cr08

If getting into the car and the fob is dead, there is a backup key to unlock it. To start it, there is an indentation in the right side of the steering column. Insert the fob in here momentarily while pressing the start button and it will start.

Given what most class actions end up coming to on the consumer end (a very modest financial compensation at best) and the fact that MFT has been improved upon substantially in recent updates, I'm definitely not going to bother pursuing it. Maybe if they were able to get Ford to force an official upgrade to Sync 3 (I think I remember even some Ford engineers mentioning that Sync 2 hardware can potentially be updated to Sync 3 software albeit with some reduced functionality), It'd be worth it. But I highly doubt it and beyond that I think it's moot. Yeah, early versions of MFT were shoddy at best but as of 3.6/3.8/3.10 it has been pretty painless and, at least for me, works as intended without issue. The voice recognition I think largely comes down to some people expecting it to better understand you like Siri or Google Assistant which can understand you if the verbiage isn't 100%. It has to be understood that at this stage the underlying voice recognition system in Sync is a good decade old going back to the original Sync 1. It's not going to be as intuitive as modern voice recognition systems. Understanding the proper verbiage which, by default, Sync will display possible commands on screen, will help tremendously. In all honesty I've had zero issues with the voice recognition when using the proper commands.

Was it possibly on an incline and did you use the parking brake? If you park on an incline without the parking brake, that is normal.

Put the coolant temp up on screen and monitor it next time. Depending on the temp called for and outside temp, it'll normally start putting out heat when it is a hair above the cold mark. At least on my Energi. I'm assuming the coolant temp thresholds are the same in the hybrid. Auto climate systems are designed to work this way. No use blowing cold air when the coolant is still cold. The only difference is defrost as it will blow cool air just to have any air blowing across the windshield for defogging purposes.

Never had any issues with mine once I got it dialed in to my liking. Took some time initially when I first got the car and it is a bit of a pain when you have to wait for it to rain to play with. But it is about perfect in all conditions for my liking. The only super minor issue I've noticed is if it has rained while the car has sat and you first turn it on, it does take a bit of time for the sensor to register anything and begin clearing the windshield. Usually I just tap it up to mid-speed and back down to auto to give it a quick wipe.

Also since they are simple resistive heaters you can use a multimeter to check the resistance. If it shows as being open circuit that would mean a break in the heating elements somewhere. That always seemed to be a very common failure mode in the past.

Honestly I think you are mis-estimating the accessory load a bit. Our C-Maxes (and pretty much any other modern hybrid/PHEV/EV) are pretty efficient across the board compared to traditional ICE vehicles. A/C has a completely variable compressor so rather than cycling on/off it will speed/slow as needed based on the cooling load so once the cabin cools off and the temp is just being maintained the electric load is greatly reduced. This is also greatly affected by what temp you set. The cooling fan in the engine bay is also completely variable and will adjust and only run as fast as needed based on the various systems in the car. Even on the Energi with electric heat, it tends to be as efficient as you can realistically get as it will only heat up the coolant as much as needed for the set temp in the cabin. Turn on recirc so you aren't trying to heat/cool outside air and save even more energy. In fact this past summer even with 90-100 temps here in the Midwest once the cabin cooled off I -MAYBE- saw a 1 or 2 mile drop in my 20-25mi electric range on my Energi. But as you said, that can also be adjusted if you are willing to sacrifice comfort. With how efficient our cars are, adjusting climate control and other accessory loads will make at least a noticable difference. But even without doing so I'd wager in the situation you mentioned with tons of stop and go traffic and idling even a hybrid's going to be 2-3x as efficient as an ICE vehicle. There was actually a trip I took to see family this past summer. All highway, roughly 175mi. Normally on my Energi I average around 40mpg keeping speed with traffic usually 70-75mph (I don't go to hypermiling extremes like some). That particular trip there was a backup of traffic that was about 5-10mi at best. It bumped the whole trip average up to 50-55mpg. That was in EV Later (essentially reverts to hybrid mode) with A/C going.

