fwhite42

I've never seen anything higher than 28. I'm currently ranked third in my region for "Renaissance Man," so my driving is pretty solid, and I really do get about 28 miles on a very regular basis, but I've never seen one of these inflated estimates. In fact, I quite regularly get a couple more miles than my estimate gave in the morning when I set out.

Very cool.

Thank you, Ashley (and others). At this point, I'm 600 miles into my new Fusion and still at almost 2/3 full from the original fill up with the dealer, so the urgency to get it fixed hasn't sent me back to the dealer, yet. I notified them of the problem, and they told me to bring it in whenever I get a chance, so I'll make the trip the next time I'm planning to be in their area anyway. Loving the car!!

On the original topic, I do think Chevy is "felling the heat," but perhaps not so much from the competition like our cars as they are from missing their own internal initial projections. The car had issues at launch, is getting mediocre reviews in most media, and simply isn't performing as they wanted...that HAS to be putting some "heat" on the people at the top. On the side topic that sprung up, I can definitely say that at least some of the salespeople at the dealerships I went to are not thrilled with the way the plug-in and EV sales are handled. But, that's probably just because they aren't one of the "EV guys," so every buyer who comes in and wants to look at one of those cars goes straight to one of the specialists. At the first dealership I went to, they had no Energis (despite a somewhat misleading statement on their website) and they seemed miffed when I walked on the lot and said that's what I was looking for. At the second dealership I went to, I was greeted by the usual onslaught of salespeople hanging out near the customer parking area, and once I told them I was looking for an Energi, their mood noticeably turned sour as they told me they'd have to go get "the guy" that I could talk to. The dealership management seemed ecstatic about the Energi, and they had a TON of them in stock, and at least claimed that they were moving quite well.

I'm having a problem where my gas door won't open after holding down the release button. The information console says that it's ready, but the door itself doesn't open at all. I've tried tapping it, pressing on one side to see if it would release...nothing. I end up having to pop the trunk and release it with the manual pull in there. The good news is, I haven't actually NEEDED to open it yet, I was just trying to open it to show the pressurized gas system to a friend of mine when I noticed that it wouldn't open. I have tried it several times since then to see if it was simply a temporary thing, but always a no go. So, it's not a time sensitive issue (still 3/4 of a tank from my initial fill up), but I wanted to see if either a) I'm doing something wrong, b) if anyone else has experienced this, and/or c) do I need to head to the dealer to have this looked at?

Oh, I'm fine tuning my braking and accelerating, for sure...if MFM would report my numbers right, I'd be top-10 in my region for Renaissance Man. My car is showing 96% overall driving, but MFM has it at 91%...and that's with taking a hit because it was god-awful for the 39 miles it was driven at the dealership. Right now I'm averaging about 28 miles per charge with no A/C, a little under 25 with A/C. I'm purposely taking surface streets as opposed to freeway/turnpike, which only adds about 5 minutes each way on my commute, but adds quite a bit of range. I'll never get to pure EV because I use the car for more than just my work commute (I'd have gone Leaf or Focus EV, otherwise), so I don't have to worry about the oil maintenance or stale gas burns. But, I'd love it if I could stay 100% EV year-round on just my work commute. I may pull the trigger on the portable solar charging unit just for grins, but it bums me out a little to think that it might only gain me 1 mile...I was hoping for more like 3 to 5.

