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Noooo! After 75 pages, I cannot believe that my silly, little thread has been idle since early November. Bring on the happy talk, please! Okay, I'll add some. It's been getting colder here in Sacramento, with a real cold snap over the past two weeks, but I've still managed to get over 40mpg on several of my work commutes. I clocked in with 50+ on one recent trip. Sometimes I still end up in the high 30s, but it's never lower than 38 or so, unless the trip is super brief and I haven't been paying attention to my driving style. Yep, I'm happy, and even more happy with the recent SW upgrade.

I just joined too, but it doesn't seem very active, lately!

I live in Sacramento and my father in law lives in the Sierra Nevada Foothills, so long trips up the mountain are pretty frequent. I've never had any problem getting up the hill in the Fusion Hybrid, even though some of the grades are pretty steep. I'd say if someone is barreling down on me on an uphill grade, they are probably going too fast.

Great review. I have to say that my experience is quite similar to yours. I've had a few trips to the dealer; nothing major, and everything has been taken care of. Mileage is reasonable and has improved with the upgrade to the software. Overall, I'm very happy with this car and I could certainly see myself keeping it for quite a while.

That is a beautiful car. Man, they don't build 'em like that anymore!

Consumer Reports seems stuck in the 1970's and 1980's. I know, because I am old enough to remember those days. My dad was an avid subscriber to Consumer Reports. Back in the day, Japanese cars were being more solidly built than American cars were. A lot of opinions about quality were formed then, and it seems to me that CR has never really moved beyond that mindset. That's why I say the reviewers all seem to be curmudgeonly old men. They are people who are still stuck in a mindset that's 30 or 40 years old.

CR has been calling the MFT system "confusing" for quite sometime. Honestly, I think they'd find anything that isn't analog confusing. Their reviewers all seem like curmudgeonly old men. And I say that as a person who isn't exactly young. There are some people, like my husband, who seem to live and die by CR ratings. I believe there is more than one side and, while I'm willing to consider what they say, their reviews are not deal breakers for me. I like to check out other opinions and then form one of my own.

Awww, thanks! I luvs y'all back, too!

That's pretty impressive!

I I'd like to do that, but with the temperature extremes here I find myself at lunchtime getting into a car that's baking hot from sunlight, even though the outside temperature is below 65*. When I leave the car on auto at these times ("my temp" is 71*) the heat runs. It's already hot in the car, and I don't need the extra heat. Rolling down the windows to air it out is only temporarily helpful because the sun continues to beat down through the windows and heat up the cabin. I really want A/C but have to manually turn it on somehow in order to get it. I wish I had a button for "my temp" and "my other temp" ;)

You are probably not any older than I am. I'm in my 50's. The ones I am talking about are the Consumer Reports guys who carry on as though they can't figure out that there's a different function in each corner of the main touch screen.

I don't know; I've never tried to use voice commands for this. My big issue is that I live in central California. It's cold in the morning and hot in the afternoon, so I run heat and a/c both in any given day. I get into the car in the morning and start to back up, then realize that I still have the AC on from the night before and it's only 45* so I want to quickly make a change, but with the back up camera on, I can't. Right now I just have to stop, put it in park, and change everything before I can head out. It's a minor inconvenience.

I've been thinking about this recently. One of the complaints we hear about the Fusion is the "confusing" MFT interface. I don't think it's confusing at all, and I believe that this complaint is probably leveled mainly by older reviewers who aren't used to using touchscreen technology or even computer technology to get things done. That being said, there is one thing I miss, and that is having something I can touch and feel in my hand that helps me do climate control without having to look away from the windshield. In an old-fashioned car you had a knob for the fan and a knob for the temperature. It was pretty easy to just feel for those two things and set them the way you wanted them without glancing away from the road. Now I find climate control to be a much more distracting process, because there really is no good way to do it by feel in this car. If I were to make one suggestion for improving the Fusion, I think it might be to put a couple of knobs back on the dash for climate control. What say you? Do you miss this the way I do?

