Considering buying an Energi...

[danmurphy]

Hi - 

 

My wife and I currently have a 2010 Fusion Hybrid and a 2002 Buick Rendezvous.  We will probably give the Rendezvous to our son to use, and are considering the Energi.

We LOVE the Fusion Hybrid, and the Energi seems to basically be taking the Hybrid to the next level.  I had never had a Ford before the Fusion Hybrid, but I think I'm a solid Ford guy now.

 

It doesn't appear that a lot of dealerships even carry the Energi.  Is it that much of a niche market?  

 

Looking around this Forum, it doesn't seem like the electricity costs are substantial.

 

Also, new vs used?  I see a Craigslist ad for a 2014 Titanium for 16K, with 27K miles.  Seems reasonable, but it's about 100 miles away!  

 

Other thoughts?

 

Thanks!

Edited June 21, 2017 at 02:12 PM by danmurphy

[DavidWhy]

I went new with my 2017 Energi because they gave me 0% for 4 years. I love my Energi. Combined overall mileage hovers around 100MPG. That's, of course, considering that I commute to work in EV Mode every day. Your mileage could be different. Another reason I bought new was to get the newest tech. They have updated Bluetooth, and GPS on the car in the last couple years. I found that my Ford salesman didn't know much about the Energi. I did the research myself. I was teetering between the Energi and the Lincoln MKZ Hybrid. The plug-in was what tipped the scale. I got a cool $4000 credit on my taxes this year. That's a REAL $4K, not just "I didn't get taxed on $4K". That was huge. Hybrids don't get a tax incentive unless they are Plug-ins. The money that I saved with 0% and the tax credit more than covered the difference of new and a year old. Also, my company installed two charging stations at my office and they don't charge employees to charge their EVs. I'm the only one with an EV out of 350 employees, but I get the best parking space in the lot. EVs are still a niche market, but the smart people are getting on board before the incentives stop and before they have to fight for charging stations. I don't have any regrets.

[muzicman61]

Check around for any dealer factory exec models.  I found a 2017 FFTE with 7500.  Fully loaded.  Sticker was $41K and I paid $23K.  Of course, I did not get the 4K tax credit but still think I got a good deal.

 

I see you are in the Chicago area so I know I saw several on TrueCar.com in the Bensenville area.

Edited June 23, 2017 at 04:20 PM by muzicman61

[jj2me]

 

Looking around this Forum, it doesn't seem like the electricity costs are substantial.

 

 

EDIT: ORIGINAL BELOW IS WRONG, in that I divided by charging efficiency.  MPGe is "wall to wheel" tested, not "tank to wheel", so the correction is to make charging efficiency below a constant 100.  I corrected the spreadsheet.  Apologies, only my second week with this car, still learning.

 

__________________________________________

 

 

As a guesstimate, you can compare the electric costs to gas costs by using the EPA's FFE estimate of 35 kWh per 100 miles.  Solving for $/gal, you get this simple formula for the break-even pump price:

 

(35 * kWh price * ICE mpg) / charge efficiency %  100 

 

[Attached is a zip of a simple Excel spreadsheet that does this.]

 

For example, (35 * $0.12 * 42) / 72 100 = $2.45/gal.  $1.76/gal. crossover point. 

 

If you choose, for example, 35 mpg instead of the FFE's sticker of 42 for hybrid mode, the crossover is $2.04/gal.   $1.47/gal.

 

Caveat: Driving conditions, battery condition, temps, etc. affect mileage using either electric or gas.

 

Caveat: I don't know how accurate that EPA estimate is.  It seems to have a large standard deviation from the two instances of data (late spring driving) that I've come across. Both show better (and coincidentally, identical) results:

- my one test of full charge to empty (5.6 kWh @ ~72% efficiency L1 charger, used to go 26.3 easy miles) extrapolates to 35 kWh/164 118 mi.

- murphy's post (5.1 kWh @ ~80% efficiency L2 charger, to go 23.9 miles) extrapolates to 35 kWh/164 131 mi.

(35 kWh/164 118 and 131 mi. equates to 21 29.5 and 26.7 kWh/100 mi.), respectively 

 

Make sure your electric rate figure includes everything (generation, delivery, and taxes).  EDIT: Ignore ----> Typical estimates for charge efficiency are 72% for a Level 1 (120V) charger (like the one supplied with the car) and 80% for a Level 2 (240V) charger.

BreakEvenPumpPrice_ElecVsICE.zip

Edited June 28, 2017 at 03:14 AM by jj2me

[Sandroad]

Hi - 

 

My wife and I currently have a 2010 Fusion Hybrid and a 2002 Buick Rendezvous.  We will probably give the Rendezvous to our son to use, and are considering the Energi.