Thank you for continuing this discussion, and my education. Assuming the portable charger was at full charge (1500 watts) from being plugged in at home the previous night, and then I plugged the car into it, considering the math you did to show that it would charge for about 20 minutes: how much actual charge would be transferred to the car in that 20 minutes? And, would the portable charger then be totally exhausted and need to be recharged before it could be used again, or would it simply be in a "rest" period and then could be used again without recharging it to transfer whatever remained after that 20 minutes? Forgive the basicness of some of these questions, but I just don't understand the difference between amperage and voltage and wattage with regard to energy transfer. All I know is that I'm reading that the portable charger can power a small refrigerator over 120V AC for several hours, so that SEEMS to indicate that it could transfer at least SOME power into the Energi. And, I get that the solar array wouldn't necessarily totally recharge the portable charger, but if it even partially recharged it (say, several hundred watts), could that then be transferred to the car through the portable charger, or would there simply be too much loss in inneficiency to really put anything back into the car? To put a finer point on it, what I've discovered in my limited driving thus far (car has only about 300 miles so far), is that I can make my workday roundtrip so long as I don't need the A/C and the traffic breaks just right (which is what happened today because it's mild out), but I can't quite make the roundtrip when I do need the A/C and/or traffic isn't quite right. So, if this portable charging thing can make up that little bit of difference, I'll be pure EV for my commute year-round instead of only some of the time.

My version wasn't reporting accurately, but I ran a VHR and then it started showing correctly...not sure if that fixed it and/or if there was a system fix applied on Ford's side at the same time. I'm still getting an error when I try to click the link to "Select your driving lifestyles." After being taken to a selection screen with options like "Commuter," "Techie," etc., it always goes to an error page that says, "We're sorry. We experienced a system error while processing your request." On my VHR, the "Scheduled Maintenance" section is red and there's an error that says, "System Unavailable."

Murphy: I live in South Florida and get pretty good sun exposure...and, I'm totally willing to step outside my office and adjust the panel(s) throughout the day to maximize angle. And, again, my goals aren't lofty here. I'm not trying to get anything like a full charge, I'm just looking to get whatever I can get from the sun during the work day and extend my range home ever so slightly. So, that said, would something like this unit work better than the Duracell unit I linked to above? http://store.sundancesolar.com/xantrex-xpower-portable-powerpack-1500/ I'm not sure if it meets the specs you mention, but it looks feasible to my untrained eye. If that unit is capable of charging the car at all, then I could charge the unit at home over night to fill its 1500 watts, then theoretically (optimally) add another several hundred watts from the solar panels. Thoughts?

I'll preface this entire post by saying that I am the furthest thing from an engineer or really a mechanical/electrical guy at all... So, I read an article today about a new C-Max concept car that Ford has been showing off that is essentially the current C-Max with solar panels on the roof. This made me think that the same thing should be possible and forthcoming for the Fusion as well, and that got me thinking about a near-term solution. Obviously, without major electrical wiring, you can't just throw some panels up there since there's no way to connect them. However, there are plenty of mobile solar systems avaliable that charge into a small battery that can then power various electricity-consuming devices. Now, to be really portable, the battery storage is only about 600 watts, which wouldn't do much for our cars. But, my non-engineer brain wondered if the panel went into the battery and the car plugged into the battery, wouldn't the car keep exhausting the battery and the panel keep charging it, essentially turning the battery into a converter? The panel I have in mind is 85 watts (I'm assuming that's per hour), so for a full day at the office, I'm looking at about 750 watts. Then if I charge the battery off my house electric overnight, I'd have a total of about 1350 watts into the car from the time I parked in the morning. That is likely the difference between a full EV roundtrip commute and having to go hybrid a little. Am I crazy? This is the unit I'm thinking about (but I'm open to any):http://store.sundancesolar.com/85-watt-plug-n-play-solar-energy-kit-with-duracell-600-powerpack/

Ha! I didn't even think that the directional shutters would also close completely. The car is so advanced that I just assumed there had to be a setting somewhere. Thanks!

Hi, everyone, new owner here, and loving the car so far! Is there any way to control the back seat vents separately from the front seat fan? I'm not worried about temp control, just vent. My elderly father-in-law often rides in the back seat, and he tends to get cold when it's still pretty warm in the front seat. So, if there's any way to turn off the back seat vents while the front seat is still blowing, that'd be great. I don't see anything on the in-car controls and couldn't find a mention in the owner's manual.