buy another car.

This happened to our Cmax yesterday. We left in my wife's Escape to go to get a few things, and when we returned, all of the Cmax's windows were open. It was not caused by the key controller hitting something in my pocket as I was nowhere around. The two controllers we have were in the house on top of a dresser and a basket right near the front door. This happened once before. Fortunately, it was not raining on both incidents. I actually had the car at the shop for something else the first time this happened and I told them to please disable that feature, and they could not. I do not keep anything worth stealing in the car when it is at home, but what if we have groceries or other things locked in the car when we are travelling and this happens? And what if it rains after this occurs? Will Ford pay for the internal damage to the car?

If you did that, they might not have given you your check!!! ;)

We bought ours a year ago and have not seen the check.

Thanks for all the information folks! I learned a lot about my car just by posting my question. Too bad Ford could not have been more informative in the article I read about this upgrade before it was available. The upgrade did seem to make a difference, just not in the way I was expecting.

I tried that and it would briefly go into EV mode, but only for a few seconds.

The tire pressure is at 41. I actually initially put them at 48 but thought that was too high. Is that what you keep yours on? Our car has about 15000 miles on it and it is almost a year old.

I think you are missing my point. The upgrade was supposed to make the Cmax work in EV mode up to 85 MPH. On this trip, it did not and worked as it did before the upgrade even on flat terrain and going a steady 70 MPH. Maybe it will not give you 47 MPG because of other factors like speed, aerodynamics, etc, but there was no change.

CD's are superior to MP3s in sound quality. MP3s are compressed files and you lose audio quality. How much depends on the MP3, some you can hardly tell a difference, but they are inferior nevertheless. MP3's are just easier to deal with and you can put tons of them on a USB device, which is why I use them now and rarely use CD's. Actually the CD's I do use, are burned with MP3's!!! ;)

My wife and I just came back from a 130 mile trip, actually 260 miles both ways. About 200 of those miles were on Interstate 40 at 70+ MPH. Before the update, we would get an average MPG on this trip of 36-38. Surprisingly, that did not improve at all. The car would not stay on EV mode for any length of time no matter what I did. This trip is also pretty flat terrrain. It seems to do fine on short trips at faster speeds, but not longer ones. One thing I should mention is that I am normally the one driving the Cmax to work and back, and it is just me in the car with nothing else. This trip had my wife and luggage, laptop, etc in the car also. It was nothing too excessive and I would not think that would make much of a difference. Either way, I am pretty disappointed in the update at this point.

That seems to have worked! I did that before I left work and when I got home yesterday. EV+ kicked in when I got near my workplace this morn. I am enjoying this update! It seems that not only am I getting better mileage at higher speeds, but the battery seems to charge quicker and it is easier to keep the car in EV mode. I am getting more consistant gas mileage at lower speeds also!!

Has anybody noticed if this update improves connectivity or compatibility of various USB devices or MP3 players? The 3.5.1 update made my 160GB iPod almost unusable, but improved USB hard drive and thumb drive functionality. It is working the way I like with my Toshiba 320GB drive and I do not want to mess that up!

Thank you! I will try that. For the life of me though, since that is the case, I do not see how EV+ is going to make a noticable difference in gas mileage. In my case, it is just going to add a half a mile of EV driving a day! :sad: