SBGrad

The gap on my SEL is the same on both sides, I can stick my index finger in it but it jams to a stop before I reach the 1st joint, so I think your gap is slightly bigger than mine (of course, who knows whose finger is thicker). I would guess everybody has some sort of gap, not sure what the 'standard' gap is supposed to be.

Oh wow, you are so patient, I would go insane waiting over a month for a car. As soon as I got the green light, I was checking inventory at 6 or 7 local dealer's sites 3 or 4 times A DAY. I was like <f5> <f5> <f5> in the inventory screens. We test drove at dealer A, I was on the phone with dealer B (because they were the offical CostCo dealer), but then neither A nor B had exactly what I wanted and when dealer C showed up with a Sterling Gray/Blk interior SEL with option package 301A, that was all she wrote! This took about two weeks, and I was going crazy at the end. When the sales person at dealer C called me and said she had what I wanted, I told her I'd be there in an hour, even though I was still over 20 minutes from home at the time. I broke the speed limit all the way home, stopped long enough to get the title and a checkbook and my wife, and off we raced to the dealer. We got there, and there was another couple driving MY CAR, and I was almost sick. I asked our dealer what happens if we both wanted it, and she said, 'whoever gets the paperwork done first gets it.' This may have been Sales Tactics 101, but I was so frantic the thought never even crossed my mind. Secretly I was ready to tear up their papers if they got done first. For some BIZZARE reason the other couple passed on my car (clearly they didn't know a good deal when it was staring them in the face), and the story had a happy ending. I hope your story has a happy ending as well.

If only the sunroof opened... I would've gotten one. The C-Max has slightly less space inside than the Escape, but the gas mileage will be WAY better. The seats are mounted pretty high, so you will still have that SUV-like 'commanding view' from the driver's seat.

I'm guessing the original poster meant being able to open the back window when parked-- that's how I took it. Not sure about 21st century Explorers, but I could open the back window of my '95 Explorer while the liftgatge was closed-- came in handy more than once.

I hope the NorCal dealers have a different perspective than the San Diego dealers. We've bought Fords from 4 of them, and visited 2 others when we were shopping, and not ONE of them offered to let us order a car, they always want us to buy off the lot. I understand that attitude, but the 2 we didn't buy from lost a sale they could've had if they'd have let us order. Both times it was, "we'll let you know when <xyz configuration> comes in." We bought the C-Max from a slightly out of the way dealer because they had the exact model we wanted in stock. Good luck with your hunt.

I don't know about you, but the green 'lights on' indicator (under the speedo) goes off and on while I am driving depending on whether the lights are are or off when I have the light switch in the right-most position. I leave the light switch in the 'auto' position and during the day if I drive into a parking structure, tunnel or even under a really wide freeway underpass the green light comes on, and goes off as soon as the sun is shining directly on the car. If you have the nav system the map background switches from white to black as the headlights go on and off.

Commute home tonight, ~24 miles of freeway, the rest is city. Traffic was pretty steady 65+MPH, with maybe 2 miles 30-40 MPH. Gotta figure out how to supress the flash on the tablet camera.

For me, watching those vids is like walking under a ladder-- I hope I didn't jinx myself posting here. Superstitious much? Why, yes, yes I am.

I've seen 6-7 off the dealer's lots here in SD. Apparently one of my coworkers has one, I 've seen it in the lot 3 times this week.

This has been on my wish list as well. With a Garmin I can chose either male or female voice, and I can pick American English, Australian English or British English voices. Garmain also has a few celebrity voices you can choose as well. I was going to ask the Ford engineers at the owner's event about this-- still will. Furthermore, I added a suggestion to Ford Social site-- I'll edit this to add the link once they approve it.

Well that bites, BIG time. I spent my childhood on the Peninsula, and I always preferred 280 over 101-- still do. The views are much nicer, and there's usually less traffic-- at least there was in northern San Mateo county back i in the day

OT, but I'll see your YOLO, and raise you Nancy SInatra singing a Bond theme...

