Rexracer

Just a suggestion on your spread sheet. You should weight the scores so they are more accurate to what you experience. Say for instance Price was really important to you, you would make it worth say 10 points, but key-less entry pad was also important, but not nearly as much as the price, so key-less entry pad would be worth say 2 points. Then when ranking them you can give a value for each. Say the fusion after all tax credits is 32000, and the volt is 33000, well you wouldn't give 10 points to the fusion and 0 points to the Volt, you would give 10 points to the fusion and 9 points to the volt (since they are so close). Key-less entry pad, fusion has it and earns 2 points, volt doesn't have it and earns 0 points. etc etc etc. BUT at the end of the day, you will drive both cars, consider how they operate for your needs and decide which one you like better regardless of the scoring. ;-)

Congrats on the car and welcome to the forum. impressive MPG given your free/way gas biased on your drive. Winter will take a hit on the battery for sure, you will be using it to heat your car and the capacity will be lower, so if your getting 79 currently don't be surprised to drop to 60-65.

Bummer, and funny since just this morning I had a lady back out of her driveway and never even look over to see if there was any other cars coming. I nearly blew my horn, but was able to stop safely back away from her and just shake my head for being completely oblivious.

Not here, but tempting as we got a box for the wifes car, so just need the cross bars/adapter stuff. But then again anytime I need that much space, can just take her car...

Let us know how they wear in the long run!

I have 16k on my car and my tires look brand new. Only way they wear that fast is carrying a lot of cornering speed. and yes while Ford has greatly improved as a company, you still have a lot of the old school dealers out there dragging the company down.

a) Nice M3, would love to have one one-day. b) my 15k mile ave is 66.3mpg ( + about $10-$12 extra in electricity per month) b) your mpg will depend on how much of your drive is freeway, and how much you "adapt" your driving style to maximize the car. worst ease you will get hybrid economy ~40mpg and save miles on the M3. Save the battery for the city driving, use gas on freeway. Since I cant afford an M3 as a daily, I have the Energi with 2x car seats, and a 3k C4 for track duty (I see your Willow Springs sticker on the back). I have PIR, The Ridge, ORP, VIR, Spokane

To the first statement about stepping on the gas above 50mph in EV now. Originally I wanted to get upset and say "THATS NOT THE POINT OF THIS CAR", but you are exactly right, the FFE doesnt have much oomph above 50mph in electric only, but... thats not the point of this car. If you do get this car you will quickly learn that you want to be efficient as possible and use your elctric for speeds 30-40 and below. If you are getting on the freeway above 50mph for anything more then 1 exit (1 mile), switch to EV later. To the 2nd part, about reduced performance, I would say you would be hard pressed to ever notice. 70-80 up hill, no problem. Now if you want to do a high speed run, and floor it till it runs out of gas, yeah ok you may notice reduced performance as there won't be as much electric assist. I have done the drive from LA to Vegas (not in FFE) so I completely understand what your talking about. The key is, don't get on the freeway in EV Auto burn out all your battery, and then be in Hybrid only the rest of the drive. Get on the freeway, switch to EV Later, and drive to Vegas. Then when crawling around the strip use your battery. What will happen on the drive is you will use some of your large battery, but when the car can recover, it will run the gas engine to recharge the spend electric, leaving you with a battery that is within 10% of when you put it in EV later.

Its all the same battery, but the system reserves a portion of the battery for "hybrid" driving. If this gets low, the gas engine would kick on to charge it back up, so realistically you should never be without some battery. Unless say the car was on the dealer lot, never charged, and you took it out and floored it instantly before the system had any chance to recover some battery. So leave it in EV-Auto, and you should never notice any diminished performance. But what you will learn is there are times you want to save your battery (steady state driving over 50-60 for more then a short distance, heavy AC/Heat need, etc), or to force battery usage (stop/go traffic, know you have a short drive so want to use as much EV as possible, etc). Its all dependent on what your driving looks like.

This is funny. When i saw the title i thought "I have to post my findings!" but then read your post, and you ended up exactly where I did! The difference is we HAD the stroller already, and decided that if the stroller wouldn't fit in the truck, then we would NOT buy the car. The first try it didn't fit at all, then with some re-arranging how I placed it it went in fine. Good info on the City Mini also edwarj3, we have a Phil & Teds for a jogger/main stroller, and it doesn't fit in truck even with the wheels off. It does go behind the driver seat just find standing up though, but now with 2 kids and 2 car seats thats not an option.