Yep. That cable is the shift linkage and what you're pointing to is definitely the transmission. Get it into the dealer to look at. Based on the noise, that is extremely obvious and hard for them to avoid. Good news is it SHOULD be covered under the hybrid warranty.

Got quite a number of questions for you: What is the status of the car at the point this happens? On? Is the engine running? Does this happen constantly even after driving a bit? Or does it only happen when first starting? As much situational info you can provide would be helpful. Might also be beneficial to borrow/rent a mechanics stethoscope and verify exactly where the noise is coming from. With the various parts in that area it could be coming from a few places. Worst case if it is indeed the inverter it should be covered under the hybrid warranty which is, at minimum is 8yr/100k mi.

To be fair this was a big topic when it came to the old Escape hybrids and it seemed to boil down to Ford being very conservative for the US market when it comes to towing capacity. The vehicle could easily handle small <1000lb loads with ease as far as pulling but the main concern was control and braking especially on hills. Engine braking sans regen has a lot less 'stopping' power compared to traditional ICE vehicles and you don't want to be riding friction brakes on a long downhill.

Take a look through fordparts.com. May be a bit of trudging through to find but they give diagrams to see what part is what and allow you to order direct or at least get a part number to look elsewhere for. EDIT: Looks like part number CJ5Z19893AH may be what you're looking for?

Just a wild guess similar to an earlier post I made, I think the reason why 3.8 and 3.10 aren't on the website are to get you in to the dealer to do the update. 3.8 was the start of significant rewrites to stabilize Sync and they likely want to make sure everything goes smoothly.

The files you guys grabbed must be missing the VHR app. I know earlier on in my ownership I self updated to 3.8 (which also was not on the Ford site and had to find someone else's upload) and it was missing VHR and 911 assist. After an APIM replacement and the dealer updating it to 3.10 I have both VHR and 911 Assist back. May want to verify the contents of your downloads.

Using the parking brake is always a good thing. :) It's become a habit for me personally. But yeah, old bug with VHR. Glad it's all sorted!

To be fair it is not Windows CE that is the issue but the 'Sync' software on top of it. Windows CE on its own is fine. It's whatever software people throw on that has a chance to wreck it. It's just like the desktop version of Windows. By itself with nothing else it is fine. Throw on buggy POS software and the whole system as a package deal goes to crap. And people often blame it all on Windows as a result. I've kinda covered that in my wall of text above. Though as a whole package deal, yes. It -was- a hot mess. 3.8 and 3.10 quite solidly sort it out. Mine's been pretty damn reliable and smooth on 3.10. I am upset they didn't add some promised features ESPECIALLY Applink but it is what it is. These days I almost exclusively play music off a USB flash drive or listen to Sirius and take advantage of nav and Travellink. I've even picked up a compatible USB modem and used the hotspot feature.

To be fair, depending on what version you're currently running, 3.8 and 3.10 really button it up and make it reliable. No new features obviously, but the system behaves well. You aren't going to get anything new going forward unfortunately. Don't even expect Google Auto. I think the reason Ford hasn't posted these updates online is to get people into dealers to do the updates to ensure things go smoothly. The techs can do additional massaging at the lower level that we do not have access to via simple USB updates. This coincides with the 12M02 warranty extension in case the system goes tits up they can fix it at no cost to you. Based on the existing information out there, at best the direct blame can be placed on BSquared for building what is the entirety of MyFordTouch to begin with, bugs, lack of promised features, and all. Then Microsoft for partnering with them and suggesting Ford to work with them on the project. Essentially the underlying Windows Automotive OS is fine but the software BSquared built which is the entirety of the MyFordTouch you see and interact with, is what has been the cause of all the headaches. Eventually it got to the point that Ford had to bring in some Microsoft engineers to fix and start rewriting things to get where it is now in a stable state. With that said, from a PR perspective they pretty much had to EOL Sync 2 and start fresh with Sync 3. It nearly murdered Ford's Consumer Reports ratings on some models. There have been rumors based on an ex-engineer's LinkedIn profile that the Sync v2 hardware is able to be partially upgraded to Sync v3 but not getting hopes up on that one. That was brought up around ~2 years ago and clearly nothing has come of it. Sync v2 is purely on life support now.

