SBGrad

Got the letter for 13C02 yesterday (along with a 2nd letter regarding 13B07), so I called my FLD today to set up an appointment. Surprise! They don't have the parts yet. I thought the letters didn't go out until the parts were in, but I guess I was wrong. DID make an appointment for 13B07, since I have a SAN-SFO-SAN trip coming next week-- should be interesting to see what sort of mileage I get. It was somewhere around 35mpg when I did the trip in December.

Heh heh, it's been -8- hours and I still don't have the car back. Just called the dealer, the tech guy has had problems with the dealer internet connection driopping. 'It's about 70% done,' and he swears I'll have it back today. Well, if the connection stops dropping.

ATT-- HTC Google Dev 1 it's at least 3 years old, and I don't even know WHICH version of Android it has, 1.5 or something. I don't have a data plan for the phone, and I have a newer tablet, so the lack of support for the old OS isn't really a problem for me. On the plus side, I've had no problems with it whatsoever, and it does have a hard keypad (which I also prefer).

Just took the car in for 10K oil change. Asked my SA 'who's the Sync expert around here?' She said she was, so I explained that I had 3.1.3 and that new builds had 3.5.1 and what's up with that? She hadn't heard about an upgrade, but I DID get an interesting tidbit out of the conversation. The SAs just put in the VIN into the computer and the DEALER COMPUTER tells them if the car requires any upgrades. Makes sense, that way the SAs don't have to try to keep track in their heads of the different combinations of software and what car gets what upgrade, they just look at the printout from the master computer. So, doesn't sound like there is any 3.5.1 in my future, since Big Brother hasn't given my car the thumbs up yet. BBBuuuttt, on the good side, the SA sounded genuinely interested in the whole issue, and she said she was going to look into it. When I get the car back I'll see what I find out.

...I'd try to get one of these!!! Slightly less hp than our Maxi (185), almost certainly worse gas mileage, but look at the benefits: 7.62 machine gun, nobody will ever cut you off-- more than once -2- spares! space for extra gas cans panoramic view that puts moonroof to shame

Wow, you're way past the 1200 files I have on a thumb drive. Still, external hard drive isn't a bad idea. Drop it into the Bottomless Pit of Storage and you should be set. I take it that this exrternal HD doesn't require power? My Western Digital 500MB drive does have its own power cord, so I probably wouldn't put it in the car on a daily basis.

Dueling trips? I haven't heard about one of those in a long time. The very last duel in California, Broderick and Terry (1859) they had to travel over the city line after the police stopped their 1st attempt to duel a few days earlier. More famously Alexander Hamilton had to travel across the river to meet with Aaron Burr.

Yah, what PW said. I have a Windows Vista computer, Vista automatically rips CDs if I put them in the drive. Once I had all 100+ CDs ripped, I took a thumb driv, popped it in a USB port on my computer and simply copied all the folders (Windows made one folder per album) to the thumb drive. I didn't have to format the drive or anything. Once I popped the drive in the Max USB port, everything worked. Well, MFT has to index the thumb drive, that took about a minute on my machine, but after that, Bob's your uncle. I have no idea if it works the same way in the Mac/iTunes world.

Do we really care what the MPG of a Prii is? I mean, they wake up in the morning, and they're still driving a car with no acceleration, that makes a lot of noise, has a off centered (to the driver) video display (I might add, a monocromatic display, if that display was a phone it would have a dial!), and a stick shift that belongs on a video game.

At the office we have a 4 1/2 level parking structure. The 'basement' half level and 1 and 2 are always full. Up on 3 about half of the spaces are mostly empty. In the empty section (farthest from the stairs) is where you see all the cars without license plates. By some unspoken rule, the 'regulars' park every other space. Just about once a week somebody will park next to somebody else, but it is always a visitor/transient parking next to one of the regulars.

The engineers told you 10/11 times, with 30 seconds between each cycle?! Seriously? I love the car, but their cheat codes need work-- a lot of it. It needs to be easy, like going into Engineering Test Mode. ..not this is on you, it's most definitely on Ford.

