MaineFusion

No you can't, nor will you ever convince them that it doesn't really save them much time in the end. One place I used to work, my team would have to make occasional road trips to other offices. Our manager would drive in one car and one of our senior techs would drive the other. The rest of us would split between the two cars. Our manager was one of those aggressive drivers who would weave in and out of traffic, brake late and accelerate hard. The senior tech, drove fast, but rarely changed lanes and always kept a decent following distance. Invariably the manager would get boxed in by traffic, where as the the sea of traffic would just part for the senior tech to let him through. Wasn't uncommon for the senior tech to beat the manager to the location. You can imagine who I preferred to ride with.

Boy, it will take you another year to get it broken in. ;-) My FFH's build date is 01/30/2013 and it already has almost 11,000 mi on it.

Agreed, cars represent one of the biggest capital expenditures we make, we should be able to expect them to be right especially in price range of a FFH. I can accept some issues with what is essentially a new car model, but I do expect them to be proactively fixed without undue frustration. I don't think it is just David's service department lacking. I think service departments lacking is a systemic problem in the current dealer franchise model of selling cars. I sometimes think that if the manufacturer directly provided the service the overall training might be better and the service more consistent. I also doubt the wisdom of multi-brand dealerships. How can mechanics keep fully current on multiple brands of cars let alone multiple models and model years? Cars have just become too complex for a mechanic to know all the finer details of all the models of cars they might see in a multi-brand dealership. Now if I could just get my tinging/clicking front halfshaft issue (TSB 13-5-24) resolved. It seems to be getting worse.

On the subject of passing and bad driving habits, I hate it when I come up from behind a car and go to pass only to have them speed up just enough to prevent me from passing without overriding my cruise control. Either drive the speed limit or let me pass in a reasonable time fame so that we don't both cause a bottleneck of traffic behind us. To be honest, I think most drivers are just clueless of their surroundings and have very little situational awareness. They may be at the controls of their vehicle, but they aren't focused on driving, which includes knowing what is going on around you and having a plan if things suddenly go wrong.

One bad behavior doesn't justify another bad behavior. Also on my daily commute I've seen lots of different cars, not just Priuses driving slow in the center or left lane causing traffic to back up. It's just that the Prius has a very distinct look that everyone knows and thus remembers. Even when in a three lane situation, I drive in the right lane unless I'm passing or need to be in the left lane for a toll plaza EZ Pass lane.

Ice Storm Fusions are always hybrids. This is a FFH exclusive color for 2013. Heh. Maybe they need to go to dash cams. ;-) There are three Fusions, besides my FFH, that I've seen parked in my parking garage on a regular basis. One is painted Ice Storm so I know it is a hybrid, but I haven't looked closely at the other two.

At what increase risk of being in or causing an accident not to mention extra mechanical wear on the car and wasted gas? Aggressive driving is really hard on a car and does increase maintenance costs.

The FFH does pull air from the cabin to cool/warm the batteries. The question is how much of a difference it makes to the batteries if they are getting 70F, 80F or 90F air from the cabin. I also don't know if there is secondary system to condition the air for the batteries or not.

There's no guidebook on how to shrink the size of a city and Detroit is just covers way too big of an area and has way too much infrastructure for its population base. If they could just magically condense the population to a more manageable size they could plow under large swaths of the city and allow nature to reclaim the land. The problem is how to you convince those people who remain to give up their homes to move to a more populated area of the city? Also, how do you decide which sections of the city to "abandon" and which to save? Those are some pretty tough issues to address.

People in general are just impulsive drivers who rarely observe traffic conditions around them. When in heavy traffic, watch the car weaving in and out and racing off the start. You'll be amazed how often after quite some distance they haven't gotten very far ahead. All they've done is wear their brake pads and burned extra gas. When I was in training to drive tour buses they drilled into us to look several traffic lights ahead to see what traffic and traffic lights are doing and to plan for lane changes. With a tour bus full of passengers, this type of looking ahead was critical to the safe operation of the vehicle. With a car it just helps get better fuel economy by knowing when to be light on the gas peddle and when to prepare for stops.

Fanaticism in almost any form is a bad thing. One thing I like about the FFH is that it looks like the regular Fusion. I don't feel like it's shouting to the world, "hey look at me driving a hybrid, I'm better than you who's driving a gas hog." I just like to smile to my self when I'm full after 10 gallons while the driver of the Hummer at the pump next to me has to take out a loan to fill up their tank.

We should start a contest to see who can go the furthest with their FFH while still reading 999.9mpg.

