MikeB

Yay, dad! Clearly, we're going to have to have another regional gathering down in LA once your cars are in. :D

Service position is actually quite easy, once you've figured it out. Turn the car off, and within about 3 seconds hold the wiper stalk down, as if for a single wipe. The wipers will come up from their hidey hole and stop. Now you can lift them away from the window and clean them. No need to open the hood at all.

"Off" isn't exactly binary when talking about an computerized electric vehicle. You certainly can't drive the car when it's charging, and the radio and climate systems aren't running, but the battery management system (BMS) absolutely must be running. So there's at least one 12v computer that is active while charging, maybe several. And if something is drawing 12v power, then the engineers must plan to either turn on the ICE or the DC/DC converter to power it, or they eventually get a drained 12v battery. Ok, yea, we do have a dead 12v battery here, but it's not happening every night to every Energi, so it's the exception not the rule. So while I'm not 100% certain that the converter is on, I think it's pretty likely.

Yea, the built-in inverter has enough to power a laptop, or a portable DVD player for backseat passengers, but not much more than that. 100watts sounds right, or maybe 110? But it would be interesting to find out how long you can draw off the built in inverter, charging phones and running laptops in an emergency would still be useful.

Actually, I've noticed that very few Energi's have reported dead batteries. I suspect that's because we tend to plug in overnight. While the car is charging, the high voltage relays are closed, but the DC/DC converter should also be on to keep the 12v systems working and the computer awake. So that should provide several hours of charging to the 12v battery in addition to juicing up the 300v one.

Yea, I've had two tanks in a row with over 600 miles, and both times I put in less than 10 gallons. Over on the Energi forums, the challenge was for a 100mpg tank, and someone got that pretty quickly. The plug and the big battery is a massive game-changer, and I'm loving it.

Yay!!

Dave, I think you just violated a law of physics or something there.... I've got a set of jumper cables that go from the 12v adapter in one car to a 12v adapter in another, they don't provide much current but will charge one battery off another. Since the C-Max doesn't need much power to boot the computer, this type of adapter is probably sufficient, rather than a heavy-duty set of jumper cables that most cars would use.

I went with Blu Energi for now.

There is an auto-play feature, when you plug in a usb drive the MFT system detects it and switches over. Of course, if you leave a loaded usb stick plugged in all the time, the system will detect it each time you start the car. So go into settings and turn off autoplay and you won't jump to the usb stick when you want to stay with the radio.

I was able to see my window sticker about a week before the build day, which was the first day of the build week. I think that's typical.

Unlike NiMH batteries, most Lithium chemistries have a negligible self-discharge rate. They can probably sit for years safely, as long as they are disconnected from any parasitic load. People have had problems with the Tesla when left sitting empty for months, but it only has the one lithium battery and there are some electronics that draw from it. For our cars, there's a relay to disconnect the high voltage battery, so you are probably best just attending to the 12v one as usual.

John, there's lots of different chemistries for Lithium batteries. Some are more vulnerable to thermal runaway, some are not. As it turns out, the most vulnerable chemistries are also the ones with the highest energy density. So Boeing used that chemistry, as did Tesla. Virtually nobody else in the EV industry does, so the batteries in our C-Max's have a lower energy density but are much safer. Personally, I'm far more worried about that 14 gallons of gasoline sitting behind me, given how many regular cars burn to a crisp on a daily basis.

The first status I saw for my car gave me a build week. Later it was refined to a day within that week. So I think your build has gotten past the week, and is now planned to be built on a specific day within that week.

EV-Later makes the Energi operate pretty much identically to the Hybrid. There's a 1.1kW battery range that will get used, and the car will charge and draw down the battery within that range. Interestingly, if we're on a long downhill or something, we can keep charging the battery beyond that operating range, probably up to the normal 'full' charge the pack will accomodate. So the car limits the downside to reserve battery power for later, but not upside.

3.5.1 is the latest Sync version in general, but it's not available for the C-Max yet. I think my car has 3.1.2, which is about the same version you have, but I'm in the Energi so there might be some very tiny differences. 3.5.1 should come to the C-Max really soon, though it looks like it won't be January. Cars with built in navigation will need a new SD card with map data, which may be some of the delay. There's also a compatability issue with MyFordTouch, but that affects Energi drivers not Hybrids.