Do you have the parking brake on when you run it? That has been a long-standing problem with VHR way back to the first gen Sync systems. It sees the red brake light on the dash as a general signal of an issue even when it is on just for the parking brake. Next time try running VHR without it set and it should give you a clearer idea.

Not necessarily. The only reason why most existing hybrid/PHEV vehicles lack trunk space is they are taking existing body styles that were not designed with EVs in mind and have to shoehorn the batteries in. The trunk is, in many cases, the easiest place to add it. And with the battery size needed for long range BEV's, I doubt Ford's going to shoehorn that into an existing ICE vehicle design without significantly reconfiguring the chassis to accommodate it. A good example is the Chevy Bolt which is designed from the ground up as a BEV. It is taking some design cues from Tesla and the battery is spread out in a flat pack under the floor taking up no precious cabin or cargo space: http://media.chevrolet.com/media/us/en/chevrolet/news.detail.html/content/Pages/news/us/en/2016/Jan/naias/chevy/0111-bolt-du.html

Given his location, very likely could be a Canadian built C-Max if used. So yeah, DRL's are the likely culprit. Could either a) work with your Ford dealer to disable them or b) (if inclined) use a tool such as ForScan to do the job yourself. Simple software toggle in the BCM.

This is true. Non-nav cars will have the GPS receiver still. If memory serves I think our cars are new enough that 911 Assist is able to provide those GPS coordinates to 911 dispatchers upon request (unlike cellular e911, the car will actively speak out the coordinates on the call). It is also used for Sync Services based navigation which you are able to use. This was even a thing was back in early v1 Sync systems with the 2 line text screens. Not sure what else. Generally the compass has its own hardware but it might be integrated with the GPS unit. GPS doesn't do well determining orientation at a standstill.

Funny enough I had this happen this last week as well on my Energi. TL;DR for the future for anyone else who runs into it: Just pull fuses 67 and 79. Shouldn't even need to really do the engine start rigmarole. I did mine while the entire car was off and just pressed the power button for the radio after re-installing the fuses. I don't know specifically where the presets are stored but in our MyFordTouch systems there are two parts of the radio: The ACM which is hidden and is basically what handles the audio routing and is responsible for the AM/FM/Sirius tuners and drives the speakers. The APIM which is what you see as the touch screen and Sync system largely just handles USB playback, Auxillary input, nav, voice commands, etc.. It routes all audio to the ACM for output. For tuners it just controls the ACM and tells it what to do. All volume controls are also done strictly by the ACM. So what likely happened in your case is since you were already listening to a USB device, the APIM is functioning fine and allowed you to change tracks but the ACM wouldn't allow volume changes or moving off that input to a radio tuner or otherwise doing anything else. ACM was stuck for all intents and purposes. My situation was very similar. USB audio worked but I managed to turn off the audio (audio power button) and it wouldn't turn back on after that. As a result there was no audio anywhere even from the parking sensors. No touch screen beeps, etc..

If you have MyFord Touch, look into the Lockpick devices. They have two MFT compatible models. One adds the option to integrate a second (front facing camera) among other features. There's also another model that adds an additional two inputs designed for side cameras that can be activated via turn signals.

I used to lurk some of the BMW forums and similarly they've done some battery monitoring and operated various modules when the vehicle was 'shut down' based on battery age and SOC. They did have some programming to indicate to the vehicle what size of battery was installed and would need to reset the monitor when replacing it. Boils down to that as the battery aged and SOC drops, various unessential modules would go to sleep much earlier after the car was shut off. Goes without saying I'm assuming the same or similar behavior comes into play with our C-Max's. With that said, haven't seen it brought up with any late model Ford's being able to modify the battery size in programming without a legit IDS.