hybridbear

It is not. I have occasionally gotten the yellow wrench from using the block heater. Ford finally came out with a TSB and a new software release to fix that issue. I haven't had it performed yet.

The C46B86 code also shows on our FFH and many other FFHs. No one has been able to determine what it means.

Sadly this tells me that Ford doesn't care about the C-Max and I'd guess that it won't be around much longer :( the Fusion Hybrid has had many changes each year with many additional options available each year to respond to customer demand. Many of the requests made publicly on the forum have come to fruition. Sadly this doesn't seem to be happening with the C-Max :(

It's interesting to me to see the differences between Ford's two hybrids that share the same powertrain. The Fusion oil life sensor does respond to driving patterns. Some owners have had the alert come on as early as 8000 miles or as late as 12,000 miles. It's funny that Ford would not use the same system in both hybrids with the same powertrain. I guess they find ways to manage costs for different vehicles in different ways.

I would second the recommendation for the Focus Electric. We're getting one next week to go with our Fusion Hybrid. They're incredible little cars. However, the $11k is for leasing the Focus Electric and that includes the tax credit because the leasing company gets to claim it. If you buy the "cash back" incentive is $6k and then you get up to $7500 as a federal tax credit. I say "up to $7500" because if you only pay $5000 in federal taxes then you'll only get a $5000 tax credit. The tax credit cannot excede your tax burder. This is why when my parents bought their C-Max Energi they planned how much money to take out of their 401k that year so that they would have a net tax burden at the end of the year of less than $100 after claiming the Energi tax credit & the EVSE install tax credit.

While not required by the EPA, Toyota has tended to test individual trim levels separately for the EPA tests. They do this with the Camry Hybrid and I think they've done this with some Prius models.

Awesome data! I want to do something similar in the FFH to determine the Crr difference between the 17-inch tires & the 18-inch tires. Have you thought about how to account for the internal friction of the vehicle? And, like Frank says, are you sure the road is truly level? Even only a few feet of elevation change matters. Google Earth has some road elevation data but I'm not sure how accurate it is.

Tire pressure drops 1 PSI for every 10 degree decrease in temp according to Click & Clack. I am able to monitor all four TPMS sensors with Torque Pro for our FFH and I've noticed that my PSI will increase from 43 PSI cold to about 47-48 PSI after driving awhile. In the winter my cold PSI was about 37. So far I have not had to add air in 5000+ miles with the white FFH other than when we first brought it home from the dealer. The black FFH did not need any air added to the tires in the 18,000 miles we had it other than when we first brought it home from the dealer. I am happy to let the PSI drop a bit in the winter to about 36-37 PSI to improve traction and to let it increase with air temp in the summer up to 43 PSI to improve fuel economy.

Did you run a Vehicle Health Report? It sounds like something didn't boot up correctly. One of the codes you found is for Absolute SOC. The other is "useable" SOC. That code uses a formula to take the Abs SOC and calculates a different value to display. (http://fordfusionhybridforum.com/topic/8416-fusion-hybrid-powertrain-technical-analysis-with-torque-pro-a-scangauge/?p=78127) There is a second parameter that the car monitors which is the Displayed SOC. The is how full the dash icon appears. This is what appears to have failed to boot up in Kostby's car. (http://fordfusionhybridforum.com/topic/8416-fusion-hybrid-powertrain-technical-analysis-with-torque-pro-a-scangauge/?p=78129) I wrote my own equation for Useable SOC which will truly have a range of 0-100. (http://fordfusionhybridforum.com/topic/8416-fusion-hybrid-powertrain-technical-analysis-with-torque-pro-a-scangauge/?p=81864)

Yes, sit in front of the car with a flashlight so you can see the grille shutters. Have an assistant turn on the car. The shutters will cycle to completely open & completely closed. Using a OBDII scanner & FORScan you can read the shutter position as a % open.

I don't advocate coal power plants. I just used that in my comparison because coal is often used as the dirtiest of all power sources currently used in this country. But even the dirty coal power plants being used to power an EV are less polluting that a hybrid.

Power plants cannot instantly adjust their output to match demand. Even power plants which can vary their output to match demand are "load-following", they are not load anticipating, so they still are reactionary. They produce enough power to prevent blackouts. The point is that a gas ICE only injects the right amount of fuel into the cylinder for what's needed. A power company is producing enough electricity to make sure that there is enough supply, having enough supply means having excess supply. Thus your EV, pulling a tiny amount of power in the grand scheme of things, is not adding any incremental pollution.

