PWBarrett

The tires are all at 39 PSI.

What I'm getting isn't that the wheel turns and the car doesn't seem to turn, it's that there's a slight resistance to turning the wheel in the first place, like there's no assist until it's turned a degree or two, then the assist kicks in and it jumps just slightly.  It's usually not all that noticeable.

That having been said, the steering is more precise, i.e. less slop than any of our current or previous cars.

[update: Fixed! - see post from 7/1/2013]

I've never had a car with electric power steering before, so maybe they're all like this, but...

Does anybody else find the power steering to be a bit twitchy, especially at highway speeds?

It seems like there's a small distance you have to turn the wheel before much happens, then it jumps to the next increment, rather than being a smooth continuous process.  So at highway speeds, I keep over-correcting, a step too far to one side then a step too far to the other.  I'm probably making it sound worse than it really is, but it gets tiring after a while.

At residential street speeds I usually don't notice it.

Yep, that's a 3.5.1 feature.  The rest of us with 3.1.3 don't have it yet.   :cry: 

I didn't see anything that looked like drainage holes, or tape.  Where are they?

High speed is another form of MPG Kryptonite - we were just on the "Texas Autobahn" today coming back from San Antonio on Hwy 130.  Posted speed limit of 85.  Found that cruising at 90 gives an MPG of about 27.  But It seemed worth it at the time.

We got much better MPG when we got stuck in the traffic jam later on Hwy 35.

I don't know how many people in that category would bother to buy an interface and use an app.

But looking at the docs, it does look more interesting than the press-release led me to believe.  At least there's the possibility of doing things in real-time, although for an app to be accepted, it probably wouldn't be allowed to do anything distracting while driving, like displaying anything.

It looks like somebody could at least use it to directly read the grille-shutter position, and settle that question once and for all.

I was disappointed when I read the fine-print in the press release about what this really is.

It's not about on-board software to get the car to get better mileage.

It's about developing an app to show a customer's driving stats to them in a way that can help them improve their mileage.

I thought we already had all that we needed along those lines, in the various left-side displays.

I don't have the window sticker from my car.  How else can I determine the manufacture date?

Replace the XXX... with your VIN in this URL:

http://fordlabels.webview.biz/webviewhybrid/WindowSticker.aspx?vin=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

That will show your window sticker.

At the bottom right is a number like 1201212101629

Skip the 1st digit.  The next 8 are the Year, Month, and Day.

Spotted what I thought was our car's twin parked at my (Plano, TX) office.  Turned out to be an Energi, with Michigan manufacturer plates.  I wonder what's up with that?

I'm skeptical because I don't think that control modules would/could be reprogrammed to clear error codes.

I'm betting they just found 5 or 6 error codes being reported and reset them all, which would fix nothing.

But without more technical detail, I'm just guessing.

I too would like numbers from someone who has monitored the battery voltage all the way down to where it won't power up.  I may be mistaken but I think all we have are reports from after it gets in that state, of seeing something like 5-6V.

In lieu of that, I just make sure the car is shut down with the doors locked when I leave it, and keep one of these http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007KDFXNO/ref=oh_details_o02_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 in the back.

I haven't had to use it yet, but it sounds like just plugging it into the 12V port in the back for a few seconds would get things going again.

I also don't think that you get a representative sample of C-Max owners on a forum like this.  I suspect that the actual frequency of this problem is rather lower than it seems by reading here.

I'll second that - when we test-drove a Prius V, we found the brakes were WAY more grabby than the C-Max.

I only notice it at all now in the C-Max in wet conditions for some reason.

I also noticed that I had some brake-dust on the wheels during the first week, but not since.  I bet once the brake pads get worn in a bit, the transition gets smoother.

Way back when my brother was a teenager he told me that drafting on a motorcycle could actually pull the bike along if you got close enough.

You'd really have to be insane to do that though.

Same here - we have an SEL with just the 300A package.  Backup sensors but no camera.  So we just get the beeps with no display.

Lots of good comments linked to that article.

If you've got the hybrid rather than the Energi, there's no mechanism for Ford or anyone to do real-time tracking of the car.  GPS is receive-only.  I suppose the car could buffer up a lot of location data, and send it if/when you ever did a (user-initiated) health-report.

Really, if that sort of thing worries you, I'd be much more concerned about using Google Navigation or that sort of thing - they really do track in real-time - where do you think their traffic congestion data and estimated trip times come from?

Part of me hopes the are tracking C-Max driving patterns - maybe they'll come up with better ways of dealing with real-world driving scenarios, like +70 MPH.

You can also separately reset the MPG that's displayed all the time on the left-side view (at least in empower), separately from the lifetime or trip numbers.

I've done that a couple of times but left the lifetime alone.

Kinda sounds like a DRM issue, but I haven't seen that myself.

If they are non-DRM .mp3 files on an un-protected FAT32-formatted USB drive, they should work.

Probably best if there are no other files on it, just folders and .mp3 files.

We keep a collapsible canvas box in the back.  It's usually enough space to hold the groceries and keep them from rolling around.  When we're not using it, it will fold up and store in one of the side nets.

I've seen more and more of this leaving 1 or even 2 car lengths at a red light in the last couple of years, and I don't understand it.

When I taught my son driver's ed, the course material said never to pull up all the way to the next car so you could get around if they stalled out.

First, how often does that happen, and second, that takes what, about 3 feet of space?  But 2 car lengths?  I wonder if some of them are just stopping early so they can start texting.

What they don't seem to realize is that in some cases, these large gaps let the signal lights time-out, causing the people behind them to have to wait through extra cycles of the light.

I just had to use the reboot app http://outofmytouch.com/reboot.html for the first time today.

All the radio preset buttons had gone blank and stayed that way for a couple of days.  The previous time that happened, it cleared up after the next power-up.

Oh well - the reboot seems to have fixed it.

Seems strange they supply a Master Reset setting but not a simple Reboot.  I guess that would be admitting they could have bugs that a reboot would clear up.

I guess I'll be keeping that USB drive in the console now.

The C-Max uses the 12v system to power all lights, blowers, audio systems, etc.  (The air-conditioning compressor...

Not to quibble, but the compressor runs off the high-voltage battery in the C-Max.

Where's mine!?

The wallpaper is always just the background - the foreground content can't be turned off.

For the MFT version you may have to sign up on SyncMyRide.com, set up a bluetooth phone, then run a health-report from the car.