Sorry about the mirror. On the bright side since you don't have BLIS, even if you have to replace the whole assembly it won't be as expensive as it could have been. About nine months ago (before I got my FFH), a truck in front of me clipped one of those big orange construction barrels and sent it spinning into my path of travel. There was a car beside me and a car right behind me so I couldn't do anything to avoid the barrel. I was doing around 55mph at the time and smacked it square on. Fortunately the truck didn't send it airborne so my bumper to the brunt of it. Had it Pulled off at the next service plaza to inspect the damage, thought for sure either I had lost a headlight or busted up the grill, but only suffered a minor crack on the cowling below the bumper and some minor road rash on the bumper itself. Had the barrel gone airborne or had I caught it somewhere other than my front bumper it could have done quite a bit of body damage to the car. I'm just glad my wife wasn't in the car at the time, she would have freaked out. It wasn't really the truck's fault because the barrel had been left where it shouldn't have been by a construction worker.

We only turned it on a couple of times during the trial period when on a long road trip away from radio stations we were used to. Couldn't find anything worth listening to. After about the third time using it, we stopped trying to find something interesting on Sirius. For my morning and evening commutes I listen to NPR (Morning Edition and All Things Considered) to get caught up on news. When our public radio station was on one of its fund raising drives I tried switching over to NPR on Sirius and the audio was so badly compressed an old fashion shortwave radio would have sounded better. Now I just switch over to music on my USB stick when my public radio station is fund raising or I'm on a road trip. Oh and yes I do donate to my public radio station from time to time, I just don't feel like listening to them asking for people to call in.

Even better!

It's amazing how just driving the speed limit and accelerating/braking moderately can improve fuel efficiency. I like to say that having to apply the brakes just wastes gas. The less braking that is needed the less gas that gets wasted.

I've heard my FFH's battery fan going a few times after driving.

Only one key for me, which I forgot to leave at the shop and my shuttle driver had to take it back with him. D'oh!

My only regret is that we didn't get the "active park assist" option. I didn't realize at the time that without active park assist, I wouldn't get front cross traffic. If I could go back and add one feature in, I would add in the active park assist for forward cross traffic. We special ordered our FFH SE to get exactly what we wanted right down to its color. We ordered the luxury package and all options except for: the appearance package (I think spoilers are stupid),moon roof (I wanted extra head space and didn't want the extra weight of a sun roof),active park assist (I don't need assistance parallel parking as I used to parallel park 40' tour buses, little did I realize I gave up front cross traffic in the process),voice activated navigation (too expensive and have excellent navigation on my smart phone, even sales man talked us out of this option),remote car start (wouldn't ever use it,nor cargo net (never used the one in our other car). One disappointment is I wish my FFH had the dual muffler mentioned earlier. I simply think the rear bumper looks way better with the dual muffler configuration.

Over the past few days of commuting 97mi round trip. I haven't seen a big difference in fuel economy, however, I am now setting my cruise control to 65mph instead of 63mph as I did before (my car would do EV mode at 63 previously). Maybe over the long run I'll start to see bigger improvements. Still it is nice to be able to use EV mode over 63mph. I'm actually passing other vehicles occasionally now. I'm sure if I had been driving at 65mph previously I would be seeing a noticeable difference in fuel economy, so for me this update is more of a speed boost than an fuel economy boos.

I also regularly exceed the rated fuel economy, Granted, running the AC makes this quite a bit harder. Here are my thoughts that would make the FFH better. Some things are probably possible with a software upgrade, other things would have to be in a future model. Increase size of fuel tank to the standard FF or make it possible for us to actually use more of the tank we have. Even though the FFH has a 12.5gal tank, rarely can I put in much more than 10.5 gallons of gas even when I run the remaining range down to near zero. I'd love to have a 600mi range. On a related note, my FFH is really prone to cause gas pump nozzles to prematurely kick off necessitating them to be restarted. Something needs to be done to improve fueling. It's almost as if there is a bad bend in the fueling pipe or it is too narrow. Add the range remaining to more screens so that I didn't have to toggle to it. Add climate control to "leaf" screen. I have to take my eyes off the road for too long to adjust climate. Along this line, the climate system should remember my fan and duct settings when I turn it off and then back on. I hate having to reset fan speeds and where air is blowing every time I turn on climate control. Have real "push" buttons for climate control. In winter when wearing gloves having only touch sensitive buttons means I have to take off a glove to adjust seat heater and other climate settings. I should be able to adjust climate settings without taking off my gloves. Also, if they were real buttons I could feel my way to the correct button without taking my eyes off the road. Have an Android app that would allow detailed trip data to be downloaded to smart phone via blue tooth. I'd love to be able to analyze my driving habits. When I worked at a trucking company in safety in the late '90s, we routinely downloaded truck data via the OBD port and printed out reports for our drivers. It really helped them learn to drive smarter, which saved fuel and reduced wear on the trucks. Most consumers don't get OBD plugs, so being able to download said data via a smartphone app and blue tooth would be a great ability. Obviously there are some data/system security concerns that would have to be addressed to make sure the car's systems couldn't get hacked from the smart phone. Being able to display my Android smartphone's navigation map on one of the FFH's displays. Google's navigation is way more accurate than the built in navigation, although the built in voice activated navigation has the advantage of not needed an active cell data connection. Make the USB ports capable of providing 2.1amps so that they can charge/run tablets and iPads. I agree with an earlier statement about daytime running lights. I didn't realize the FFH didn't have them. I thought this was a standard regulatory requirement nowadays. Increase the distance at which EV+ kicks in. The distance at which it kicks in doesn't really do me any good. I could keep my car in EV mode for that last little distance even without EV+ because of the low speeds. If EV+ kicked in twice as far out it could actually stop my ICE from turning on for a brief moment on the final hill before my home. Add another distance setting on the adaptive cruise control. Some times I'd like to be following at a further distance than is provided by the current maximum following distance. Have an audible alert if someone tries to change lanes with someone in the blind spot. While the BLIS light in the mirror is nice, getting an audible alert when trying to change into a lane with someone in the blind spot would improve safety.That's more than enough ideas for one post.

