viajero

Get a phone app that logs your path to a GPX file (I use GPSlogger for Android). Open that file in Google Earth and you can right-click on the track and tell it to show an elevation profile. Don't use the elevation directly from a GPS unit. They are very good with horizontal position but very inaccurate and noisy with vertical position. Last time I did it Google seemed to use topographic data, probably from USGS, which includes landforms but not bridges. So it won't include overpasses, and if you take a bridge over a canyon it will show you falling off one side of the canyon and climbing the other.

I recently noticed I'd been driving for months with the little peel-off plastic cover still on the climate control display (the one that says A/C On or Off). I peeled it off and then saw that my polarized glasses make it partly faded. I guess that transparent plastic sheet de-polarizes it.

Whoa! I can't believe you just said that! Especially on this forum. According to ERCOT's report, electric energy for the Texas grid in 2012 was: 44.6% Gas 33.8% Coal 11.8% Nuclear 9.2% Wind 0.1% Water 0.5% Other http://www.ercot.com/news/press_releases/show/26382 On that chart you can see the percentage of wind energy is slowly inching upwards each year. And a few old fossil fuel plants get upgraded or replaced by newer ones each year, so the grid keeps getting cleaner. Meanwhile each year the oil gets harder and harder to get out of the ground. They have to drill deeper, pump harder, use more fracking fluid, or burn more gas to cook tar sands to get the same amount of oil.

This is incorrect. Ethanol has 33% less energy per gallon as does gasoline, so if you have 10% ethanol, you will have 3.3% less energy, and get between 3-4% worse fuel economy. http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=27&t=4 http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/ethanol.shtml

They could put it on the floor of the cargo compartment. Or, they could mount it vertically to the side of the cargo compartment, like my old Jeep Cherokee did. Or, they could offer an optional outside swing-away tire carrier, like the Cherokee also did. Thinking back on my own history of flat tires, I've had one flat tire in the city in my 30 years of driving. But I get one about every other year when I'm on the road - on a back road in Colorado, on a dirt road in New Mexico, by the sand dunes in the middle of Wyoming. Those places don't have cell service, and tow trucks often won't leave paved roads or charge extra if they do, and then it takes many hours. I can understand making a spare tire optional, since probably a majority of people mostly drive in major cities and the major highways between major cities. But they should make a provision for a spare as an extra cost option for those who go off the beaten path. Not a can of fix-a-flat, not a donut spare, but a real, full-size, full-speed spare wheel and tire.

Others have complained about the seat being too hot even at the lowest setting. If I've been out in the cold I like it at 1 or 2. Oftentimes 1 is too hot for me, so I'll just turn it on when I get in and turn it off at the first feeling off warmth. It takes the chill off the seat and then my body heat keeps it warm from there.

I've only had one person recognize the C-Max specifically. A family got out of an Expedition parked next to me and the guy said they were a "Ford family" and wanted to know all about the C-Max and how I liked it. Other than that the only time it gets a second look is when it's plugged in to a public charger. Then I've had people ask how much it costs to charge and how far it goes. The often comment it's the first time they've ever seen a car plugged in to one of those stations. This weekend I saw a runner do a double take when he saw it and go over and inspect it all the way around, then continue running. I was running on the far side of the parking lot so I didn't have a chance to talk to him.

The same thing happened to my Energi five or six weeks ago. It was rather scary. I pulled over, turned the car off and back on again. It drove normally but the wrench was still there. After recharging the wrench went away. It hasn't happened again since then. I suppose if it repeats I may try to dig into it some more. Unfortunately when problems are that intermittent they are almost impossible to debug.

One of the options in the MyView screen is accessory and climate power use. It gives you a nice big graph, so you can see just how much power the A/C or heater is using under what conditions. All the 12 V accessories have a separate graph. That's pretty much everthing but the A/C or heater - stereo, lights, fans, plug-ins...

I have the glass roof and really like it. I did get it tinted. I hardly notice any heat coming through it, and haven't closed the sun shade yet. The car does get hot in the sun, but I think most of that heat is coming through the broad, shallow-angle, untinted windshield. If I hold my hand just under the glass roof with the sun directly overhead I can't feel the sun's heat at all, but I can through the windshield.