Kelleytoons

There is, of course the EV+ mode which "learns" some of your routes, but I'm not sure the C-Max "adapts" otherwise (and truth be told, I was just about to start a thread about that mode, which I don't understand at all).

A USB port only supplies 500 miliamps -- to put this in perspective, a cigarette lighter is usually fused at 8 amps (some at 10) which is at least 40 times this much power. Another way of looking at it is even if that USB device was drawing power (and such a drive will not do so continuously even in use -- usually even during read/write operations it's only working about 5% of the time) you could run it 40 or 50 times as long as something from your normal 12 volts without drawing down your battery. Or, to put a cap on it, it would take about three days of such use before it would affect any battery significantly. I would *never* be concerned about the USB ports being an issue.

If they drive the Prissy first then will never want a hybrid. LOL. If I hadn't already driven the C-Max when I borrowed my friend's Prissys (V and regular) *I* would have thought that ("Stupid hybrids -- they obviously can't drive worth a damn"). Not only that, I almost got killed in the V due to the lack of acceleration (and if so, would never have bought my C-Max. Logically speaking). So there's that.

Oh, right, yes -- BAD C-Max, bad girl! You go to your room and think about what you've just done (or not, as the case may be).

Doc -- is this charger okay? (same maker, gets better ratings, and slightly cheaper with free Prime): http://www.amazon.com/Schumacher-SSC-1000A-SpeedCharge-Battery-Maintainer/dp/B0009IBJE4/ref=pd_sbs_auto_2?ie=UTF8&refRID=077PN10S81NX42EYPPCP It says it can't be shipped to California (where you live) but otherwise I don't see any issues with it. Also, do you charge overnight? If not, how long do you typically leave one of these running? My main issue with this is that our GFCI in the garage constantly trips (and even an electrician can't figure out why) so I can't promise we have power there for more than a few hours at a time (wouldn't do much good for me to count on running this overnight).

You make her sit in the back seat? LOL -- don't let Laurel see this thread! Truth be told, I'M a terrible "back seat driver". My wife has threatened more than once to pull over and switch places if I don't like the way she's driving (and more than once we've done it :>).

I also like the lack of e-brake on the floor, but mostly because it's an easy visual reference as to whether it's on or not (can't tell you how often I try driving our Durango with the e-brake on and wonder why in heck it is moving so slowly). Obviously with electronics you can see things better nowadays, but it's still a no-brainer to glance over and tell (and most of the time I never set it anyway -- it's only my wife that does and this way I can undo it right away). I never know about the accident thing so I thank HybridBear for enlightening us. Jeff, no one is really sure about how long these batteries will last in ANY of the hybrids. Just not enough data to build evidence for it. In any case, by the time it's really an issue the technology will have moved on/improved/changed to the degree I wouldn't worry about it. Assuming any of us still want to drive our vehicles longer than 8 or 9 years (we're on the 15th for our Durango and the car before that was 17 years) I suspect we may well be able to replace the battery with something else that's far cheaper and better. At the very least I suspect the batteries can be reconditioned for a fraction of the cost of a new one (there may well be a new industry for this that will grow up in the next decade or so).

Eve -- can't be worse here than Florida, and even with the easy to put up/take down ones I use from Wal-Mart Maximis stays cool enough so the A/C can work in about five minutes or less (just make sure you have recirc on and run the fan high. Remember as a general rule it's better to have a higher fan and higher temps as you will feel cooler with less energy. And you don't want to be cooling all that outside air if you can help it, so recirc is also very efficient). I set my temp at 73 degrees and even when it's 100 outside (with humidity in the 90's) I feel cool and breezy :>) As for Dropbox -- if you past your images into Photos you can then share that link here by simply copying and pasting it in. Because I have them automatically go into Dropbox I'm not sure how you get them there otherwise from your phone, but *somewhere* you need to be backing your images up from your phone, right? (Remember the rule of thumb is to only backup the data you want -- so if you don't want the image, don't take it <bg>). So wherever that backup is (on the iPhone it will be in the iCloud - I'm not an Android user but I'm positive there will be cloud backup for it as well), just move one of those images into Dropbox and you can then share it.

Do you have Dropbox? (Everyone should, no matter what they use. It's available for your Smartphone, tablet or computer, no matter the OS, and you can share documents between all your devices as well as use it for sharing images). It's free -- just sign up and then you can post a link to your image (Dropbox can be set to automagically capture your phone images and then you just share the link).

