MikeB

hiya maxed, there's an Energi forum over at http://fordcmaxenergiforum.com/, but most of us read both forums since there's little difference between the vehicles. The 21 mile EPA rating for a full charge is pretty accurate, but it will vary based on conditions. In colder weather, I typically saw 15-17 miles when running the heat. With mild spring weather, the estimate is up to 25. In the heat of the summer, AC will probably drop it back down to 21ish. If your daily drive is reasonably short, and you don't need a ton of cargo space, the Energi is a great vehicle. All the comfort of the C-Max, plus you can get absurdly high MPG on average. (My lifetime total is just below 60 now, but the last tank was over 80)

I put a narrow strip of black electrical tape across the light sensor, to make the auto lights come on while it's still a little lighter out. The sensor is a small bump in the dash, far forward, between the defrost vents.

Good info from Plus 3. I'd add one additional thought: if you are going to jump start another vehicle with your C-Max, it might be best to use your battery to charge the other car battery, rather than using your battery to start the engine. We have plenty of juice available if delivered slowly, but not a great deal of cranking amps. So plug in the jumper cables and let the cars sit for a bit, rather than attempting immediately to start the 2nd engine.

I agree, setting 1 is too hot. I'm almost afraid to try any setting higher than that. It's probably great for people wearing lots of winter layers for extreme cold, but if it's only mildly cold out and you just have a pair of jeans on, it's way too hot.

Wait a second.... I DO press the Start button to turn the engine off....

I should post an update: I got the software recalibration from the TSB, which seemed to reduce my navigation location errors. However, from a highway drive a few days ago, it has not eliminated them. The map clearly had me on the next road over, and was trying to navigate me back to the interstate. I'll probably ask for a GPSM replacement next time I take the car to the dealer (hopefully in a week or two for the 3.5.1 update)

First, despite a few 47mpg tanks from users, I think the C-Max really isn't a 47mpg vehicle. Experienced fuel economy testers have driven the C-Max and Prius V on identical roads under identical conditions (literally driving in a caravan and rotating drivers), and the Prius V did a good bit better than the C-Max. Make all the excuses you like, but the EPA test is supposed to be a level basis of comparison test, and the real-world experience shows that it's not functioning as intended. Sure, some of you can get 47mpg, but you're driving in a manner that should be getting you 52mpg. There's no question that the average performance of the C-Max is below the EPA number, and it's below the EPA number by a larger amount than some similar cars. That said, I have a personal suspicion that the C-Max is simply more sensitive to cold weather than other cars. The engine can stay off longer due to a large lithium battery and higher all-electric top speed. With the engine off in cold weather, it can't get to a good operating temperature and stay there. So if a standard car might lose 5% due to the cold, we're losing 15% in the same conditions. So as warmer weather comes around, the discrepancy between EPA numbers and real-world will be reduced more than we expect. Testers like Consumer Reports applied a cold-weather compensation number to their test results, but their compensation number wasn't large enough since it underestimated the impact of the cold. So, that still leaves up the question of the lawsuit, which I still think is bogus. Ford can't really advertise any numbers other than the EPA results, and the results they got are probably exactly what the test procedure produced. If anyone should be the target of a lawsuit, it would more likely be the authors of the EPA test procedure, but they probably have government immunity.

I'm pretty sure the in-car hotspot was proposed by Ford sales execs several years ago, when most phones couldn't provide wifi hotspot features on their own. I know I used to own an older iPhone that could do bluetooth or USB tethering, but not wifi. And once Ford decides to add such a feature, it's not going to get removed quickly, even if phone technology rapidly makes it irrelevant.

I think this is a spambot posting, not a real person.

Just a note for the coming summer heat: our batteries are cooled with cabin air. So don't be too stingy about using your A/C when it gets really hot out. If you're managing to stay cool only by sticking your arm out the window, then think about the poor batteries who are sitting nowhere near a window, but still working hard to keep you moving fast. Also remember that aerodynamics are more important when moving fast. At highway speeds, it's probably more efficient to run the A/C than to have the windows down. I'm sure I'll be running the A/C regularly in the coming summer, but I'll probably keep the temp set moderately high.

Nobody ever said 47mpg was not possible, just that it wasn't likely under less-than-ideal conditions for the average driver who wasn't employing special methods. But I'm glad to see you're doing well with your car, and that conditions are getting better.

Hiya pumpman, First, there's a sister forum for Energi owners, at http://fordcmaxenergiforum.com/, but most Energi owners read both forums. Your dash is reading correctly, but you have to think about what exactly it's measuring. It's looking at miles traveled against actual gasoline consumption. Using that scale, the Energi can reach ridiculous numbers if you drive in EV mode enough. But you can go to Settings -> Display -> Units and convert the screen to show MPGe instead of MPG, and that will count EV miles using a kW->gallons measurement. You do want to break the engine in eventually, but there's no real hurry. I received my car right before christmas, and broke it in with a family road trip. Ignore the dealer an their oil change schedule, the car will tell you when it needs an oil change, and it'll be up to 20,000 miles if you drive in EV mode a lot. The engine will turn itself on for 'oil maintenance mode' and for 'gas freshness mode' if you don't use it enough, so you don't need to deliberately try to run it. On the other hand, it's a fun car to drive, so go out and have a drive now and then, get the engine hot and burn a little gas on the weekend. There's no gain for a level 3 charger, we're limited to a 3.3kW charge rate (and many level 2 chargers are twice that).

