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Improve your Winter MPG's by 4MPG by Taping up your grills. The strategy here is to minimize heat lose, because the ICE needs to get up to operating temperature(202-212*F) to get the best MPG's. All heat comes from burning gas so the less you use to heat up the ICE the better your MPG's. BTW taping up the front of your car has another benefit of protecting your paint job. Supplies you will need, Heavy Duty clear packing tape,Windex cleaner and car wax. Clean and wax areas to be tape to make it easier to get off. You need to setup your Smart Gauge like this. This is accomplished by toggling down Display menu to MyView then toggling right one step and then toggling down till you get Engage display. Then toggle right one step and then down till you get Temp display. Then hit OK button in the middle to save this, you can monitor MyView for water temperature. Then open hood and tape up intake holes as in the pics below. This keeps cold air from going into the intake of ICE, instead uses warmer air from the engine compartment which helps the ICE warmup sooner. Next close hood and tape up the top grill opening to keep cold air from going into ICE compartment as shown in the picture. Next tape up center grill as shown all the way across the two openings. Do the same thing to the lower grill. You can also tape up hood and head light joints to keep cold out. EASY! If you don't like it you can pretty easily take it back off. Good Luck :)Paul

Just pushed the bar a little higher without running out of gas, sorry Jus. Smart Gauge reads 902.2mi/14.13gal and 63.8mpg then corrected for(New Tires) Odometer error of 1.019%= 918mi.. I put in 13.5gal., second click= 68mpg for the trip. In theory having .4-.5gal. left I could have gone another 25-30mi. before running out or 945-950mi. total. Also 72% EV, 28% ICE. My Wife and I decided go someplace Warm after Xmas, Florida didn't disappoint with temps in the 70's-low 80's to look at Lighthouses for fun. It turned out to be harder than I figured but that's another story. To get ready for the trip I set up MADMAX with everything I could think of to improve MPG's like 50PSI tire pressure, installed New Upper Grill Cover along with Center and lower Grill Covers. Also Wheel Covers, GasPods, covered Fog Lights and taped seems around hood, Lights and Grill Covers with clear packing tape to minimize heat lose. You get your best MPG's when WT is above 200*F which I monitor with my ScanGaugeII. I topped off my tank with eight gallons ethanol free gas plus 2gallon gas can if I needed it, I didn't. Started trip Dec. 26th and it took 4 days to go the 900+ miles. The first day temps in Newnan,GA were 35*F when we left and it took about a hour to get the WT up 200*F with speeds between 35-55mph on State Routes and about three hours before I could get my average to 60mpg when temps got up to the 50's. After 10 hours I was up to 67.4mpg so things I thought were looking promising. Second day I lost .5mpg right of the bat because of warm up of ICE, couldn't plugin ICE heaters on the trip. Then made a wrong turn and ended up on I-95 for 15mi. with speeds up to 77mph, lost another .5mpg. St. Augustine was having a Party and got stuck in gridlock for 2.5 hours and only lost another .5mpg. Third day started at 66mpg and by the end of the day I was down to 65mpg average, because of head winds. Forth day we had rain so we lost another 1MPG so I thought from looking at the not so Smart Gauge being off by .6 gallons and I went at least 50 miles pass 0m to E expecting to run out at any time for the last 30miles. It looks like I could have gone another 20-30miles. I still think it is possible to go a thousand miles on at tank, but everything would have to go your way to do it. It looks like if traffic and weather conditions had cooperated I could gotten around 970-980miles, getting very close. :yahoo: Paul

My MPG's have gone up about 2MPG with the addition of NAPA oil pan heater. I plugin at home and at work and I'm averaging 51-52mpg with temps around low 30's. With speeds in the 40-55mph. I currently also have Grill Covers,GasPods and wheel covers on MADMAX. Those with block heaters really got it made by adding Oil Pan Heater, because you can maybe get to the magic 128*F WT and be able to go into EV mode quickly and save more gas. :) Paul

Is there a way to see the lifetime summary other than shutting off the car? The only thing I can find in the manual and on the forum is how to reset it. I am quickly turning into a geek about all the stats for my car and would love a way to see the lifetime summary. It would be really nice if there was a statistic screen on the touch screen. Maybe add it to the vehicle settings page on there and add it to the trip screen so if you don't have a touch screen you can still see it.

