kostby

Just noticed two on Sunday in Lebanon, Indiana - a white C with Virginia tags and a roof rack in a neighbor's driveway, and a Ruby Red C, twice on State Road 39. I was so astonished to see another one that I didn't notice details, like SE or SEL or Energi SEL. (Of course I don't count the White Platinum 2014 SE that's been, uh, 'resting' in the nearest dealer's showroom since February...)

Not about Ford, but my favorite story about being 'assertive' with a car dealer was when the girlfriend of a co-worker took her bright red 1-month-old 1990 Honda Prelude Si 4WS back to the dealership for the first service. A dealership employee managed to get her brand new car severely t-boned right in front of the dealership that afternoon. The dealership owner apologized profusely and said they would fix her car 'good as new'. She crawled over the owner's desk to get right in his face and tell him that they absolutely owed her a new car. And she got it! A few weeks later, the sales manager's wife got an almost-new bright red Honda Prelude Si 4WS... EDIT: Here's a YouTube video of the 4WS feature (4-wheel-steering in action):

A good illustration of what happens to a hot liquid-cooled high-performance battery when the coolant leaks out. I'm sure Elon Musk and Tesla will be demonized for this fire too. Had it been a gasoline-powered vehicle, the whole street could have been on fire as gas sprayed out of the back half of what's left of the car when it broke in half.

http://www.ncdoj.gov/consumer/automobiles/lemon-law.aspx

Sorry to hear of your cancer diagnosis. Prayers for you, your family, and your medical team as you undergo treatment. I'm sure you don't want sympathy, you want solutions to your ongoing car problems. As ptjones says, an inexpensive jumper battery pack can eliminate the uncertainty of the 12v battery being discharged and the car not starting. Mine was less than $50, about the cost of one fill-up, or one tow-in by my local service station. Yes, I'm being proactive. We've had a dead battery twice, and never been "stranded", because we were prepared. Prior to purchasing the jumper battery, I've always carried jumper cables and a few simple tools (screwdriver, pliers, flashlight, and now cell phone) in my car for all the 45 years I've been driving. Most often I used my cables to help other folks with a dead battery and no cables. No, I'm not letting Ford off the hook. Ford engineers and the dealers absolutely need to properly diagnose and fix all the problems affecting a small number of vehicles, including yours. Yes, I understand that even 99.99% reliability means nothing to you if it is your car is the 0.01 percent that won't start when you need it. I sincerely wish you well as you pursue your buyback case with Ford.

What about the (high-voltage battery) cooling fan in the rear of the car? I've heard it turn on and run for maybe 5 minutes on our C-MAX hours after the car was last driven.

Thanks. Yes, I saw that thread about two months ago as I read my way through all the threads on every topic from the very start of the forum. Water intrusion of the coolant pump connector could account for the most recent dead battery event. What doesn't make sense is that IF water intrusion caused our most recent dead battery, it has only caused a dead battery to our car once, yet I've used the same car wash 3 times, doing the same handheld spray routine using the same solutions (prewash, soap, 'clear coat protectant', and spot-free rinse, for the same amount of time ($5 for 14 minutes), and I drove the car for about 20 miles at interstate speeds in a torrential rainstorm, without any apparent (negative) effect on the 12v battery state of charge in the days following any of those other events. In addition, the car was washed at the dealership the day we took delivery, and didn't suffer the first dead battery until 3 weeks after that event. So I still suspect the base radio/CD/SYNC system in our car.

What is interesting is that NO ONE in this admittedly unscientific poll thread has ever specifically mention having the RADIO replaced. I believe there are two or three people who have mentioned it in other battery threads. Doing some quick math, 59 of the 99 responses here (~60%!) in this thread involve the C-MAX SE with either Equipment Group 200A (the Standard equipment) or Group 201A (Power lift gate, Reverse Sensing System, and Ambient Lighting). Every other Equipment Group for the SE and all the SEL Equipment Groups have SYNC with MyFordTOUCH, not MyFord SYNC. Narrowing it a bit further, every SEL has the Ambient Lighting and Reverse Sensing system standard, so if that was the root of the problem, there would logically be far more SEL owners responding. Since the 200A group has no options, besides the parts common to ALL C-MAX hybrids: engine, 12 v and hybrid batteries, steering, brakes, windows, door locks, and the hybrid system itself, the ONE common hardware device to both most-mentioned vehicles is… (drumroll please) The standard AM/FM/CD player with Ford Sync. The one with all the buttons. Hmmmm.