Yep, this is pretty common. All the things that use energy have to derive that energy from somewhere, and that affects fuel economy. For a while when my Fusion was new I was just warming the cabin in the morning and then turning the heat off, but I finally decided that I want to just drive my car and not be obsessed over everything that affects mileage, so I stopped doing that. It's getting cooler again, but with the upgrade I'm not seeing as much affect as I'd expect without it, so I think the upgrade is pretty successful.

I have an iPhone, and my car read a text message to me a few days ago. It was quite a surprise. That never happened before the upgrade, and I still can't send them, but apparently it will now read them to me. I don't know about the original post, though. My car has always had the correct information in the display for callers.

Just popping in to say that I am thrilled to see this thread still going strong :) I have had the upgrade for a couple of weeks now, and it looks like I'm getting about at 10% improvement or so. My numbers are pretty consistently in the very high 30's to low or mid 40's. I'm really happy with this car, all the way around, and was just thinking this morning that I might keep this one for a while. I usually get the itch to get a new (to me) vehicle every few years, but the longer I drive my Fusion, the more it becomes like an old glove that fits comfortably. I still have less than 10K on it (noticed today on the way to work that the odometer read 7777.7) so there's still a lot of driving yet to be done. I don't know how I'll feel in another three years, but right now I'm just really happy in my Fusion.

LOL, well I have never had a Garmin or Tom Tom so this is the only navigation I've ever used. So far it has not tried to send me off the edge of a cliff, but you never know!

I haven't been around much, but was finally able to get the software upgrade and latest round of recall repairs taken care of. I have to say that I've stopped worrying much about mileage and have just settled in to enjoying this car. There's a lot to enjoy! Still feel that, for the money spent, there is nothing out there that comes close. Style-wise I'm noticing that other manufacturers are responding to the Fusion by bringing out racier versions of their mid-size sedans, which is kind of cool because I really think that Ford, with this Fusion, has driven the market in a very competitive way. Now that I have had the car for several months, there are several features that I didn't think I wanted, but that I wouldn't now be without. In no particular order: Navigation: This was not on the car I ordered, but was on the car I ended up buying. I love it so much that I don't know if I could ever buy another car that doesn't have it. So nice to not worry about directions any more. Adaptive Cruise Control: I sort of thought I wanted this, but I am surprised at how much I use it. I use it all the time, even in light traffic on surface streets. Blind Spot Indicators: The visibility on this car really blows the old Prius out of the water, but the blind spot indicators are a valuable plus. How did I ever live without these? Anyway, it's nice to see everyone. I hope all is well, and that everyone is getting the most out of their car. I remember when we were all so patiently waiting to get ours. The recalls and so forth are the cost of early adoption, but I would not trade my Fusion and I'm really happy I have this car.

Hi everyone! I finally got the upgrade over the past weekend, and will be reporting on it over the next few weeks as things settle in. I'd stopped hypermiling after a while because it was just too intense and too much work for little gain. Driving like my normal manic self I was at about 38.5mpg lifetime average. This morning I hypermiled in to work to see what I could do and ended up at about 45mpg. That's not bad, but it's not outside the realm of what I was doing on that trip previously, so we'll see. I've reset my lifetime averages though, so hopefully that will improve. One thing I am very happy about, knock on wood, is that the bluetooth streaming audio seems to be functioning properly. Good to see everyone.

I had this problem too. Dealer fixed it several months ago, all is fine now.

Looks black or dark gray to me.

I'd be interested in that, too, since I am also in the less-than-stellar group for mileage. I am pretty much convinced it has something to do with battery charging and retention of charge.

Cool.

Oh yeah, that is the first thing I tried.

Thanks. I haven't had it detailed, but I do have it cleaned and waxed frequently. They did offer to take care of it for me, but when I've done it there before it's been expensive. I have been planning to clay it soon, but was told that the clay bar might not take care of the problem. Do you think it will?