I don't think that self driving cars are going to be mandated and people wont be allowed to drive any time soon. Will there be autonomous cars? Yes Will it revolutionize how we commute? Yes Will it eliminate all human drivers? No There are lots of people who enjoy driving, and there are a lot of places where a self driving car doesn't make sense. How often do you get in your car and not know exactly where your going, or change your mind along the way "oh i want to stop for a soda". Im not giving up racing cars either. Will driving cars move from being an every day event to a hobby? Sure, just look at Horses.

Do you mean cambering the tires IN to wear the outside edges less? Cambering them OUT would put positive camber into the system causing more outside tire wear. My tires are wearing very evenly, never even roated them yet, and at 15.5k miles, but I also drive the car likes its a comfortable high MPG car and not a sports car. I have my track Corvette for that sort of thing.

My guess would be a flat piece of metal, when the tire ran over it it caused it to kick up. It then scrapping the under body until it basically wedged in straight, puncturing the sheet metal and ripping out the back as it flopped over. Being flat, you would have had a really hard time seeing it. The rub marks right before the puncher make this make sense.

I have an accountant, thats why I need a new one! ;-)

I need a new accountant if that's all the tax liability you guys have. I don't make 6 figures, have ~1500 a month in mortgage interest, and $3500 in property tax's, plus the 9-10% state tax, and 2 children, PLUS daycare deductions, and max health/cafeteria, donating 10% of pre-tax earnings to charity and I still had $10k or so in Federal and 4-6k in state tax liabilities.

Wait, Icant turn the wheel of these cars 10 degrees and turn sharp corners?!?! ;-)

This is the thing that confuses me as well. And I haven't seen any advertising incorrectly stating that its a credit, not a rebate, but I think a lot of people just don't understand what that means & a lot of dealers don't know either to properly explain it.

Well this is part of a much bigger reason that MFT is going away and a completely new system is being developed. And as an Engineer, when I chose this car I knew MFT was a weak point, and accepted that fact. Compared to the complaints I have seen, its really not that bad. Even if that means having to spend 15 seconds adjusting the clock twice a year. ;-) And I wasn't making excuses for the current state (not auto changing), just saying that there is likely some rational that we know nothing about.

You drove through my area (PDX) and didn't stop to say high!?!? ;-) Sounds like a fun trip

with all the talk about "i want to lower my Energi, what do I do" now we have a definitive answer. Just get the H&Rs and your done! looks good.

In Oregon the only people that get in trouble for tinted windows are the ones going really really dark, which is easy to spot. I don't think they will pull you over for it, just add it on top of some other infraction, or use it as an excuse to pull you over. On sedans we get tint our rear windows to 25-30%? but CAN'T tint the front windows (not windshield just driver/passenger window). The crazy thing is that in SUVs, trucks, and vans you ARE allowed to tint front windows. So I had my fronts tinted to legal level (the 25-30%) and had the back windows tinted 1 shade darker to better protect my infant and toddler. I was pulled over and the cop didn't say anything about it, because it doesn't look worse then you would see on an SUV.

I haven't done it, but people have talked about it, look at this thread http://www.fordfusionenergiforum.com/topic/1544-led-lights/ most of the way Meyer showed some nice looking lights, but that's the entire assembly as well, and they are ~$1k. The ones you linked look really good, I would be up to spending $90 for lights If you do it please post up the results and opinion!

You can't claim that kind of deduction in Oregon (at least that I know about), no idea about Ohio. My experience if you are willing to take trade value on a car (so 18.5k in your case) putting it on Craigs List for that price should net a sale within a day or so. But maybe cars are cheaper in Ohio? But remember the thousands you would save buying from this guy, so really you could sell for 17k and still come out ahead. ;-)

Hey instead of buying that one, get this one for sale on the boards, http://www.fordfusionenergiforum.com/topic/2518-2013-energi-titanium-navroof-for-sale-19k-miles/?do=findComment&comment=19840 would save you a few thousand.

?? Just vote by mail, do it at your leisure, its great... Oh your not in Oregon, sorry. ;-)