Um, no, 9 mpg is all the difference (not much more than what the adjustments were made between what they first reported for our C-Max and now). Again, it was a HUGE car, twice the size of the Escape (road weight I believe was 6000 lbs) with a V-8 engine (you could get better mileage with smaller engines). Or to put it another way, at the gas prices then it was less than a few hundred dollars difference each year (of course, it would be greater now but we were talking about THAT Escape versus a Durango back then). I'm not saying the Escape wasn't a nice car -- I have no idea -- but it certainly wasn't that great in terms of mileage and particularly measured against any load standard you want to apply (passengers, cargo, whatever).

Reminds me of the story about the husband who said "In our household I make ALL the major decisions and my wife makes the minor ones. I decide where we stand on foreign policy, the trade deficit, and world peace, and she decides where we live, what I do for a living, and how we spend all our money."

They don't advertise them here in Florida, either bandit. And we can't be accused of having cold temps <g>. The ONLY ad I've ever seen for the C-Max, long after we bought, is that extensive "Summer Spectacular" one that covers the entire line. It has about 3 seconds (literally) showing the C-Max, with the rest of the 60 second spot devoted to the rest of the line-up. But they don't often run that whole thing anymore and the truncated version naturally cuts our beloved vehicle out.

Laurel -- LOL. An honest wife -- you are a treasure (of course my OWN acts the same way but would NEVER admit it :>).

Scotti -- let's hope she knows what a great guy she has in you. Seriously. While there is no denying she has paid her dues in raising your kids, there is also a real interesting dynamic that lets her dictate to you how you could use something you're paying for. Then again, "happy wife, happy life" but even though I've been married to my current wife (my LAST one, as I always tell her to say about me as her husband) for 27 years and we definitely have a "what's hers is hers and what's mine is hers" relationship, I am NOT going to let her hog Maximis. Just too much fun driving it (and she can drive the Durango if she wants wheels to go to her hobb... ahem, part-time job). Except for those days when she doesn't, like today. Sigh. My wife and I are both seasoned citizens and one of our requirements was to NOT have to climb down into a car. Since we came from the Durango (which you have to climb "up" into, but that's okay) I had gotten spoiled and we thought the C-Max was okay, but nothing special in this regard. Then I had a loaner while our baby was being fixed (a slight ding from the factory) and I not only had to climb down into this Honda Civic, I felt like I was riding on the road in a skateboard. We had been looking at small SUVs along with the C-Max and I hadn't realized how very low most cars are nowadays. Can hardly imagine what it was like to get into that Jag.

She only drives it Wednesdays for 21 miles and won't let YOU drive it? I sure hope she's making the payments (including paying for the insurance, gas and maintenance on it). Otherwise, brother, um, does the expression PW mean anything to you? <bg> My wife WANTS to drive Maximis more, but I only let her do it once or twice a week (for one thing, she brings down my MPG every time she gets behind the wheel, as she is a binary driver for whom only the states of gas/brake on/off seem to apply). She has her right now and I'm feeling lonely <g> (not for missing my wife, though :>).

Yeah, and after driving both a Prissy and a Prissy V for a week I can tell you there is NO way in hell I'd ever buy that car, mpg or not. It's not just not fun -- it's a accident waiting to happen. I was literally almost run over twice coming out of our development because I could not accelerate up to "highway speeds" (um, 55 mph -- I could barely get to 30 in the time I had and this was a *very* reasonable amount of time for even an RV. Just not a Prius). It's loud and uncomfortable and the ONLY thing it has going for it is good FE. But I can get better FE from a bicycle and would be safer on the highway with it (because at least I wouldn't be *trying* to pull out in front of other cars :>). Quite honestly, I can't imagine anyone who's ever driven one for even a short period of time wanting another one, but that's just me. Heck, there are some marriages I don't understand either, and those folks *seem* real happy, so go figure. Maybe if all you ever do is drive around Mayberry for short periods of time a Prius would be great (and I guess there are still some places left like that in the U.S. -- I just don't happen to know where they are). If I hadn't bought a C-Max I think I'd have gone with the Buick Encore -- electronics pretty nice (not as nice as MFT but close), great ride and build, and a terrific armrest <g>. But, of course, I'd have missed the mpg.