3.1.3 and had the location error problem until the TSB was applied. After the TSB, problem seems to be resolved.

Miles to Empty is always an estimate based on recent driving.

I got the GPS recalibration as specified in the TSB, and have now done a good 200 highway miles. I think it has resolved my location error problem, it didn't show me off in the weeds for the whole trip.

There's actually a third parallel universe out there: http://fordcmaxenergiforum.com/ It's the place where us Energi owners gather and whisper about the Hybrid owners behind their backs. :D Actually, since there's more traffic over here, most of the Energi owners read both forums. We've asked to have them all combined, but Robert Lane doesn't seem convinced it's needed.

I had my car tinted a couple weeks ago, and got a similar message from the tint installer. He recommended that I leave the sunroof untinted and just use the screen, since the glass could build up excessive heat otherwise. And if a sudden thundershower came along in the heat of the day, the shock of rapidly changing from hot to cold could crack the glass.

All C-Max cars have a GPS receiver, even if you don't have Navigation. The GPS module itself is actually quite cheap compared to maps and a big screen to display them. And EV+ isn't based on roads, just location, so that's all you need.

I had TSB 31-3-11 done last week, and I think it actually worked for me. Been watching the map closely for the last few days, zoomed in, and my car has stayed on the road. Too soon to be sure, but it seems likely it at least will help some people.

Yes, when you do a Lifetime Reset, the EV+ locations are also cleared. But I haven't heard of a way to reset the EV+ locations without also resetting your Lifetime MPG stats. My car learned my house in 2 days, but took about 3 weeks to figure out my office. It's now added a 3rd location at my local grocery store (which may be interesting, since I pass it daily on the way to and from work).

The EPA test specifies 100% gasoline, no ethanol added.

You probably want to reset the 'Lifetime' statistics before driving off, in case the car has poor MPG due to any test drives. That way you have only yourself to blame for bad numbers, or praise for good ones. On the Left multi-display, go to Settings -> Display -> Lifetime Settings, then hold the OK button for a few seconds to reset everything. For that matter, you might also want to reset Trip 1 & 2. (I reset Trip 2 every time I fill with gas, and Trip 1 at the beginning of various trips.)

I haven't found an electronic sensitivity adjustment. But I did put a little piece of black electrical tape over the sensor, and that seems to make them stay on a little longer around dusk and dawn. The sensor is way forward on the dash, a little lump between the defrost vents for the windshield.

Bluetooth is a communication path, it can carry any data you want. There are bluetooth profiles that define some types of data that can be carried over bluetooth, but some of those profiles are generic like 'serial port' or 'network', so they could have anything. I just got a new Pebble smartwatch which uses bluetooth to talk to my phone, and it does set the time on the watch based on what the phone has. But there's an app on the phone to support communication with the Pebble, which is probably providing the time information in a special profile.

This is completely false. The US has roughly 3% of world oil reserves, and consumes around 30% of all oil production. Additional drilling on US soil can't possibly make up for that imbalance. If we exploited every single drop of oil available in Alaska today, we'd be self-sufficient for something like 9 months, then Alaska would be empty. And that assumes that we could build enough wells to pull 50 years of production out of the ground in a single year. Domestic oil production has actually risen significantly over the last 4 years, and it hasn't even put a dent in oil prices, or even significantly altered the level of imports. And if you attempted to increase the number of wells a hundred-fold, you're going to increase the number of spills by an even higher factor. All the easy oil has been found and extracted. Now we are looking for the hard stuff: deep underwater or extremely thick and trapped tightly within rock. And the harder it is to get the oil out of the rock, the more likely it is that we'll mess up and spill it on the ground, or in the water. Sure, the technology for drilling has gotten better and made difficult oil possible to extract, but the financial consequences of failure have not risen significantly. An oil company can do $50 billion dollars of damage to the Gulf, and escape with a fine of 1/10th that amount. So they have no financial incentive to put safety and the environment first. And then, of course, you run into the problem that carbon-dioxide is going to destroy our entire agricultural system. The laws of thermodynamics are never wrong, and there is a fundamental imbalance of heat arriving and departing at the top of the atmosphere. Unless the three laws of thermodynamics don't apply to the planet Earth, we're getting warmer at a rate never before seen in this planet's history. And that rate is too fast for plants and animals to adapt to, so it's going to cause an ecological disaster. And when ecology collapses, so does agriculture. If we burn all possible oil in the ground, we're absolutely guaranteeing a planetary warming of something more than 10F, which would essentially end agriculture in the US and most of Europe, not to mention China and India. We'd have to import food, probably take it by force. And that's when it gets nasty.