I think Consumer Reports "real world" tests may be too aggressive of a driving style. Maybe there should be two driving style tests, one for aggressive driving and one for economical driving. Also CR's test results don't say how much of a break-in period they gave the FFH before starting tests. It takes 6,000 miles for the FFH to be fully broken in. If CR began testing at say 2,000 miles, that isn't a fair test of the FFH's capabilities. Personally, I think a lot of the fuel economy problems people have with cars in general, not just hybrids comes from over aggressive driving, being too fast off the stop and too late in braking. I'm not saying everyone needs to drive like a grandpa, but even being a little easier off starts and sooner to let off the gas before stops would result in marked improvement in fuel economy and less mechanical wear. What really kills me is when people race off the start to get to the next stoplight; it makes no sense at all.

Some might be the car, but also keep in mind I never go above the speed limit and highest speed limits in Maine are 65mph. On the Interstate, I always use the adaptive cruise control. Also, I have an extremely light foot when it comes to accelerating and braking. Friends accuse me of driving like a grandpa. One trick that I've learned is how to keep the car in EV mode just a little bit longer than it would otherwise. When the car kicks out of EV mode I let off the gas ever so lightly and it will kick back into EV mode for a bit longer. Of course this only works when not on cruise control and at low speeds.

My issues so far: Driver side BLIS intermittently nonfunctional: Five visits to fix: Dealer did not run diagnostic and just assumed it was a problem with the radar sensor in mirror ordered new mirror Dealer installed new mirror, they did not notice it was painted wrong before installing. They had to order a new mirror. Mirror did not resolve BLIS problems. Dealer installs correctly painted mirror. Insists problem is with mirror sensor even though I show them manual indicating BLIS sensor in back 1/4 panel. BLIS problem still exists. Finally convinced dealer problem was with sensor in back 1/4 panel. Ford required full system diagnostic before approving 1/4 sensor replacement. Diagnostic revealed weak sensor in 1/4. Dealer installs new 1/4 panel sensor, BLIS finally works right. Time frame to get fixed, about 6 weeks total. Fuel filler cover would not open: When fuel door pressed it would not pop out so that it could be opened. Had to claw it open with fingernails. Took three visits to fix (part of five visits above). Visit one, show dealer problem. Visit two, dealer discovers they ordered wrong part. Visit three, new assembly installed. Didn't notice until a few weeks later that mechanic left tool mark dents on 1/4 panel around fueling assembly from trying to pry old assembly out. Complained about tool marks at scheduled service this past Saturday, still waiting for solution. Wrong gear shift knob installed: At end of 5th visit to dealer to fix BLIS issue above, I asked dealer if we were done for a while and they explained there was a service bulletin to replace gear shift knob. I thought they were joking, they assured me they weren't joking. I said we could wait until the scheduled service was due. Just got it fixed this past Saturday. Bad fit and finish around interior door trim: I haven't complained to dealer yet about this because I'm tired of dealing with them from issues above, but black plastic pieces around door handles on driver side keep popping out of place and have to be pushed back in place. I think they are missing some adhesive from their back sides. Overall, I'm not overly impressed with interior finish details, for a $34K car there shouldn't be fit and finish issues. My wife doesn't like the fact that the front leather seats have a cloth panel on the center console side of seats.

Sounds like you did not get the update. My FFH was very happy to go into EV mode on a regular basis at 65mph today when before it wouldn't go into EV mode over 63mph.