I got the 32G Sandisk version of that, and it seems to be working well. My music collection is slighty bigger than that, but I still have a huge selection once I squeezed out a few things. I need to play with setting up some playlists, since the ipod lists didn't transfer over right, but just turning it on play-all and shuffle makes for about a week of uninterrupted music.

For the Energi, the EPA gave it a rating of 44/41/43 after you empty the battery and go into regular hybrid mode. And as best I can tell, mine is getting pretty close to that. The problem (and it's a good problem to have) is that I always start a long drive with ~20 miles of electric range, so my 41mpg drive might look like 48mpg. My last tank of fuel gave me 66mpg, and higher numbers aren't far away. It's all a question of your driving pattern, but most people who order the Energi know what their pattern is and how well the Energi will fit it. Yea, the Hybrid isn't meeting expectations, and CR made a big todo about it. But my opinion is that it's mostly a flaw in the EPA tests, somewhat a flaw in Ford optimizing for those tests, and partly a problem with consumers not understanding what 'your mileage may vary' means. Honestly, if the Hybrid gets ~40 instead of 47, it's still in the 'Excellent' category, just not in the 'Spectacular' category. If you really want phenominal mpg at any cost, I strongly recommend an electric motorcycle/scooter, I'm getting ~300mpg on mine.Yea, 300. Really. But there's a price to be paid for that type of efficiency, and that price is mostly in safety and comfort, especially when it's raining in the winter. And then there's issues of range and cargo, etc. The C-Max is a compromise, but it's a good balance of comfort and efficiency and I'm happy I have it now.

Guybarth, we've got a whole alternate forum for Energi owners, but you'll probably want to read both this and that since most content overlaps. www.fordcmaxenergiforum.com. Join us! Yea, remote start appears to be standard, we have a 5-button remote. Press Lock-Start-Start, and the car comes on for 5, 10, or 15 minutes. If it's really cold out, the engine may come on to provide heat, which isn't a great plan if the car is in a closed garage and plugged in. There's no feedback on the remote, but the parking lights stay on while the car is running. Once MyFordMobile becomes live for us, we'll also be able to trigger that via smartphone app or website. We should also be able to schedule a time when the car will be warmed/cooled.

I'm surprised this one hasn't been added yet: PHEV - Plugin Hybrid Electric Vehicle (as in the C-Max Energi)

My daily commute is 10 miles round-trip, so I get home and have battery range left to get dinner or groceries. But my office also has a pair of outlets in the bottom of the parking deck, there's a Volt and an iMev that recharge there during the day. I expect the building manager will try to get more outlets installed, she's apparently an EV advocate. My local power rates are about $0.10/kWh, so a full recharge is about $0.75. Yes, that is increasing my monthly power bill, but since I can only charge about once a day it can't go more than $30/month.

Nope, don't have a ScanGauge. But the info is probably in there somewhere, if we just knew the code to look for.

I have to agree with Valkraider on this, they spend gazillions of dollars on research for efficiency, Ford almost certainly has a real wind tunnel in addition to supercomputers to measure cd. And if you look at our current front grill, most of it is already blocked off, with purely cosmetic chrome slats going across most of it. If the engineers could safely eliminate the grill entirely, they probably would have. I appreciate that ptjones is carefully watching engine water temps, but I might be driving at 70mph for 10 miles purely in EV mode, and I don't want my high voltage electronics overheating while the engine remains off. Replacing a high voltage converter can't be a cheap repair, and blocking airflow with a grill cover is certainly going to invoke some questions about the warranty coverage.

Well, I bought the Energi, so my EPA numbers (outside of EV mode) are 44/41/43. It appears that the Energi is going to end up much closer to those numbers than the Hybrid is to it's EPA numbers. So I'm not quite as disappointed as many of you. But my goal was to get into a PHEV that I liked, with a battery range that covered my daily commute, and highway efficiency that was reasonably close to my previous VW Jetta TDI. And by those criteria, the C-Max Energi is just perfect. As an aside, my last fillup in the Energi netted 66mpg, so paying a little extra up front for the bigger battery is making me rather happy. Even if it takes me a few years to make up that cost in gas money, the reduction in pollution and the benefits to our economy has it's own satisfaction value.

There is a simple bar graph, under the Fuel Economy section of the left dash panel. But it lumps things into 1, 2 or 5 minute blocks, and shows the last 5 blocks. I have mine set to 2 min blocks, and find it somewhat useful.