Was someone mowing near the parking area? (Sorry the pic is so much smaller. I'm almost out of allotted attachment space.) I see a potential point of impact, like a rock flung by a commercial mowing rig. Try Safelite auto glass. Even if your auto policy covers it as a Comprehensive claim, after deductible, you're probably still be on the hook for most, if not all of the cost. :sad:

7-2-2014 1250pm chart and data update: As Bro1999 reported, Ford sold 988 C-MAX Energi's, a 117% increase over June 2013, the 3rd best monthly sales ever, and the best numbers since October 2013. June C-MAX Hybrid sales calc'd at 1952 were 13th best month, still down 32% from year-ago sales, and down about 7% from the prior month. Ford doesn't usually talk about number of selling days in the month like GM does, but it was two fewer than June 2013. The increases in both C-MAX Hybrid (782 to 988) and Fusion Hybrid sales from 1342 to 1939 also comes when sales of Volt dropped from 3117 to 2347, sales of the Toyota Prius PHV dropped from 2692 to 1571, so Ford might be taking market share away from similarly priced PHV's. The luxury-priced Tesla sales increased form 1000 to 1800. EDIT 10-02-2014 CHARTS AND SPREADSHEETS DELETED BECAUSE EACH NEW REPORT CONTAINS ALL PRIOR MONTHS DATA

Really? We are not the victims of some grand Ford conspiracy. If anything, this forum has encouraged an increasing number of potential buyers to select the models and equipment groups with the fewest reported problems as they arrange their PURCHASE of a C-MAX. What the Ford C-MAX Hybrid Forum has accomplished is far more significant - established a real sense of community among a hugely diverse group of people all across North America who share one common interest: C-MAX. This is ABSOLUTELY NOT a place where the disgruntled owners come only to rant and rave and claim ownership of their victimhood. Yes, these forums have chronicled the experiences, both positive and negative, of hundreds of people buying and leasing a C-MAX. This forum is a living body of knowledge of the collective owners and would-be owners that is helping many of us everyday by providing tips and advice (often delivered with a dose of laughter) about how to get the most from our hybrids, as well as sharing our experiences, both the good and the bad. Yes, some owners have serious, on-going issues with their cars. As do a small number of owners of every mass-produced vehicle. And thankfully, there are established rules and processes already in place to protect the rights of both the buyers and the manufacturer. Yes, some owners have successfully pursued Ford buybacks or lemon-law replacements. And by sharing their experiences here, have undoubtedly helped others achieve positive outcomes. C-MAX issues have been and are being addressed by Ford on a continuing basis. No, maybe not as quickly as everyone would like, but the issues ARE being discovered, investigated, AND CORRECTED on a case-by-case basis. The difficulty in diagnosing and fixing these issues is that, unlike the GM ignition-switch recalls, there is not just one single part or supplier or design or assembly-line practice that is causing every reported problem. If "it" was easy to fix, "it" would be fixed already. The situation for any C-MAX owner, even a disgruntled one, is far from hopeless. Ford is still building the C-MAX. They have not and are not abandoning either the car or the owners. And there are still legal mechanisms in place. No, I'm not a Ford employee, nor did I ever work for Ford, and they're not paying me to write this. I just hate to see someone mis-characterize their apparently bad ownership experience as being typical of every C-MAX owner.

