treeofliberty

I had real problems in this area, for over a year, and they started nearly the day we bought the car. A f ew months into this, we took the car to the dealer with intermittent BLIS faults and they did nothing, not being able "to reproduce the problem". I lived with faults for about a year, until they were happening daily. I took it back in, and they replaced one of the side mirrors, saying that is what the Ford docs said to do. This didn't fix the problem so I took it back and they replaced the other mirror, which did eliminate the problem. All that being said, I have received the stuck indicators and faults when driving a distance next to a hard surface (like a wall on the freeway). This happens very infrequently and I do believe it is simply inherent to the system. I also had this happen in the pouring rain (infrequent in Phoenix). Here are the errors I was getting prior to the fix.

There has also been lots of discussion in other threads about the fuel pump being located in the bottom of the tank, using the gas as coolant. Running the tank dry could be bad for the pump over the long haul, hence the skewed computer numbers. Like you cite, I've always chickened out before reaching "0 miles to E". One of these days I going to do it, just to see what the fuel guage looks like.

I'm aware of that cool feat. I was wondering what was the largest "miles to E" readout was, upon filling the tank. It would be interesting to see what the computer came up with after that record-setting stunt.

I couldn't agree more on the cat warm-up. Geesh these emissions laws are rediculous. In the winter months in Phoenix, I must drive 5 minutes before EV is even an option. I couldn't imagine what it is like for folks that live in real cold weather. I'm torn on the memory seats. They're cool on our 2003 Tahoe, but they're starting to flake out, transitioning from convenience to irritant. Now you have to adjust the seats and mirrors every time you drive the thing, even if you were the last one to drive it. Electronic features would be better if the degraded gracefully. Too often, they go wacky before they die altogether. My biggest desire would be: Plugin/Lithium option (as already mentioned). Think of the range! Diesel/hybrid option. Think about the extra mileage and durability diesel engines have. I wonder why diesels are not appropriate for hybrid technology?

My wife thinks I am uber geek when I pull this stuff. "What is it with men and numbers?" I don't have a good answer. It's just cool. Congrats on 746 miles to E. Now you have me wondering what the "record" is. There is something liberating about having this kind of range.

I think my recent mileage, right before the fillup, made some sort of impact here. Subsequent fillups have not registered the same 700+ mile range. My hypermiling games that I played during the previous tank (45-50MPG) appears to have made the computer more optimistic when projecting from the full tank.

I have a little over 15,000 miles at the moment. My commute is very flat. Under ideal circumstances (morning traffic and temps in the 60-80 range), while drafting trucks and maintaining an average speed in the 65mph range, I can pull mileage numbers between 48-50 MPG. However, this drops off considerably if any hills are involved, or I jump up over 70mph, or "push my own air" instead of drafting. On long trips, where the speed limit is 75 and I drive 80, my mileage drops down to the 35-38 range. On a hot summer commute home, with temps above 110, I will also pull mileage numbers in the upper 30's. The old addage "your mileage may vary" really does apply here. Still, I suspect your computer is still learning. Keep an eye on your tire pressure. I got lazy and found my pressure had dropped to around 28psi and bumped it back up to 38. This made a noticeable (few MPG) improvement.

I've been bored with my 38-mile (one-way) commute and have been entertaining myself with attempts to boost my long term mileage. At the start of this little game, my long term mileage, which hasn't been reset in thosands of miles, was right at 40.0. After 2 tanks, it is up to 42.3. The bulk of this mileage comes from my daily commute on the Phoenix freeways. After the first tank, I was rewarded with my best range ever, 724 miles: Just after the second tank, coming back from a photo outing, I was able to display a perfect 20-minute window of maxed out mileage graphs: None of this means much in the grand scheme of things. It was just fun to pull off.

I've had intermittant "Blind Spot System Fault" and "Cross Traffic System Fault" messages now since buying the car, back in July. The RF interferance theory makes sense. Most of the time, the sensor on the passenger side is the one that goes out, and it's often while driving in urban freeway traffic, althought that's the lion's share of my FFH driving. Attempts to have this serviced by the dealership monkeys have been a waste of time, although I did get a "free" car wash in exchange for an overpriced oil change. I'm starting to think this is a design flaw, rather than a build flaw.

As my mind tends to wander (and wonder) during my 40-mile commute, I began thinking about the Arizona Dept of Transportation cameras that blanket the Phoenix freeway system. One can get on the ADOT web site and get a picture of traffic at dozens of spots on the freeway. From time to time, I peak at them before driving home, to see what I'm getting into. <politics> I don't approve of all this domestic spying our various governments are performing, of which I'm funding, adding insult to injury. :banghead: </politics> This lead me to dream about how cool it would be to integrate this into Sync, and be able to touch the Nav screen at a point on my route and bring up a happy snap from the traffic camera. All the connectivity is there. It's just an integration problem. If ADOT geotagged the images, one could even imagine a fairly general solution that wouldn't be ADOT specific. Any traffic camera that geotagged could be linked in. That led me to think about the iPhone, Blackberry, Android, and Palm Pre. What if Microsoft published an API for the Sync system, which allowed third-party application developers to come up with all kinds of new applications for Sync, which could be purchaced from an app store, accessible from Sync. How many people have purchased iPhones because of the myriad of applications you can run on it? They're certainly not buying it for the AT&T phone service. This kind of buzz could really sell cars and reinvent the way onboard systems are built. OK, this topic should have been put up in the Sync forum, but I like our corner of the forum better. And if by some means this idea gets legs and becomes reality, consider this my copyright notice. :happy feet:

I work on the Intel side of the house, which hasn't been hit too hard (yet). The F-35 Lightning II has a Navy variant, so technically we are working on a Navy fighter, and that aircraft is pretty innovative too, although not quite as awesome as the Raptor.