Hi, we purchased a used C-max 2013 SEL manufacture date 10/12, two weeks ago. The MPG is so erratic, varying from 47 for my 100 mile down hill commute, to barely 22 city driving. Average temps here in the WA state Tricities area have been over 100 degrees, have been trying to spare the A.C. Have also been trying the pulse and glide but obviously haven't figured it out. What's ICE? Also, never had a car so attractive to bugs on the grill. Love the spacious interior but too stressed out about Mpg. Any hand holding available?

ICE block heaters would improve MPG's by at least 2mpg all year around and shorten time to get heat in the winter. Remember CMAX doesn't want to EV until 128degrees WT. At this time the only way you can get a ICE BH is by fleet order according to FORD. It would be nice if you could order it as an option at least. IMO :) Paul

Has anyone else seen their MPG meter indication constantly jumping up and down? Mine was doing it yesterday at a rate of about 2 to 3 times per second with a magnitude of, perhaps, 2 to 4 MPG. Not at all the normal reading that just changes smoothly with road and speed. No water on the road, temps about 70F, didn't matter if HVB was being charged or supplying power. Tach and speed were steady. Car seemed to be running normally with gas mileage unaffected. Saw it for over an hour - AFAIK, till the end of the trip.

Hi, I just got my cmax energi last month and have 550 miles on it. I mainly use it on electric as i work close by. My dash reads about 128 mpg isn hat correct? it continues to go up every time i drive it. I thought 108 was the maximum the cmax could do. How high can it go? Also what about engine break in. Do i need to run the engine? How much? I just got a letter formoil change at 7500 miles is that combined or is there a way to see non-electric miles so i know when to do oil change? I think i used engine for maybe 20 miles so far. Should tHe engine be run once week? I mainly go to,places now that have level 2 charging. My ford dealer is near supermarket so i get a free charge while i shop. I charge overnight at home and may get level 2 charger. So far the one 110v charger that came with car is fine. Also can you use cmax with level 3 charger? Very happy with lease!! Saving $200 month in gas. Richard

http://www.forbes.com/sites/michelinemaynard/2013/08/15/why-did-ford-wait-so-long-to-fix-c-maxs-mpg-rating/

I have a solution for poor MPG on CMAX Hybrid that would increase City MPG by 3-10MPG's and 2-3 MPG's Hwy for about a hundred dollars approx. in parts,but Ford doesn't allow you to modify their CMAX without the possiblity of voiding the warranty. Not using their air filter could void your waranty. So you can't solve the problem yourself and they will take your idea if you don't have a patient. No quick cheap solutions here. What can you do?

So, I obviously have a big problem with the max. I have contacted Ford and have a case number and all that stuff so I am not so much looking for an answer rather than sharing my experience. For starters, MPG. I would cautiously state that everyone needs to relax about the low MPG. The break in period of the car and what appears to be a glorious misunderstanding of mean, median, and mode are responsible for this. Even though I am getting about 35 MPG at the 5,000 ish mile mark, I expect warmer weather and more break in to cross the gap. Oh sure, I have more problems; rear kick to open the hatch thingy is intermittent, GPS is lost, the gain on the speaker phone mic is way too high, and sync. Sync is the one problem that is so significant that this will be my last Ford purchase. Take a look at the video..... It isn't 1993 and we should have this radio thing to the iPhone 5 thing figured out BEFORE we launch a car. After talking with Ford they actually admit that the iPhone is more powerful than their Sync system and the Sync doesn't know how to act. While I applaud Ford for trying to take care of, we'll, everything, I think they fell short. All I want is what what's advertised. Not to wildly ridiculous when all I want is to; make a call, have a text read to me, and listen to the radio. My C Max experience has failed me at all three. Now I know some of will have diarrhea of the blog and star screaming how its Apple's fault and even pepper that with some Steve Jobs versus Bill Gates conspiracy theories. I get it. But, Ford claimed that it would work, not Apple. Ford admits the iPhone is more powerful than Sync so I will let them figure that out. I love my dealership and they have tried everything they can but my mechanic isn't a software programer nor do I want him to be. Ford promises a fix is coming but..... Thoughts? http://youtu.be/CdrQPKcN0Ms