And we had our second DOA event today at 1575.5 miles, in just over 90 days of ownership of our 2013 SE with Equipment Group 201A. (First DOA was April 17th, 2014, Post #1185 in this thread on 04-18-2014. April 16th WAS a full moon!) I went to the garage about 1:30 this afternoon to open the rear hatch, and the car was completely dead. Hadn't driven the car since about 10 pm last Sunday evening, roughly 40 hours. Since the first event in April, I've been keeping a daily log of trip length (if any), whether or not we locked it when parking it in the garage, rain, car washes, and other observations that might be important in terms of isolating one or more causes. This DOA was similar circumstances to the first time: the car was used recently for only for about a dozen local round trips of 5 miles or less in the last 10 days, not driven every day, and with no extended highway travel. Since the first event, we'd driven the car on round trips of 30 miles or more at least once every week. Most recently was brief night time trip home, obviously with headlights on. I did turn on the ambient lighting (and adjusted the color), because it was the first time in about 6 weeks that we'd driven it at night. I washed the car at a self-wash on Saturday. I noticed that the HVB gauge showed a completely empty indicator on Sunday during one short trip, but had returned to normal the next leg of the journey. That's the 4th time I've recorded it, and it seems to be a potential 'early warning' indicator that the 12v battery is slowly losing charge. The last two times it happened, we drove the car on longer trips of 20 or more miles the next day. Since ours is a 2013 SE that sat for nearly a year (April 10 2013 to March 26 2014) and only accumulated 133 miles, it's not that surprising that the 12 volt battery could be weaker than one kept fully-charged all that time. I haven't opened the rear compartment to see if the higher-capacity 12v battery was installed. When we took delivery, the car was current on advisories and recalls, and we need the recently-announced 14S04, the restraints re-programming. When I schedule the service visit, I'll have them test the battery too, and address a couple of minor trim weatherstrip and trim I've noticed. I immediately attached the (Stanley) back-up battery to the under-hood power points, and the car came alive immediately when I turned the ignition to 'ON'. 1. The radio was on. (It had not been used the last time the car was driven.) 2. The instrument panel dimmer display came up, set to full brightness. (I usually have it at the dimmest setting). 3. "Start fault" indicated in yellow, even though no attempt had been made to actually START the car. Cleared it with 'OK' button. 4. Fan and AC came on. AC was definitely OFF the last time the car was driven. 5. Clock showed 1:55 pm, 06-30-2014, about 23 1/2 hours behind real time. I reset it to the current date and time without any problems. 6. HVB display showed about 1/8 charge. It had been at about 3/8 when it was parked. 7. When I turned the key to 'start' position, the ICE came on immediately, at high idle. Dropped to low idle once it had run for about 2 minutes. ICE continued to run for about 5 minutes, then shut off. I turned off power to the Stanley back-up battery. I didn't really think the 12-volt battery was fully charged, but I wanted to try a few things. 8. I was waxing the car, so I opened and closed the (power) rear hatch several times. The last time I closed it, apparently it did not have enough battery power to fully close AND lock. When I attempted to lock the car, I got two very weak 'beeps' from the horn, indicating a door or hatch was not closed completely. I checked the hatch and closed it. By this time, the 12-volt battery did not have enough juice to beep the horn at full strength, so I turned on power from the back-up battery again and re-locked again. Normal horn volume this time. I finished waxing the car and put the car on the electric charger. It has a high/start mode providing up to 200 amps and low setting. On the low setting, gauge showed the 12-volt battery was accepting about 30 amps, so it was pretty well discharged. 3 hours later, the trickle charger meter was now showing 0, so the 12-volt battery is fully charged again. On to the next adventure...

2940 Combined C-MAX Hybrid and C-MAX Energi sales for June 2014 An increase of 107 combined units over May 2014, and best sales month since August 2013. https://media.ford.com/content/dam/fordmedia/North%20America/US/2014/07/01/june2014sales.pdf That's a 12.1% decrease from the 3341 combined units sold a year ago during June 2013, but an increase of 3.7% over May 2014 combined sales in a month when Ford and Lincoln combined US retail sales decreased 5.8% and fleet sales decreased by 7%. I'll update the monthly chart when I get the Hybrid/Energi sales breakout tomorrow (7/2/2014) as posted on http://insideevs.com/monthly-plug-in-sales-scorecard/

#7 is so good that the name's been in use for over 70 years: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1941_Chevrolet_Carryall_Suburban.jpg and more recently http://www.clubcar.com/us/en/commercial/utility-4x2/carryall-500.html BMW and Mercedes have often used 3-digit numbers, so why not Ford? Let's see now, 5 passengers, 5 doors, 6 years to pay, so how about the Ford 556, Powerful Integrated Transportation Answer Of course owners of a troublesome model will just refer to it as a P.I.T.A. :banghead:

