Ryan McEachern

Taxi's are the ultimate use of hybrid technology, because of all the sitting time they do, waiting for dispatch, waiting for clients to exit the building, waiting for clients to exit the car, etc. I haven't seen a non-prius taxi in my area in quite a while. It will be interesting if any fleets pick up the C-max.

I saw that too and thought, "no way is that a 7 second car". On my test drives, it certainly pushed me back into the seat, but not like that! I have to wait a while for mine to test it, but my recollection would be that the C-max I test drove was somewhat faster launching faster than my 3.8l town and country, and somewhat slower than the 5.2l grand cherokee.

Can't get the link to work from my computer. Mirror? -Ryan

I did not realize that. It makes sense - those little diesels are amazingly efficient.

Although the cooler temperature causing issues was already mentioned, I think it is important to remind people that a conventional gasoline powered car uses "waste heat" to warm the cabin space, therefor it is "free" energy that would otherwise be removed in the radiator. That is a large reason why your small gasoline and diesel cars don't see such a dramatic decrease in MPG in the winter, whereas EV's PHEV's and hybrids that use an electric resistance heater are going to suffer quite dramatically. It is ironic that the inefficiency of the internal combustion engine leads to a lot of extra heat, which we have been harnessing to warm our cars interior. The same issue will arise with the ICE if we ever produce an ultra efficient gasoline engine that doesn't produce heat. You will need an electric heater, or some other way of heating the interior of the car. All effeciency technologies will suffer from this same phenomenon, air cars, hydrogen cars, electric cars, flywheel cars....

That will depend on the tire size, not the rim size. The outside diameter of the tire can be the same, regardless of rim size, it all depends.