Marc Smith

got my letter yesterday... hav had my 2013 SEL for about a year now 26K miles. no battery problems. use blue tooth religiously, and keep an Ipod plugged into the usb port as well 24-7. I'm not too inclined to take it in and sit around for a few hours to solve a problem that has not happened... Maybe when the airbag recall parts come in that way I can get a loaner for a day...

anyone can claim to be a cop. Its easy to be whomever you want behind a screen and a keyboard. Whether it be a thug cop, troll, ect... Here in Northern VA we have yearly safety inspections and every two years emission inspections. Not nearly as many what i would consider "ricer" type mods to cars as you may find in other states with no inspections. Which means if a mod is done, its usually done right so it passes inspection. Around here I have not seen any HID lights look to be too bright or poorly aligned. But I do see a lot of the "blue" head light bulbs on older cars.

have not really had the need to use the center console for much of any other other than storing the i pod and a couple of 12v cables for charging various devices. but the deep tray advertised above looks pretty functional. Snow... I have some cherry veneer you could wrap it with. Although I'm more of a high tech guy...I'd wrap it in kevlar...or carbon...

too cute....

Well....Pics.... of the puppy

Jeff, I have a 2013 SEL, I got it used with 11k miles on it about 10 months ago. I now have close to 24K miles on it. It has only been in the shop once for the seat back recall. It has never failed to start, no dead 12v battery. my life time MPG is 42-43. my last tank was 46. I like certain aspects of the car when compared against other comparable hybrids. but there are a some things I don't like I would buy another c-max or even consider the energi Since my commute is 15-18 miles the energi would work well for me.. I would take the VIN to a ford dealer and have them run a vehicle check to see how many times the car has been seen by a dealer. That might indicate if it has any problems...

bummer, glad it was an "easy fix" and not something internal and hopefully covered under the power train warranty..

Just a thought. are you sure you activated the vents... there are several buttons, one for the floor vents, once for the dash vents, and another for the defog vents. If you have all three selected then you are efficiently sending the air every were. if you nly have one selected, say the dash vent, it will direct all the air to the dash vent only. I would think that this migh be your problem if you are not getting the flow you think you should be..

Rad There were a few cars that were the same price. But not many. And going through the list the payback was as short as two years on up to fifteen years. I have not searched the site to see if they do the same comparison on plugin vehicles... Right now tax credits are the great equalizer.. Over time. The hov exemption is going to get phased out which will negate the time savings benefit. Of course in many places to get the hov exemption you need to buy special tags/stickers which cost more or the municipalities limit the amount of decals issued.. And I imagine tax credits will also wane. if there remains a price differential between normal ice and electric/hybrid it makes it much harder to become "green" Many years ago I went the cfl route long before it was Main Street and I took advantage of the energy saving. And in my current home I have been swapping out cfls as the burn out with LEDs. So it's a consious effort to go green.

yes they are the same price. 35K which is 12K more than the base fusion ice... I'm sure the mkx is a much nicer fusion, not sure its 12K nicer... Ive never been in one so I can't judge... it does makes you wonder, if ford can make the mkz, the same price as its ICE counterpart. why can't it do the same thing with the fusion? currently the ice/hybrid there is a significant price difference...pretty much across the board though... accord, hybris is a $7K premium camry hybrid is $4k premium fiat 500 $17K premium

http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2012/08/14/data-center-water-use-moves-to-center-stage/ 15 megawatt server farms uses 360K gallons a day. The nice thing about the server farms they can use non potable water. but you have ot have access to non potable water. but even farms that use A/C sometimes still use cooling towers to help get the freon cooled down for a higher efficiency system... we have a bunch of walmart, and larger, server farms here in Northern VA... Cooling towers. There's obviously ample room for improvement. In 2005, researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found that "a single high-powered rack of servers consumes enough energy in a single year to power a hybrid car across the United States 337 times." In the average data center, in fact, only about half of the energy is used by processors themselves; the other half is gobbled up to cool the facility. Google says it has been able to reduce the energy needed to regulate the temperature in its facilities to about 20 percent of the industry average, in part by using water-based cooling towers.

Tim, the "problem" right now with hybrids and plug-ins is that you are buying the fuel, in a sense. you are paying up front for the fuel efficient technology, when compared against a similar ICE... take a look at the fusion and use it as our baseline for MPG and cost.. does not include any tax credits... the fusion SE ICE is $23,900 fusion energi SE $34,700 average fuel savings of 3500 over 5 years, Fusion hybrid se $27,200 saving of 3200 over five years here is the link from the epa... http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=sbs&id=34089&id=34088&id=34312 if you are considering the fusion... you have three options.. you will spend nearly 10K more for the fusion energi and almost 4K more for the hybrid. it will take you nealry 12 years to break even when you compare the energy vs base fusion, and it will take you 5 years to break even on fuel cost hybrid vs base. this doesn't count interest rates if you have to finance the car. now if you get a great deal, or buy used...you can cut this break even time down.... but right now with the expense of the efficient technology it still falls in favor of the ice.... When the hybrid/plug-in tech is the same price or comparable to the base ICE thast when people will really begin buying more and more hybrids or plug-in...