The closest most suburban "sport utility vehicles" ever get to off-roading is accidentally driving on the lawn while backing out of the driveway. (Pardon me, soccer dads, and no-offense-intended, soccer-moms, but) manufacturers and consumers have co-opted the "SUV" moniker to mean 'Soccer-mom Utility Vehicle'. While SUV's originally began with truck heritage, (original International Harvester Scout 1961, Ford Bronco 1966, Chevy Blazer 1969) today there are countless all-wheel-drive vehicles dubbed "SUV's" Then there are 4WD vehicles, primarily trucks designed for serious sustained off-road use. Even Ford's Explorer, originally of the largest-selling truck-based SUV's, has been built on a unibody chassis since 2011. All-Wheel-Drive (as opposed to 4-Wheel-Drive) is marketed primarily as a desirable feature for the ability to navigate slippery snowy roads, regardless of the vehicle "type". Subaru especially excels in this market niche without any true "trucks" in the lineup. No wonder Ford uses "Multi-Activity-Vehicle' to describe the C-MAX. I'm sure the term "MAV" makes Mark Cuban proud! From 2002 to 2012, the Toyota Matrix was available with All Wheel Drive, and a bit more ground clearance than front-wheel-drive versions. Years ago, one of my students shared a great truth of 4-wheel-drive vehicles: "4WD doesn't keep you from getting stuck. It lets you get stuck in worse places."

And the next plug-in Prius to October 2016... From Automotive news (Link follows below)June 30, 2014 - 12:01 am ETTOKYO -- Toyota Motor Corp. has delayed the start of production for the fourth-generation Prius from next spring until December 2015, as engineers sweat the details of a new vehicle architecture and the company's next-generation hybrid system. Toyota initially targeted a spring manufacturing launch for the next iteration of its hallmark hybrid, code-named 690A. That has been pushed back to December, people familiar with the matter say. The Prius confirmation vehicle, a prototype typically built 12 months before Job 1 to ensure performance, is scheduled for around November 2014. Production of the plug-in version is expected to begin in October 2016. Reasons for the roughly half-year delay are murky. One source said engineers were tweaking the car to ensure maximum fuel economy, possibly adjusting body and chassis issues. A Toyota spokesman said the company could not comment on future product plans. (article continues) http://www.autonews.com/article/20140630/OEM05/306309966/next-gen-prius-launch-delayed-6-months Reaction from GreenCarReports: http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1093025_2015-toyota-prius-launch-pushed-back-six-months-report So, if true, this gives Ford the opportunity to...

The 'leaves or compass' choice is for those of us SE owners without a nav/audio upgrade. There are other display options for the right-hand screen if you have Sync with MyFordTouch, standard on the SEL models.

Welcome! We're only 90 days into ownership ourselves, but this site is an amazing resource for all things C-MAX hybrid. If you have 'spare' time to spend online, it's very enlightening to go back to through older topics. Often threads stray quite far from the original subject, but they still offer great, helpful information.

+100 Please don't confuse those high-speed Prii drivers flyers with facts. They bought a Prius ferheavenssake! They're automatically and singlehandedly saving the planet, ending global warming, reducing Uhmurica's reliance on furrin awhll, and ensuring the world has a never-ending supply of cuddly kittens. :love_shower: Driving 85mph in the Carpool lane is their little earthly reward for being such a good person!

Lowrider C, anyone? Eibach has lowering springs to drop it another ~30mm (1.18 inches) if you want to lower the car a bit more and make all that side-skirt ground-effects stuff work even better. http://www.ford-accessories.co.uk/productgrouplisting.htm?marketId=GB&languageId=en&modelId=6&categoryId=39&articleNameId=575 Disclaimer: They're european C-MAX spring kits, but a fully opted British Grand C-MAX Titanium minimum published kerb weight is 1634kg/~3602lbs, almost exactly the North American C-MAX Hybrid published curb weight, at 3607lb. http://carleasingmadesimple.com/business-car-leasing/ford/grand-c-max/kerb-weight/ http://www.ford.com/cars/cmax/specifications/capacities

Not a dull white at all, Oxford is a very bright shiny white, just without any metallic sparkle or 'pearl' effect. And Oxford White is easier to match color and touch-up dings, I've read. That said, I love our Platinum White C-MAX, but we got such a deeply discounted price on a 2013 SE (in March 2014) that extra cost of the color wasn't really a factor.