Adrian -- we aren't responding to someone with a problem (at least *I'M* not) but rather someone who's trying to make up their mind about buying this car. Pretty obviously if you come to any forum with an issue (which is mostly why folks come to any forum) it isn't helpful for someone to say THEY don't have that issue. In those cases the best help is to try and figure out what to do about it. But coming to a forum and trying to make a decision about a particularly hardware/software/place to live/job to get means that all aspects must be discussed. You can say "Hey, *I* wouldn't buy this!" and I might say "But *I* would buy this!" and those are both equally valid things to contribute to the discussion. The problem, again, is that the majority of people who come to a forum have problems (even I only came here at first because I had, if not problems, at least questions I needed answered). I would invite you to go to ANY forum about ANYTHING and you'll see the same pattern. It's one of the reasons you have to take the reviews of things you read at Amazon with a grain (or perhaps a large block) of salt. There isn't one single item I've seen there that doesn't have at least one review stating it's a piece of crap that never worked properly and that person would never buy from that company again. The difference is that there you have a lot of folks willing to rate a product highly if they were satisfied with it, unlike places like forums where people come to complain. If forums were more balanced (that is, if there were more people who came to them with zero issues than not) you could form a pretty good opinion but as it is it's just too lopsided to make a qualified judgement from the stories told there.

Well, I'm glad it worked, and she might continue to experiment to see if she can hit that sweet spot exactly (some say it's 67 others say 68). I don't know if it works for all but it apparently does work for some (I will try it myself the next time we drive to Orlando). As to why -- who knows? (These cars are mostly still mystery to me :>)

But remember, asking someone who had a (relatively) uncommon problem what HE would buy is a bit like asking someone who was just divorced whether they would favor marriage again. You need to make your OWN decisions -- as I always say (and will continue to say) if all you did was spend time in hospitals you'd conclude there were no healthy people in the world. The vast majority of us have had no issues with our C-Maxes and likely never will. If you aren't comfortable with a car that might have issues, then don't buy a new one. Buy something used that continues to run well and you will save yourself a TON of worries (that is unless it stops running well, as it inevitably will).

Just based on this week's gas/diesel prices, your buddy isn't doing any better than Paul is doing (with nationwide averages at least gasoline is 90% the cost of diesel, so 50mpg diesel = 45mpg, gas). Obviously YMMV by area (here in our local area it's WAY worse, with regular gas going at 3.18 right now and diesel at 3.85 gasoline is 80% the cost, so your wife would be getting better value at her mpg than your buddy). But lower temps will be an issue with our hybrids, that's for sure (although for us here in Florida it will be to the good when we hit winter). You might have your wife try going a *little* faster - supposedly there is a sweet spot of between 67 and 68 mph that gets the best gas mileage at freeway speeds (folks are reporting 45+ when they set ecocruise at that sweet spot).

You need to read all the other threads and form your own opinions. Like you, I live in Florida and pretty obviously drive in the rain all the time (even go through puddles, some of them quite deep) with Maximis with no issues. But others have reported issues with "wet episodes" apparently leading to corrosion in connectors that was "solved" by merely replacing the connectors and packing with grease (and they have also reported then never experiencing any more battery problems). AFAIK these were all issues with earlier models (i.e. 2013) but I'm guessing just statistically you could find a 2014 in there somewhere. My hunch is they have addressed the most common causes of these issues and that models built this year (and further on, hopefully) will have have a lot fewer issues. But also, clearly, there are some vehicles for which they don't understand what is happening. Again, my belief is these are all vehicles without MFT (or, let's say, the preponderance of them are without MFT). And, like with any vehicle made nowadays, there are also some lemons that come off the line that no amount of fixing will ever help (but these are rare, obviously). I would buy another C-Max today in a heartbeat and never worry about any of these things (of course, I would NOT buy one without MFT, but not for that specific reason -- I just happen to think it's a major reason to buy a Ford). If your concerns are whether you should buy based upon this I can tell you there is NO vehicle on the market today for which you could not find similar problems (not necessarily battery problems, just chronic issues for which *some* people conclude they don't want a car from that maker anymore) even if statistically they make up a very small part of that universe.

I believe that there are many causes of battery problems, not the least apparently is some sort of connector issue with water causing difficulties. I also think that a major cause is the standard radio somehow not turning off or draining power and I think it's this reason that the SEL models (which come with MFT) show less battery issues than the SE models (which can be so equipped but not as part of the base package). So I would be curious to know if folks who have a 2014 model SE with battery problems have MFT or not. If they do have MFT, the next thing I would suspect would be water issues (and those connectors). If a 2014 model has MFT AND has no water issues (say they are fairly sure they didn't experience any wet conditions prior to the battery problem) then it's something special to remark about.

The question I would ask any folks with battery problem is this: Do you have MFT?

In the old days you used to be able to roll back miles by going backwards (although it was said that *some* unscrupulous folks put cars on lifts and spun the rear axle backwards for this purpose). Nowadays I think you'd call this the "Benjamin Button" effect <bg>.

If you look at the sliding arm rests (can't recall which cars/makers have them but there are references here on this forum) you'll see that they don't sacrifice drink holders -- you can just slide the arm rest forward over them when you want. It really would be a perfect solution and one I wish all cars had.