hybridbear

I agree with both catsailor, C-MaxSea and BobJustBob. Ford made a serious mistake with what they did. I have been saying since January 2013 that Ford took a calculated risk with their C-Max EPA figures and with their heavy promotion of the 47/47/47 MPG instead of actually promoting the merits of the C-Max and Fusion Hybrid. That risk backfired and has cost them millions of dollars. While we can speculate about how or why these things happened or about how many people might have lost their jobs at Ford because of this goof, that doesn't do much good. While I'd really like to know what went on behind closed doors, unfortunately we'll never know. However, I don't believe for one moment the baloney that has been in some quotes from Ford engineers claiming that they "didn't know" the C-Max would have lower real world MPG because of its aerodynamics. When your company sells directly to consumers there can be far-reaching effects to the seemingly small decisions made every day. The seemingly small decision at the time to not test the C-Max but just use the FFH EPA numbers has had far-reaching effects for Ford and has cost them. Hopefully their internal culture will adapt and learn from this mistake and they will use this learning experience to make their future hybrid vehicles even better.

This is common in every car and there have been articles about it like this one from Edmunds. With our Fusion I've found that when I also account for the fact that the odometer reads less miles that I've actually driven then the MPG gauge on the dash is pretty accurate. Our Honda Accord Hybrid which we owned before the Fusion was off by 12-15% typically. This is more egregious than the 6-10% most C-Max and Fusion owners have found.

Were the contestants driving the Energi as part of their race?

You're right about avoiding it by shifting momentarily into L and then back to D. This mode exists for EPA emissions testing. All vehicles start off in Open Loop and in the case of the hybrids the can keeps the ICE running rich at a low RPM when cold to warm up the catalytic converter components. This mode is very bad for fuel economy. It is designed to reduce pollution by limiting the pollutants flowing through the cold emissions components. But it also slows down their warm up and means that the ICE has to run longer before it can shut off the first time which burns more gas and creates more pollution... I was trying to put a link here to the FFH Forum thread about this but the server is down. You can go to www.fordfusionhybridforum.com and under the "General Powertrain" section there is a pinned thread about the warm up stages. Here is the link directly to that topic: http://fordfusionhybridforum.com/topic/7408-ffh-warm-up-stages/

Dealerships can see inventory of all other dealers in the country. They can see the specific option packages that each vehicle has. Most dealers will not let you the customer know this information though because they don't want you to use their access to go buy from the competition. But dealers have this access to try to do dealer trades.

The defrost setting can also keep the ICE from shutting off when it normally would while idling to create heat too if the outside air is cool and your inside temp is warmer.

The gauge changes is because of the incline. We've noticed this often in our FFH. When the nose is higher than the tail the gas tank shows lower, when the nose is lower than the tail the fuel level according to the gauge increases.

Do you have the copy of your window sticker that was on the car when you took delivery? I am surprised to read that someone above says that they weren't given their window sticker. I was under the impression that the law requires that it be given to the purchaser of the vehicle. In the past the dealer has always stuck our window sticker in the glove box when buying a new vehicle.

I guess this shows why on the Fusion Hybrid SE Ford charges $550 for Push Button Start like the C-Max SEL has. That's some expensive technology still. Hopefully the price will come down soon.

What a great deal!! I just bought an SGII a few weeks ago and I searched for deals before buying but found none :( too bad Amazon won't price match.

For such a short mileage commute you get really great mileage!! I would expect that your MPG will tank in the winter though :( on such a short drive in the winter based on our experience last winter with our FFH you will likely see at least a 10 MPG drop if not more.

I thought the point of the Atkinson cycle with its longer power stroke (compared to the shortened compression stroke by leaving the valve open) means that you can have better economy but less power (due to the lengthened power stroke) for a certain displacement.

Some Fusion Hybrid owners who also had their MPGs go down after the update found that doing a hard reset may help cure the issues. It's too soon to tell though. They definitely found that the car behaved differently after doing the hard reset. You do a hard reset by disconnecting the 12V battery and the HVB. This effectively reboots the computer. See this post.

It's important to remember that in a hybrid when the ICE is on it's not only driving the vehicle but is also charging the battery, so it's not really fair to calculate that way. However, the answer is YES Ford could have put a more efficient ICE in, but at what cost? Most hybrids typically don't have the most advanced ICE technology such as direct injection because it would be too expensive. The ICE in a hybrid already runs on the Atkinson cycle to sacrifice power for fuel economy and when hybrids are such a small % of Ford's overall sales they aren't going to invest a lot of money into R&D for direct injection with an Atkinson cycle engine which would only add more cost to each car. Once hybrids become mainstream and make up a significant (>15% minimum) chunk of all new vehicles sold then you'll see more manufacturers bringing advanced ICE technologies to hybrids because the cost per car will be much lower.

Frank, Is it ok if I quote your posts on the Fusion Hybrid Forum? They're great information that will surely benefit Fusion Hybrid owners too. Don't forget that the bottom of the battery symbol on the dash isn't actually 0% SOC and a full symbol isn't actually 100% SOC. Like the Prius, Ford doesn't allow the battery to be fully discharged or fully charged. it's hard to judge actual SOC and kWh based on the dash icon because it doesn't actually represent the entire kWh capacity of the battery. I recently bought a ScanGauge and I'm working on figuring out XGauge codes to try to get more information out of our Fusion which would likely apply to the C-Max too.

How did you get the car to go to a lower RPM under these conditions to momentarily get the high instant fuel economy? I'm kind of doubtful that the Ford engineers wouldn't have implemented this already if it were possible. They no doubt extensively studied the Prius and TCH powertrains to figure out the engineering behind them and then tried to improve upon it. They also have surely analyzed the BSFC charts for the 2.0L Atkinson cycle engine in our cars to make it run most efficiently as often as possible.

Obviously the MPGe portion doesn't apply to the hybrid, but the change to remove the Lifetime Summary could and that is my question to see if we can figure out if the Job 3 hybrids are also losing the Lifetime Summary.

Has anyone seen the same with Job 3 hybrids? We might get a C-Max as our second car but if it loses the Lifetime Summary then that would be a real strike against it... http://fordcmaxenergiforum.com/topic/1654-new-nrgs-built-after-7-31-13-wont-show-mpge-or-lifetime-summary/

Great analysis that applies to the FFH too! How did you do your C-Max tests at different RPMs when the computer controls all that?

Awesome tool! Thanks!

On the few cars I've owned with rear windshield wipers every one has sprayed like this. My parents' Energi sprays the same. I think it's because of the location of the nozzle, unlike in the front, the back nozzle has to be located near the glass and almost parallel. This makes it very hard to get a wider spray that wouldn't miss the window entirely and spray on the back bumper.

So sorry to see what happened to your C-Max. It's easy to loose faith in a world where most people only look out for themselves and lack honesty.

Thanks so much! I finally installed our Fusion one last night and it's perfect! Now stuff won't fall off the top shelf anymore! :happy feet: :worship:

You should complete the survey. It appears that many dealers take it very seriously. For salespeople their commission depends on what you score them on the survey.

Here's what I don't understand. The Hybrid is now 45/40/43. The Energi is 44/41/43. We know that Ford ACTUALLY tested the C-Max Energi and submitted that data. How is it that the Energi is better on the highway than the hybrid? I would expect the Energi to be worse in the city because it takes more energy to accelerate because of its increased mass. I would expect that on the highway as well the Energi would take more energy to maintain its speed because the increased mass would also require more energy to overcome friction. Now that both vehicles have been put through the EPA test cycles, does anyone have an idea why the Energi would have a higher highway MPG than the hybrid?