Hawk

bdginmo. I see what you are saying although I can't help but wonder how accurate the car is at calculating it. I did as you said yesterday and drove 21.2 miles using 4.3kwh, temp in upper 50s, no heat. Today I drove 20.2 miles using 4.4kwh (although it was at4.5 driving down my street but dropped back to 4.4 by the time I parked) Car had not switched to engine yet but was very close. Temp was mid 40s, no heat but did use seat heater some. For this time of year this is pretty close to what I was getting when car was new. I have never tracked kWh per charge so have no idea what the starting point was (at least according to the car). I am not trying to defend this battery in any way just stating my experience. This car has put me in a strange position. I have absolutely loved it and has been very reliable other than a few hiccups early on but can't wait to sell it and never by a Ford again. I will stick with the automakers who believe in electric vehicles i.e. Tesla. Still waiting for other automakers to step up!

I have a 2013 Energi with 36k miles. I am sure there has been some degradation but nothing noticeable at this point. I am getting around 20 miles per charge right now. I am in the southeast so winters are mild. Highway driving will kill your mileage real quick so I never use battery on highway. Its much better to save it for around town driving. I always plug it in immediately when I get home if I have depleted the battery. If its not depleted I delay the charging for middle of night to minimize time it sits with a full charge. I leased a 2013 Nissan Leaf for 3 years and tried to keep charge between 20-80% as much as possible and had no noticeable degradation with that battery either. (I know there had to be some but again not enough to see it without doing any testing) I am sure certain habits of charging can positively or negatively effect how well your battery holds up (as well as climate you live in). For me, living in SE and charging like I stated above has been very good to this point for my batteries

The 350lb rating is the echo hitch. The one I purchased has an extra mount at the back by the bumper giving it the 500lb rating. The find the forklift site very unfriendly to use. It takes some searching to find it.

Murphy, where in the manual does it explain how to remove the console to release shift lever from park position? I have looked but can't seem to find it. Thanks

In looking at the curt trailer hitch that fat fusion posted a link to, there is only one additional slit I had to cut for this one. It has a side wing on each side that the 350lb tongue does not have. Otherwise you still have to cut slit on back side, hole to go over bolt securing hitch to frame and notch for tongue itself. It also has a second bracket that attaches to the frame closer to rear bumper but that one is completely out of the way. Yes it is a 2" hitch that the rack fits in very securely with no rattles.

I originally went to amazon to order but it would not have made it on time. Luckily harbor freight had the exact one I was wanting. I posted pictures on gallery on main page. Tried to upload here but it did not work

I had a fully loaded car with 2 adults, 2 adult sized teenagers and a 7 yr old. Loaded trunk and had a newly installed cargo rack attached to a trailer hitch full of beach gear. I drove 500 plus miles mostly highway and forgot to charge battery before leaving so it was all in hybrid mode. As a result, this was the first time I did not average low to mid 40s on a road trip. No complaints here!

I just bought a torklift trailer hitch and a haulmaster cargo rack for my fusion. The hitch has a 500lb tongue capacity so it provides more than enough strength. The rack was on sale at harbour freight for $50 so for $300 total I now have plenty of "trunk space" when needed. I had 2 concerns with doing this and that was rack scraping the ground when going up ramps etc. and removing the plastic wind guard from rear bumper. The rack angles up nicely giving it plenty of clearance and I had no problems with that at all. I did not get a chance to put guard back on before trip but with a couple of notches added to it I was able to reinstall it which gives me a lot of peace of mind. The hitch is completely covered with only the tongue visible. My trip to the beach was just over 500 miles total with about 90% of it on the highway going 73mph. The car was fully loaded, 2 adults, 2 adult sized teenagers and 1 7 yr old. Full trunk and beach chairs, umbrellas, boogie boards etc strapped to the rack. I averaged just shy of 38mpg. A typical trip like this minus the cargo rack I would avg 42mpg. I would imagine that with wind guard back on and without the rack I should continue to see low to mid 40s on similar trips. Hopefully with the wind guard back on and with rack attached I can do a little better than this last trip but don't consider that a big deal since it will be very rare that I use it. I do have pictures I can post, I just have to figure out how to first. Forgot to mention the trip was done in 100% hybrid mode as I forgot to charge battery in my scramble to get hitch and trailer installed before leaving.

Thanks, good to know. I will definitely try it out at home some time. As it was I had to quickly figure out how to use that key and where the positive terminal was located for jumping. Hopefully there will not be a next time but at least I will be prepared for it.

Yikes, this just happened to me and I have had the car 14 months and almost 14k miles without any issues to this point. My wife drove it to work and light came on just before she got there. Parked with no issues, locked up and plugged into charger. At end of day went to get in and nothing, no power at all to open doors and of course start the car. It was in a parking garage 2 floors down and we thought we would have to push it out to flat bed. Luckily we were able to "jump" start it because otherwise I don't know what we would have done. How do you unlock steering, put car in neutral etc when you have no power? (on a funny note I jumped it with my nissan leaf, once we hooked it up the tow driver gave me the crank the key gesture. I must say it is very different jumping a car when neither makes a sound) It got it working thankfully but clearly a dead battery was not the problem? It drove out of garage fine and then was towed to dealer. Waiting to hear what they find out now.

I know at some point I will have a Tesla. Right now the timing is a little off for me. The lease on my leaf ends October, 2016. So a little to early for the III. As much as I love the energi, I will drop it in a heartbeat for the Tesla III if by that time I feel I can use it for all the long distance travel I would need it for. I wish Ford would get more serious with there pure ev's. As an early adopter I plan to stick with the early providers like Nissan and Tesla.

Nice. I read this post and remembered that the fedex truck stopped in front of our house last night. Opened the door this morning and there it was. North Carolina