Trying to find space for CDs in a C-Max? or another car? 'cause I've got over 100 CDs in the center console. On a thumb drive stuck into one of the USB ports. I stil haven't put an actual CD into the slot yet-- I have no idea if it works.

Full on awesomeness.

It would drive me crazy, my blood pressure would go up a whole lot. If they were directly in front of me they would be getting high beams flashed at them for sure. As far as getting your personal MPG higher, put it in eco-cruise whenever possible. Leave the HVAC off if it isn't too hot outside-- today it was 81 and not only did I put on the HVAC, but the AC as well--buh bye MPG.

The kinda scary thing is, the display says 12.2 gallons burned, yet you say it took 13.88 to fill it up again. I've seen the same thing in my car, it was off my 1/2 a gallon last time I filled it. How are we suposed to know when to fill this thing up? ..and this is really a rhetorical question on my part. We've talked about this in the DTE thread, I'm not really looking for an answer. I did show some pictures to the Ford engineers, showing gallons burned vs gas station receipts. He was slightly surprised, and made some notes on it.

Well, I've posted here 3 times, so the demoralizing comment could very well be aimed at me. It was never my intent to demoralize anybody, and I sincerely apologize if anyone has been put off by my posts in this thread. That said, the 3 examples I've posted here were all done on the same route I take home from work every day, I'm not the sort of person that picks routes to maximize EV time. I pick my routes to minimize travel time. The only differences were my driving style and the amount of traffic on the road, which varies from day to day, even on the exact same route. The only competition I engage in is vs myself. I'm not trying to better the next owner, I just want to do better vs myself. All of us have vastly different driving requirements and conditions, and almost any comparison would apples to oranges, the only fixed element is that we all have the same vehicle. Operating temps, driving style, length of drive are all very different. OK, I'm confused here, because it seems to me that fuel cost is indirectly proportional to MPG, so if my MPG is higher, my fuel costs will be lower. I agree with your quote, as I said above, I don't vary routes just to get a higher MPG. I want the fastest route home for my commute, which is 1/2 an hour even if there is no traffic. If I want to save gas, I can take a combination of bike + train, but that's 2 hours door to door (1 way), and not something I am willing to do that often, more like 1-2 times a year, tops.

Ooops, I did it again. I confess I turned the HVAC off for this one.

Heads up display, period. Put the entire left side MFD + speedo up there.

Sent you a PM

When I parked, I counted the cars, and there were 15, plus a few out on test drives. The interior guy asked me, "Do you know about the lap vents?" and I slapped them and said, "These? I love them, my wife hates them." He then asked if I wanted them split into dual controls (they are on off only, no aiming where the air goes), and I said sure. He wrote that down. I might have to go to a dealer next year to see what changes get made. What I am discovering about SYNC is that you let it interpret as little as possible, I will never again say "Navigation Destination POI by name," because SYNC is very bad at place names. Instead I will say 'Navigation Destination POI by category" and let SYNC show me a list of places and then I will pick one of them. At first we tried calling out shopping malls by name, and SYNC could never find them, now we ask for categories, choose shopping, and then SYNC shows us all the malls near by. Works much better for us.

The engineers were asking the same thing in Irvine. My experience has been the MPGs are related more the to type and style of driving than the age of the engine. If I take another drive to SF, I'll get another 1000 miles of sub-40 MPG 'cuz I'll be driving 70+ most of the time. A month after owning the car, the lifetime MPG was 42-43. Taking the 2 trips to SF for Thanksgiving and Xmas took it below 40. Right now it is 40.4, slowly increasing, but again, I think it is because commute miles are driven slower than I-5 speed runs. I had eco cruise on for much of the 50MPG commute trip, compare that with 47MPG doing the same run in Jan with no eco cruise (but a LOTof stop and go traffic). The other weird thing on the 50MPG commute, twice I acclerated hard enough to put the kw gauge in the yellow zone, so I wasn't really expecting to see greaat numbers. I just try to enjoy driving the car, I don't worry too much about what sort of MPG I am getting (ie, more leadfoot/keep up with traffic than hypermiling behavior).

Ironically, the waterbottles don't fit into any of the in-door cupholders.