I don't usually name cars, but syncmyride.com asked for one when I filled out my profile, so I put in 'Grey Ghost.' I definately HAVE named the Sync voice. In 2001 the computer was Hal, so the C-Max is Halle. Before we got the C-Max we used a Garmun Nuvi for nav. On that one I used the English woman's voice, and we called her Moneypenny. Amazingly, my wife, who doesn't go for anthropomorphizing, started called her that as well.

Very informative page, thanks for posing the link.

It is interesting that Ford had NiMH batteries in their earlier generations of hybrids (like the Escape) and went to Li-Ion for the newer vehicles. I can see why they did it, the NiMH batteries don't have the power to move the car at 62MPH like we can do in the C-Max. ...and I understand that there are different types of chemical make ups of Li-Ion batteries, the 787 has Li-CoO2 (Lithium Cobalt Oxide) which have the most energy and are also the most prone to thermal runaway (from what I've read, YMMV). I've done some searching and haven't been able to figure out what the exact chemistry of the C-Max battery is. In any event, I'm not super worried about it. Our battery is the same as the Fusion hybrid, and there are far more of them that 787 batteries, they been operated for far more hours than the entire fleet of 787s. I'm pretty sure that if there was something wrong with the type of battery that Ford is producing, we'd have seen it by now. That's one other difference between Ford and Boeing. Boeing gets its batteries from a sub contractor-- Ford has its own battery plant.

I saw this thread and said to myself, "there's an ENHANCED mode?! How can they stuff in more than what I am already seeing?" Went out to the car and looked-- I already have enhanced view set. Looked at the normal/basic view-- yah that wouldn't be very helpful.

The "xx miles to E" seems WAY conservative to me, as is the red/yellow triggers. I get the yellow warning when MyView reads ~75 miles to E, the red warning comes on ~40 miles to E. The thing is, Trip 1 says I have burned less than 12 gallons! WHy does it go red when I have 1.5 gallons left?! Why does it read < 30 to E when I've got 1.5 gallons left? Ford is being conservative but it makes me go crazy not knowing how far I can/should go before the tank is actually empty. It's something I'll be raising with the engineers at the owners event in a couple weeks.

Slightly OT, is there any trick to moving the mirrors? I've tried a couple times and they don't move. My old '95 Explorer you had to exert much less force to move them. It's nothing critical for me, I was figuring I'd just wait until the next time I am at the dealer and see what they say about it.

Oh, you can do the same thing with a gas/electric. My sister ran her Prius out of gas and thought she could make it to a gas station on her battery-- she was sadly mistaken.

35 is way low. I've got ~6700 miles with 2 trips San Diego-SF-San Diego, well over 2000 miles > 70+MPH. Even on those 2 trips I got 37 MPG, average MPG for the full 6700 miles is 39.8 (and that's with CA formulated gasoline, I'm sure I could get better MPG with non-CA gas).

Yah, that's it. Open door, powerpoint works. Open it a 2nd time, powerpoint shuts off.

Yah, it looks like I can put my phone on the USB at any time and it will charge. I just walked down to the car right now and tried it, charge light went on as soon as I plugged it in (one of my 2 USB ports has a USB to phone cable attached at all times). The car hasn't been 'on' since yesterday afternoon, I didn't even have the access fob with me when I tried it just now.

I've got the Sony and while I wish my speakers went to 11 (or even 12), it comes across very well compared to my previous car, a 2006 Focus ZX5 with just the standard 4 speaker factory radiio.

I don't know what it is, but the Candy Blue I see in pictures looks WAY better than any Candy Blue I saw on a lot. I really wish they had done this car in Ink Blue (I think that's the shade the Edge comes in) Slighty OT-- how did you get the link to Flickr to work? I tried it (using the 'grab BBCode' under the 'Share' dropdown) and I got some error mesage that said something like 'this extension is not supported'.

You mean my CLASSIC hardtail... The road bike won't stand up under any cicumstances, so I can't really try to get 2 side by side. The next thing I want to try is to see if I can stand up the mtn bike and leave one car seat up as well. That means I could take 3 people and 1 bike.