viajero

Me too. I had wanted a Fusion Energi since it was first announced. Got in the C-Max and it was love at first sit. My head doesn't scrape the ceiling. I can see stop lights when I'm the first car in line! I actually flipped a sun visor down for what may have been the first time in my life.

More codes are posted on the Energi forum. Many of them didn't work for me. Three interesting ones that did work were State of Charge, Battery Temperature, and Interior Temperature. http://fordcmaxenergiforum.com/topic/1293-scangauge-x-gauges-programming-c-max-ffh/

Cooler air inside does keep the battery from heating up as fast. I don't have a hybrid, so the only way to really be sure you're having this issue would be to read the battery temperature with a Scangauge or something similar. The hybrid may not heat up as much as the Energi since it has the ICE running part of the time in normal operation. It is an on/off situation. Up until the battery hits the threshold temperature, it behaves normally. It might be better for the longevity of your battery to run it at 98 instead of 100 F, but for me that doesn't seem to affect the operation, as long as it's below the 113/114 threshold.

That's why I sprung for a full size wheel and tire and tie it down in the back. I was in a hurry but you could probaby find a cheaper one with the same geometry if you researched a bit.

The computer could be working the ICE harder and babying the battery after it's been in a hot parking lot all day. This effect is very pronounced in the Energi. Sitting in the sun on a hot day will get the battery temperature to 100 F easily (per Scangauge). Once it hits 113-114, the ICE starts running even though the battery still has plenty of charge left. A couple degrees hotter and it starts engine braking rather than regen, which the Energi never does unless the battery is full. I can't speak with certainty for the hybrid, but it may be doing a bit of the same after an afternoon in Phoenix.

After several weeks without seeing any I finally merged in front of another one on the highway, dark grey. They must have been hypermiling, because even though I was going the speed limit, they rapidly receded in my rearview mirror.

Energi weighs 7% more than the normal hybrid. http://www.ford.com/cars/cmax/specifications/exterior/ That about matches the difference in city mpg (EPA rates hybrid at 47, Energi at 44). Weight matters when you're accelerating it. On the highway weight shouldn't matter much, but there the Energi is rated 41 vs 47 for the hybrid. http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=sbs&id=33336&id=33010 Car and Driver said the Energi has a lower final drive ratio to allow it to run in all EV mode most of the time. That would explain the big difference in highway mpg. http://www.caranddriver.com/news/2013-ford-c-max-energi-first-drive-review It looks like the Energi also has a bigger gas tank, 14.0 compared to 13.5 gallons, almost 4% more gas. In any case, I'm not going to try to see how far I can go on a tank of gas, since that kind of defeats the purpose of the plug-in, which is to run on grid power instead of gas.

The first time I did it to preserve the original surface. Then I noticed that making the wheel thicker made it much easier to hold (at least for my hands). I've since put one on every new car. The install is a pain, but I think it's worth it.

You might want to call and be sure whatever unit you get will shut itself off when you shut the car off. The Scangauge does this. I had another one, which required you to flip a little switch to shut it down. Sooner or later I knew I would forget and probably drain the battery.

I often think I see a C-Max and it turns out to be an Escape. I've learned some quick tricks to tell them apart. From the back, the Escape has two prominent tailpipes. The C-Max has only one and it's almost hidden. From the front, the Escape has a more rectangular grill.

I've seen this on other battery-powered devices as well. Electrons move through wires faster than the various chemicals and ions move through the electrolyte inside the battery. When you stop pulling the electrons out through the wires, the chemicals inside the battery have a chance to get caught up again. http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/everyday-tech/question390.htm

I'm not sure what to think; my FJ Cruiser confused me a bit. The manual said premium gas was required, but a TSB was issued saying regular gas would not harm the engine but might result in lower power or fuel economy. It did say you had to run several tanks of one kind of gas for the engine to fully adjust itself. I tried 10 tanks of each, and the mileage matched to within 0.1 mpg. Given the variability in fill-ups, that may not even be significant. I didn't have a dynamometer handy, so I can't really say about the power. It didn't feel any different to me in my everyday driving. Now I just use the cheap gas and call it good. Someone with more ambition than I will have to do the experiment for the C-Max to see if it adjusts itself for premium vs. regular and if so, what are the results.

I (and other testers) have seen big differences in mpg between 65 and 75 mph on level ground. It does make sense that the difference would be less while going up a hill, though. In that case more of the power is being used to lift the car to higher altitude and the percentage of power used to overcome air resistance is lower. So a given percent change in air resistance would result in less percent change in total power.

The same thing happens with gas cars which have a display how many miles you've got left on your tank. The gas gauge tells the computer how many gallons (or kWh) are left in the tank (or battery). The computer multiplies the gallons in the tank times the miles per gallon you've been getting recently to figure how many miles you can go. "Recently" is some secret formula averaging the last few miles/minutes you drove.

The software is stored in flash memory, similar to the flash cards used for storing photos from a digital camera. You'll sometimes hear this kind of software referred to as "firmware". It's somewhere between hardware and software - software that's a permanent part of the hardware, and doesn't disappear when the computer is turned off.

I haven't plugged my Sangauge into this car yet, but I don't think my test would be valid for you since in my case the engine doesn't turn at all. My guess is that it does cut off the fuel, simply because that's what most cars do these days. Google "deceleration fuel cut off" (DFCO) and there will be various accounts of it. On the last three cars I've owned, the Scangauge showed fuel consumption dropping to zero whenever I coasted down a hill, or even just coasted to a stop light if I was going fast enough. In my FJ Cruiser I was able to go 10 miles or so down a steep mountain pass without using a single drop of gas. It would surprise me if the C-Max didn't do so as well, given that fuel economy is one of its major selling points. But then again, I was surprised by the hybrid behavior described in this thread...