The first big problem with such analyses is that they are making an unfair comparison. Burning gasoline is a hybrid or conventional vehicle is the equivalent to discharging the HVB and spinning the electric motor in a BEV. The BEV creates ZERO pollution in that part of the process. The pollution created by electricity generation for a BEV is the equivalent to the refining process for a gas powered vehicle. To generate electricity you take coal, for example, and "refine" it by combustion to generate electricity. For a conventional car you take crude oil and "refine" it to make gasoline. If you want to start talking about pollution from electricity generation for EVs, then you need to compare that pollution to the pollution from the gasoline refining process, the pollution from transporting the gasoline to the gas station and the pollution from gasoline evaporation between the refinery & the combustion chamber of the ICE. Only then will you have a real "apples-to-apples" comparison. Another aspect about pollution that's often missed is that most EVs are charged at night. At night there is excess supply. This means that the power plant would be producing x kWh of power regardless of your EV and thus they would be emitting y kg of CO2 emissions regardless of your EV. Effectively the EV is creating no pollution because even if you didn't plug it in the power plant would still be polluting the same amount. This would basically eliminate, or at least greatly reduce, the amount of electricity generation pollution that can be tied to the EV. It really bugs me how off-base so many of these articles are. Whew...I need to calm down now. Articles like this get me really worked up because they just go to show how the oil industry creates this propaganda to deceive the public.

That's hilarious! It appears that he wasn't driving backwards in the part of the commercial that shows the interior at the time of the collision.

A number of Fusion Hybrid owners have noticed this. We've all attributed it to the gas because no one has seen it happen for more than one tank. We had it happen once on a road trip and the MPG display behaved that way for that entire tank of gas.

Don't forget that the CVT in a non-hybrid car is very different than the eCVT in a Ford or Toyota hybrid. Below is a great video explaining about the Prius eCVT. It is nothing like a CVT in any non-hybrid car. This thread at the Fusion Hybrid Forum also explains about it. As far as not dealing with shifting gears, it's incredible!! I don't know how anyone can drive a car with a transmission that shifts as it seems so archaic now to us. I also don't understand how anyone can drive a car that isn't a hybrid as the hybrid is so quiet and smooth with the ICE shut off much of the time that it's a far superior driving experience.

There have been a couple discussions about Platinum White amongst Fusion owners that you might find interesting. http://fordfusionhybridforum.com/topic/8075-oxford-white-vs-white-platinum/ http://fordfusionhybridforum.com/topic/6104-white-platinum-paint/ http://fordfusionhybridforum.com/topic/8633-platinum-white-tri-coat-color-inconsistency/

The OP said that he wants to fit bikes inside the car.

In our Fusion Hybrid we see about 38 MPG @ 75 MPH, 40 MPG @ 70 MPG & 45 MPG @ 65 MPH. The C-Max should be slightly lower due to higher drag. Your best bet for lowest overall cost (initial purchase & long-term operating costs) is likely either a diesel, a small car like a Fiesta or Corolla or a hybrid. Since you bring up the bicycles that means the small car is out so it's really C-Max or diesel. Some of the decision probably depends on how much city driving you'd do outside of your commute. And also what speed you'd travel on your commute.

I love the Around the Horn t-shirt on the back seat passenger. That show is awesome. I watch it every afternoon on my phone with my headphones sitting at my desk while I'm at work lol I hate it if anyone wants to come and talk to me between 4:00 & 4:30 lol

Very cool information. The Prius shows the AVG MPH and I record that in my Fuelly notes. I usually estimate city/highway by considering that our driving is 100% city unless I can recall specific long distance (30+ mile) trips that involved sustained freeway speeds. Then I put those miles as "highway". I'm going to update the Prius tanks based on your chart. Edit: before adjusting Prius tanks we were at 83% city, 17% highway. After adjusting the city/highway splits based on the chart above we now show 82% city, 18% highway. There were a number of tanks where we never left the city but our average MPH was high enough to move us out of the 100% city bracket. Those tanks must have had less traffic to slow down my wife's commute.

The EBH is standard in certain states and cannot be factory ordered if you are outside those states. The EBH is standard in Wisconsin but not in Michigan or IL. If you aren't too far from Wisconsin you may want to look at ordering from a dealer there to get the EBH. It's awesome. We use it in our Fusion Hybrid & my parents use it in their C-Max Energi and it makes a big difference. It will heat the coolant to approximately 30C above ambient temp.

I am. I have not seen an increase in temps with keeping my grille blocked as temps have warmed and thus have left my foam in. Most of our daytime highs have maxed out around 60 with overnight lows in the 30s & 40s so it isn't warm here yet. We're still running almost a month behind schedule on our spring weather.

MFM has lots of bugs. However, in comparing it to the apps that Chevy has for the Volt & what Nissan has for the Leaf, MFM does more than either of those apps.

Interesting to see the trends. There was a period of sharp increases from 2003-2008, but then prices have leveled off since 2008 with only a small increase from 2008-2013.