Undeniable Fact of Life #7294: Car salespeople are paid to move inventory, not to spend time studying brochures and memorizing specs. The salespeople who DO take the time to learn about the products they sell, mostly do it on their own time, because their time on the sales floor is far too valuable to 'waste' studying spec sheets and model comparisons. Knowledgeable salespeople appeal to the "high-information" consumers (like us) who also spend lots of time researching the cars, but that's probably still only 2 in 10 buyers. The other 8 out of 10 buy their cars based on monthly payment, color, how the seats feel, immediate need, 'newest-thing-out-there', perceived 'once-in-lifetime-sale-price', CU magazine ratings, or because someone at the office has one and the buyer thinks it's somewhere between "kinda cute" and "really sharp". The best way for any manufacturer to increase the sales of the ANY car model (but especially a tech-heavy-hybrid like C-MAX) would be to first REQUIRE EVERY dealership salesperson to drive one for a full month. You don't learn nearly as much about a car just by reading about it or hearing about it. It's after you use it that you discover and understand the features, and can describe to a potential buyer how YOU use those features. Those personal insights are what convince some prospects to become buyers. That's also why many of us here have become C-MAX 'evangelists' and have probably influenced at least one other person to check out C-MAX when car shopping.

It's not a huge deal for me because I park our car, at most, three or four times a day, usually in angle spaces or in our garage. If you park your car dozens of times every day (package delivery person, estimator, appraiser, or sales rep are some occupations that come to mind) in '90-degree' spaces, such as small urban parking lots, high-rise parking garages, some malls, or parallel parking, by all means test-drive a C-MAX and park it several times in each scenario before you decide. The published turning radius of the 2013 C-MAX is 19.2 feet, so the curb-to-curb turning circle would be about 38.4 feet. I don't know where Edmunds.com got 35.8 feet reported here - maybe a dyslexic copy-editor? In comparison, a current Chevy Suburban turning circle is 43 feet. We own a 1996 Taurus, and its' turning radius is virtually identical to the C-MAX, at ~38 feet, so the C-MAX doesn't bother me at all. The turning circle of other car I usually drive, a 2003 Pontiac Vibe is about 35.5 feet, about 2 and a half feet tighter. I can 'feel' the difference between the Vibe and the C-MAX only when I'm trying to get into an especially tight 90-degree parking space in a mall or downtown parking garage. In those situations, with the steering wheel at full lock, I wish the car could turn about 1 foot tighter than it actually does. So I back up a bit and turn in again.

Reported long ago, but news to me, the Lincoln MKZ Hybrid has flowers (Apple Blossoms) that grow among the Efficiency Leaves and remain as rewards for long-term driving efficiency. http://green.autoblog.com/2010/06/04/2011-lincoln-mkz-hybrid-gets-updated-smartgauge-with-apple-bloss/

For future reference when searching for specific Diagnostic Trouble Codes (DTC) Ford has free downloads of pdf copies of the "OBD System General Overview and Operation Summary Guides" for Ford and Lincoln vehicles. NOTE: These are NOT the actual service manuals with repair procedures. In addition to great technical overviews of the many complex systems at work in our vehicles, it provides a general reference for many of the trouble codes unique to HEV's (Hybrids and Plug Ins). Downloading a copy to your device allows you to do a quick search of the pdf to locate DTC's Here's the 2014 Hybrid and Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (includes C-MAX Hybrid and Energi) link: http://www.motorcraftservice.com/vdirs/diagnostics/pdf/OBDSM1402_HEV.pdf Here's the 2013 Hybrid and Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (includes C-MAX Hybrid and Energi) link: http://www.motorcraftservice.com/vdirs/diagnostics/pdf/OBDSM1303_HEV.pdf Or in the future, select the appropriate model year on this page: http://www.motorcraftservice.com/vdirs/retail/default.asp?pageid=diag_theory_retail&gutsid=diagsheet&menuIndex1=10