I tried this and it did the same thing it does in L in EV Auto mode with a full charge. The engine started, the car bucked and lurched, and then the engine revved like a kid showing off before a stoplight drag race. I shifted back to D right away. This happens not while decelerating, but while gradually rolling away from the charger in a parking garage. I suppose the designers of this car just didn't think anyone would drive in L all the time and they never planned for or tested this case. The control firmware doesn't handle it gracefully. So, I'll stick with my habit of driving in D the first quarter mile and then shifting to L. At least now I know not to tell anyone with a non-Energi to drive in L, since I would have assumed it behaved the same.

That sounds believable to me. The hybrid and Energi have different kinds of batteries, and supposedly a different final drive ratio. It seems like either of those could affect the computer's decision of when to use regen vs. engine braking. http://www.sae.org/mags/aei/11705 Oh, well, it's late and it's a school night. Maybe I'll ponder this more tomorrow.

I did read somewhere, but can't find it now, that if your battery is full and can take no more charge, or you're going down a really steep hill and the regen would produce power faster than the battery could take it, then if you're in L the computer will move the MG1 to make the ICE start turning and you'll get real compression braking from the engine. I suspect that the computer (rightly or wrongly) thinks this might be about to happen when driving in L with an almost full battery, causing the engine to rev wildly, like Laurel and I and others on the Energi forum have observed. I'm just speculating here - there may be a different reason, and maybe even two different reasons between the hybrid and the Energi. They may never tell us the root cause, but I know the workaround for the Energi. Maybe the hybrid is different...

The engine is not always spinning while in low, at least not while decelerating. Go to the power split animation and play with the sliders. You can set the ICE to zero rpm and the MG2 to something other than zero. In this case the power electronics turn on switches allowing current to flow from the electric motor/generators to the battery charger, which creates a reverse torque on the motor/generators, slowing the car down. It feels like engine braking, walks like engine braking, and quacks like engine braking, but it's not engine braking. It's regeneration. The C-Max's eCVT is not equal to a CVT. In a traditional CVT, there is a belt or chain that slides along cone-shaped gears to change the ratio of engine rpm to wheel rpm. In a C-Max, the MG2 is connected directly to the differential to create a single-speed electric car, and the MG1 allows the ICE rpm to vary relative to the wheel rpm, mimicing the effect of a CVT. There are no clutches or bands, no engaging or disengaging. All the gears are always meshed, all the time. The magic of the system is the computer, which feeds electricity into or out of MG1 and MG2 as necessary to keep everything turning smoothly at the proper rpm. It took me a while to get my mind around this. It made my brain hurt at first. It is very different from how any traditional automotive drivetrain works. Play with the sliders on the animation, play with your car on the road, sleep on it, and repeat. The system is really very simple and elegant once you come to appreciate it. Of course, for most car buyers this information would probably either bore them to tears or scare them away, so the manual just says "CVT" and "engine braking" because it feels exactly like those things when you're driving.

OK, you made me question my own memory for a bit, so I went for a drive around the neighborhood. I'll have to believe you on how the hybrid behaves, since I don't have one to experiment with, but here's how the Energi behaves: When the ICE is running, and my foot is on the gas, shifting from D to L or vice versa does absolutely nothing. The engine rpm stays exactly the same, according to the tach and to my hearing. When I let my foot off the gas, the engine goes silent and the tach goes to zero rpm. Shifting between D and L makes the regen weaker or stronger. It's a pronounced effect and very easy to feel the difference. But in either D or L, the engine is not turning at all when my foot is not on the gas pedal.

Ford's documentation (owner's manual and marketing brochures) can be kind of confusing if you're trying to understand the workings of the C-Max. They use terms like "CVT" and "engine braking" because many people are familiar with those ideas, and the C-Max often behaves as if it has a CVT or does engine braking. But, there is no CVT in the traditional sense, and the ICE is never "engaged" or "disengaged". There's one planetary gearset, and a second, smaller electric motor to take up the difference in rpm between the ICE and the wheels. This thread on the Energi forum has links to three sites which are very helpful in understanding how the whole thing works. Y'all can check these out while I go do some driving experiments... http://fordcmaxenergiforum.com/topic/531-powersplit-ecvt-hybrid-transmission-video/

There are no changeable gear ratios in a C-Max. In theory, shifting to L has no effect while accelerating or driving at a constant speed. It only increases the regenerative braking when you let off the gas. I drive in L almost all the time with the same "fuel" economy as D. It gives me more precise control of my speed. The reason I do it ALMOST all the time is because there's a strange quirk in the Energi where if you start out in L with a full battery the engine will turn on and rev up like you're stomping on the gas. It can be kind of scary. Once you've burned just a little bit of charge, it doesn't happen any more. I and some other people on the Energi forum have experienced this. Since all the discussion I've seen was on the Energi forum, I'm not sure what might set off this issue in a non-Energi C-Max. But it sounds like you're experiencing some variation of this theme.

I think you'll like the glass roof. I would never have paid that much extra for it had I ordered the car, but the dealer had one otherwise just like I wanted coming in two days after I test drove, and I got impatient. Now I'm glad I have the glass roof. Even though the driver can't really see out of it, it certainly makes the car feel more bright and open inside. I immediately had aftermarket tint put on the already-factory-tinted glass roof, to keep the sun from overheating the car. I don't think I've closed the shade since I first tried it to see if it worked.

The first other one I saw in Austin was black, but since then the few more I've seen were all white or silver. I like dark colors but not after it's been sitting in the parking lot a while.