We LOVE the Fusion Hybrid, and the Energi seems to basically be taking the Hybrid to the next level.  I had never had a Ford before the Fusion Hybrid, but I think I'm a solid Ford guy now.

 

It doesn't appear that a lot of dealerships even carry the Energi.  Is it that much of a niche market?  

 

Looking around this Forum, it doesn't seem like the electricity costs are substantial.

 

Also, new vs used?  I see a Craigslist ad for a 2014 Titanium for 16K, with 27K miles.  Seems reasonable, but it's about 100 miles away!  

 

Other thoughts?

 

Thanks!

 

 

As you are deciding, make sure you consider the warranty. That 2014 may be out of the basic factory full car warranty. Unless you know the history of the car and can confirm no issues, buying one with the factory warranty in force might be good. As posted in other threads, the Energi can depreciate fairly quickly in some markets. We bought our 2017 as a corporate exec lease with 9XXX miles for about $17,000 less than the MSRP. Nice car, and no gas bought yet (3 months and counting). 

[fconway]

Check around for any dealer factory exec models.  I found a 2017 FFTE with 7500.  Fully loaded.  Sticker was $41K and I paid $23K.  Of course, I did not get the 4K tax credit but still think I got a good deal.

 

I see you are in the Chicago area so I know I saw several on TrueCar.com in the Bensenville area.

This. i just bought one of those also, also 6,000 miles, also $23k. a beautiful, fully loaded car. this is the way to buy them, unless you just have to have new. No problems, no regrets. look at autotrader, there are still a bunch of low mileage cars around in outstate Illinois.

[danmurphy]

Thanks all for the very helpful comments!  I'll let you know what I end up with!

[MarkK]

I live in suburban NYC, I have about 10 Ford dealers within 20 miles of here. When I was thinking of an Energi, I looked online at their websites and made a few calls, and I found no Energi models at any dealer. I picked a dealer, talked to them about ordering per my specs, got the very excellent (low) pricing, and ordered one on March 2nd. It arrived on June 21st. I had to return my last lease to Infiniti that day, I expected to pick up the loaner they had arranged for me, but instead I picked up the car, which had arrived that morning. It is a Titanium with various nice features. It is MUCH better than I expected in every way. Over the past week of ownership, with my local driving, I've used virtually no gas. Currently showing 254 mpg on the dash.

 

No one even knows that Ford makes such an excellent plugin. That's why dealers do not stock them. I looked at Tesla, Volt and Prius, but my older house cannot add a proper charging station for the Tesla, and the Fusion is much more car than either the Volt or Prius in my humble opinion.

[murphy]

IMHO dealers do not stock them because they are too lazy to learn how they operate.  They also don't like the oil change recommendation of 2 years or 20,000 miles.  They much prefer to zap you for an oil change every 3000 miles.  Mine was also a factory order and it was the first one the dealer had ever seen.

[Neil]

The issue with buying a used Energi is that the battery really does have a limited life span.  It's not like a normal used car that you can just drive a year or two longer.  My 2013 Energi has about 70k (~55k electric) miles on it right now and the battery has lost over 15% of it's capacity.  When the battery is ready to be replaced (probably 3-4 years from now) it may be the death knoll for the car.  It'll be hard to justify putting a $10k battery in a car with 140k miles.  in addition, the resale value of a car that needs a $10k repair is going to be next to nothing. 

[jeff_h]

The issue with buying a used Energi is that the battery really does have a limited life span.  It's not like a normal used car that you can just drive a year or two longer.  My 2013 Energi has about 70k (~55k electric) miles on it right now and the battery has lost over 15% of it's capacity.  When the battery is ready to be replaced (probably 3-4 years from now) it may be the death knoll for the car.  It'll be hard to justify putting a $10k battery in a car with 140k miles.  in addition, the resale value of a car that needs a $10k repair is going to be next to nothing. 

 

I don't know if I'd go as far as saying that the HVB is going to reach end of life in a couple years, they aren't like the normal 12V battery in cars that do have a limited life span.  However you're right that degradation does occur as my wife's 2013 Energi has probably also lost about 15% of capacity, and that's a caveat in the manual that it's to be expected.

 

My 2010 Fusion Hybrid with the NiMH HVB is just about to the 250k mile mark and HVB still works the same as it did when new, as best as I can tell.  Now whether the Li-Ion HVB will remain functional (albeit with degradation as noted above) after that many miles remains to be seen but giving the design engineers the benefit of the doubt when they transitioned from NiMH to Li-Ion, I expect they will.

[muzicman61]

Oddly enough the 4 FFE's my dealership had were all factory execs and came from auctions they went to in Texas and Wisconsin.  They had no new stock.  But I'm happy not to have taken the hit when they left the lot. :)