All of the lanes she would travel are hov/hot lanes. Or will soon become. In va when you got a special clean fuel plate you were hov exempt. Ie you could drive in th hov lanes with a single passenger. But the last few roads are scheduled to switch over to the hov/hot so the clean fuel tag exemption will end. it was a good run while it lasted. And since she started her own consulting gig. She's not traveling into dc as much. So it's not a big deal any more..

Let me rephrase. My daughter will maybe get wife's 2008 saturnvue green line. And wifey may get a new car where I might push hard for a plug in.... The hov exemption for hybrids on lanes that my wife would travel ends soon. So while we won't need a hybrid something that gets decent mileage is a good call. Even if it's not a hybrid... I know the wife will push to keep status quo and let daughter use her car when needed and not buy another car... We'll see how strong my resolve is...

Cheap gas won't be around for ever. On the plus side it means EV's and hybrids will come down in price. I'll be in the market for a third car by the end of the year. Maybe I'll be able to get an EV on the cheap for my daughter...

just be mindful that some of the blue tooth adapters do not work with apple products. or at least the 5c I have the mini eml327 non wifi and I have to use an old android phone. I have been using the elm with torque(app) to be able to run checks and such..

Largely missing from Brown’s appeal was the one industry that uses more water than anything else in this state but has already been brutalized by the drought – agriculture. As Californians mulled Brown’s unprecedented order, some wondered why farms were not being asked to sacrifice more. Brown ordered farmers to report more information about their use of water. But he sheltered the agriculture industry from a mandatory 25 percent reduction in water use in cities and towns Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/water-and-drought/article17268866.html#storylink=cpy The farmers drop in water usage Has not been voluntary though. Their drop in usage has been a result of the water just not being there, ie. Well dried up. No natural rain falling. As I mentioned earlier farmers could do more. Get rid of overhead irrigation. And convert to drip. The problem is that it's not a cheap conversion. Get better environmental monitoring. And only water when the plants actually need it. There are many sensors and programs available. I use some on campus. But as I mentioned as well if we cut back on ag/industry usage. We run the risk of some increases in food borne illness if the food and equipment isn't properly washed during production and handling.... Put a mandatory reduction on server farms. Many large ones use cooling towers which chew through tons of water. But then we can't not let people use their computers.

Locks/keys just keep honest people honest. and to be honest. if someone wants to break into my car, I'd much rather them doing it without the collateral damage. I had a 1994 Impala SS wife and I were at Lamaze classes ath the hospital in Florida. The theives bent the door skin, broke the window, tried to cut out the air bag, , cut the seats, bled on the seats and broke the dash removing the radio. at the time I had a $1000 deductible....

Great "little" car....I came over to the Cmax from a prius and have been very happy with change. Which it was easier to get closer to 50 mpg with out modifying the car...but its heavier and has a bigger engine. been in my cmax for nearly a year, over 11k miles. my lifetime average is right around 43mpg there have been no problems, and its only seen the inside of a ford garage for the recall for seat back replacement

Rock That's about like the dc metro area We moved up from Florida in 2000 and bought a 30 year old fixer upper for 250k. Might have been about 2000sqft on a 1/4 acre

1963 Austin mini Copper S problem would be most likely not enough space for battery for a nice range or how about a 1990's mazda Miata would be a fun car. or how about a lotus 7

Steve I just did a 2500 mile trip to florida. 90% highway and I got 43mpg with the cruise set at 65 I figure the tesla guys since they were stopping every 200 miles or so to charge would couple potty breaks and meal breaks when they were waiting for the charger. either wasy we'd be able to do it faster than the tesla since we would not have to stop but maybe 12 times.. But yes the ICE has it place still in the automotive world...

edmunds did a cross country thing in a tesla 23 stops for charging Distance: 3,331.9 miles Total time: 67 hours, 21 minutes. Driving time: 52 hours, 41 minutes Average driving speed: 63.2 mph Total Supercharger plug-In time: 14 hours, 40 minutes Average Supercharger plug-in time: 38.3 minutes Number of Other Stops: 0 Total energy consumption: 1.06 Megawatt-hours Total fuel cost: $0 (thanks to Tesla's free Superchargers, available to all Tesla owners) figure with our cmax, you'd get 500 miles per tank on highway milage so thats 6.6 stops for fuel (90 minutes). figure by the time you stop for food, potty add in another 6 more stops (2 hours)

Hope springs eternal... I drove my first hybrid about 7 years ago. A 4 day rental prius while in CA. took me a while to finally pull the trigger. was happy even with the prius.... I think the ICE will have it place for a long time. Hybrids have become mainstream. 100% electrics are now being sold by major car makers. Tesla has the range for all others to shoot for. now if we can get range with a lower price. Couple that with some charging station network...we'll be on to something... I could easily use any of the all electric cars for my daily use. my commute is under 20 miles one way... Old habits die hard. and I'm not ready to give up the ice 100% just yet. We are a two car, soon to be three-car family. I wonder if a new EV may be in the my future I can pawn the 2008 Saturn Vue green line off on my daughter...

now I had a 66 Coupe. that to this day holds a very special place in my heart, and if my wife allowed it I would sell all my current toys to buy another one. and never in my right mind woudl I even consider hacking up a good classic car to create an electric wannabe. That being said. if I happened across a an old classic car that would not ever be "right" in stock form. no problem with a chop/cut/rebuild. http://www.theverge.com/2015/4/1/8320189/zombie-222-electric-car-1968-mustang-texas-mile