50MPG on the commute home this afternoon

Ford C-Max hybrid Owner’s Event Irvine CA 23 Feb 2013 Back in mid-January I received the invitation from Ford to go to the owner’s event. Along with the invite there was a survey mailed to me. It was several pages long, a mix of ‘rate 1-10’ and essay answers. Decided that Ford wouldn’t pick me if I just rate everything ‘10-perfect’ so I spent some time writing down everything I could think of. Fast forward to last Saturday. Drive to Irvine, the event was at the Taco Bell HQ. As far as I know, Ford just rented out the bottom level of the parking structure, the main building was locked up, the only building I went into was the building 3 restroom. Driving up, there were some signs directing us into the parking structure, where somebody marked my name off a list, and told me to park in Bay 3. Ford ignored the striped parking spaces, and marked out bays that were roughly sized so that 2 bays took up as much space as 3 striped normal parking spaces. You sign in, and get a packet. Actually, I never once touched the packet, but inside were the script sheets for each of the 8 interviewing groups: Chasis, Electrical, Exterior /Sheet Metal / Paint, Interior & Climate, Powertrain, SYNC/MFT, Vehicle Engineering, Marketing. On the script sheets were questions the engineers wanted to ask me, as well as all of my survey answers, including my essay answers, word for word. I thought that was very cool. So, signed in, got the packet (a handler non-engineer actually was holding it), walked back to my car, handler-lady put it under the rear washer blade, turned around and nabbed the 1st engineer who walked by unattended. Engineer walks over, introduces him (or her) self, and pulls their script out of the packet, and off we go. The Interior, Sync/MFT, and Electrical people conducted their interviews inside the vehicle (they wanted to see you work things), everybody else did their interview walkaround style. Smart move marking out extra wide parking spots. Each engineer was different, some wanted to dive right into your survey questions (they wanted explanations for any/everything less than 9 or 10-- ‘what do we have to do to get this to 10 for you?’), others had their questions to go over and didn’t refer to the survey that much. They were very careful not to lead us to certain answers, nobody ever asked, ‘do you like feature A?” they would ask “what are you favorite features?’ or ‘what do you dislike?’ There were no right or wrong answers, they really wanted to hear what we had to say. The chasis guy asked me what I disliked the most, I said,’ the turn radius,’ and he asked why, and I said it had the turn radius of the Titanic. He loved that answer, he was laughing and wanted to write it down word for word. He swore he would use my exact quote with the people in Detroit. ..to be fair, we went into the issue in more detail, I explained how I had to make a tight 90 degree turn to get into my garage and my 2006 Focus could make the turn and my C-Max required a ‘Y’ turn to get in. As I said, they never led me to say one thing or the other, but after I gave answers they might tell me, ‘yah, everybody else is saying that, too.’ The turn radius is not beloved among owners, they know that. I told them I thought the wheels were boring, I wanted sportier wheels (also mentioned that fewer spokes are easier to clean) and the guy told me that others had also asked for that option. The engineer said that aerodynamic concerns at least partially drove the decision to pick the wheels they chose. The 3 ‘in the car’ groups had me demonstrate how I used the car so much I ran down the battery to the point where the car started shutting things down. It was interesting how Ford categorizes systems. I started telling the Climate guy about the defroster, and he said that the defroster isn’t Climate, it is Electrical. I told him, with all due respect, the defroster control is lumped with all the climate controls, so as far as me, the owner, is concerned, I link defroster with climate. I bet that is at least partially why the manual is messed up, owners don’t categorize systems the same way Ford does. Notice that in the section of the manual that has a picture of the climate controls, there is no label/explanation for the defroster. Now I know why. In each of the 8 groups, there was more than one engineer. Roughly 80 engineers, split 8 ways. It was hit or miss who you got, there was a wide variety of skills/knowledge between the people I talked to. The electrical guys were pretty sharp, there were 2 of them that talked to me. The MFT/Sync person I got wasn’t so great. I was talking about things I could do with a Garmin nav system (that I couldn’t do with Sync/MFT), and this engineer had never seen or heard anything about it. It was, ‘oh you can do that with a Garmin, I have to write that down.’ The Sync person DID want to demonstrate how I could call up my horoscope while I was in the car. Ugh! After the engineers went over the survey, it was quiz time. They would ask ‘what do you know about feature x?” If I didn’t know about it, they would show you how it worked. The Sync engineer partially redeemed herself by showing me how to search for gas stations, filtering by cheapest price. The electrical guys showed me how to use the key fob to open all the windows all at once (just hit ‘unlock’ and hold it ~5 seconds and all the windows go down all the way). Maybe not useful today, but it will come in handy this summer. One thing that became obvious after a while, people here (our web site) are WAY over to the right side of the knowledge/use curve. We do things most owners don’t do. All 3 groups that conducted their interviews in the car (interior, SYNC and electrical) all noted that I had uploaded my own wallpaper to the MFT display, they were all surprised/impressed with this. The Sync engineer was surprised that I had over 1200 songs on a thumb drive. There was no set time to spend with each group, nobody was looking at watches. If there was a lot to talk about, it was covered. Once you were all the way done with an engineer, they would wave to one of the helpers and ask them to find another engineer. The helper would go walking around until they found somebody. Meantime, the engineer you had just finished with stayed with you until the next one came along. As a result, you were NEVER alone. I brought my camera and never really had a chance to take pictures. Never had a chance to talk to other owners, because they were never left alone either. While you were waiting for the next engineer, we chatted. If there weren’t car things to talk about, they mentioned the weather. Some engineers were from Detroit, the rest from the factory (also in Mich) and Calif winters in the mid-60s with unlimited blue sky made them all very happy. Finally, about 3 ½ hours after I started, I had worked my way through all 8 engineering groups. But wait, there’s more! Time for a test drive. 2 engineers climbed aboard, one had a laptop that they hooked up to the car. We drove around for 5-10 minutes, including a freeway stretch. They gave me the turns to make, but didn’t specify a speed and/or driving style, they didn’t care what my mileage was, they just wanted to see the numbers the car was spitting out about Kw usage, charging states, MPG based on how I was using the accelerator, etc. The woman in back was calling the turns while the guy with the laptop was watching his screen. After a rapid fire set of turns the woman said, “I hope you don’t mind that I’m being a back seat driver.” I started laughing and told her that she WAS in the back seat giving directions. Wife called in middle of test drive, asking where I was, since I was ½ an hour PAST the ‘end’ of my time slot. Test drive done, but wait, there’s MORE. They put everybody on camera, and asked us 5-6 questions. Name, type of car, what you liked, disliked. If you had a message for the Ford executives back in Detroit. Let’s just say I am more comfortable behind a camera than in front of it, so I don't think you'll see me in a commercial any time soon. Interview over but not done yet, because, WAIT! There’s MORE! This was optional, but I was glad I did it. Some more engineers had a survey about the left side info screen. They had some general questions, and then a printout of just about every left side screen: inform, empower, the coaching screens, etc. You were supposed to mark which ones you used. They also also asked about which screen(s) you liked best/least and what changes you would make, if any. When you were done, they went over it with you. I told them I wanted the left side screen info available on the right side screen, explaining that in a ‘normal’ car you can see all your gauges at once. I told them the leaves were interesting for about 1 minute, then a complete waste of time. I told them there weren’t enough options for MyView, and that they should get rid of the analog speedo so we could fit more digital guages in there. I also lobbied for replacing the lifetime average MPG in the Empower screen with DTE. My rationale is this (and I explained it to the engineer)-- the longer you have the car, the less the lifetime average MPG will change. You don’t need to know your lifetime MPG while the car is moving, but DTE is much more important. Anyhow, these engineers were software wonks like me, so we got along great. Got my check and a small goodie bag (Pens, C-Max shaped post-its, C-Max tshirt, couple of plastic water bottles). Best 4 hours I’ve spent with the car. ...and it could've been longer. I am kicking myself for forgetting to tell the sheet metal/exterior guy I want a sunroof that opens and want to be able to open the liftgate window. I had a full page of notes in my tablet and covered all of them, but there were a few more things I should've put on there.

Cover for the inside of the rain sensor? Wife was playing with mine yesterday and it fell off, but we reattached it