Hey, a Valley Forge guy. Cool. I work for Lockheed and am frequently in Valley Forge. My favorite VF activity is grabbing the camera and loitering in the National Park. Keep experimenting with the hypermiling and share your techniques.

Wow, those are amazing numbers. Even with your numbers going home your average is very impressive. I'm anxious to see how things average in the fall, when I can stop using the A/C. Congrats on breaking the 60 mark, which I'm sure puts you in a very small class of your own. That's territory usually reserved to the Prius owners. Pretty cool to pull that out with a full-sized sedan.

Broke my record this morning with a surprising 50.2mpg for the commute (according to the computer). Traffic was perfect and I hit many of the lights, allowing extended stealth mode driving.

As with most others, I've been playing the moderate hypermiling game with my FFH since picking it up. Sitting here in the middle of hottest part of a Phoenix summer, this has translated into unbelievable mileage in the morning commute (5-6am) and moderately wonderful mileage coming home (4-5pm). My commute consists of 5.5 miles out to I-10, with a slight upward grade, about 30 miles on I-10 (all flat), and about 3 miles from I-10 to the office, with a very slight downward grade. Unlike my prior driving habbits, I now try to keep to around 45mph on the regular streets and around 70 on I-10. For my three morning commutes this week, I was able to get 46.4, 47.0, and 46.5mpg, according to the computer. The corresponding drives home usually dropped the day's average to about 42-43mpg, meaning I was getting around 39-40mpg on the drive home in the 105-110 degree heat and heavy traffic. This week's commuting was interrupted by a quick 800-mile business trip to New Mexico. This trip included hills, a passenger, and faster speeds (nearly 80mph). My overall mileage for the trip was 35.5mpg. The morning commute, with the lighter traffic and cooler temperatures, has become a hypermiling lab for me. My attention is glued to the traffic patterns and the instrument cluster, set to Empower. 47.0 appears to be the upper limit on what I can achieve with the FFH, without extreme measures, like truck drafting and dropping to grandpa speeds. This all makes me curious about the numbers I'll see when the weather cools back down. The FFH is certainly delivering on the number one reason I bought: commuting mileage.

After reading this thread last week, curiousity got the better of me and I checked mine, since I've only had the car for a couple of weeks. Surprisingly, they were at 42 pounds (from the dealership), with a maximum rating of 44. This would explain, at least in part, the wonderful mileage I'm getting. This does bother me slightly. With the oversized tires on my Wrangler, inflating them near the maximum would result in reduced contact patch, right down the middle of the tread. These are certainly different tires, a different car, and different driving paradigm. However, I cannot get past the feeling that 42 pounds will reduce my contact with the road, wear the tires prematurely, and make them more susceptable to puncture. My next experiement will be to reduce the pressure by a couple pounds at a time, watching the impact to mileage.

This certainly is a stupid design, especially on a car that is littered with innovation. We live in Phoenix, and are used to seeing temperature guages reading in the 120's until getting moving. Sadly, it sometimes only falls to 118, because that really is the temperature. I agree with Oman, they're fixing a problem that doesn't exist.

I tried the link but got a 404 error. Many thanks go out to Toyota for the FFH sitting in my driveway. I had given my friend at work considerable grief for his Toyota Pious, until he let us borrow it for a trip to California wine country, in exchange for picking up a few cases he had in storage out there. That trip was a real eye opener as to the performance of hybrids. What surprised us was how much spunk the little car had. I expected an anemic reincarnation of the Geo Metro, but was surprised to be able to pass cars on the long hilly portion of I-5, north of L.A. This, along with the electronics, cargo room (18+ cases of wine will fit, with the seats down), and of course, fuel mileage, wedged in the back of my mind for over a year. Thankfully, I didn't act on that impulse until Ford perfected their offering. Our country is better off, for I purchased an American car. I'm better off, because I purchased a superior car. No doubt, the 2010 Prius is an solid evolution from the standard bearer, and if you're in the market for the best mileage you can achieve, this is probably best choice. If you're ready for a few more creature comforts and a polished ride, the FFH is hard to beat.

I got 4.5% in Arizona through Bank of America. The rate said it was good for terms up to 72 months.

It is surely a sign of self-absorption when you quote yourself... :redcard: I forgot to mention one detail that may explain some of the difference. At the beginning of this period, I filled up in the morning (about 77 degrees) and at the end I filled up in the afternoon, at (about 102 degrees).

Actually, my Jeep is a 2004 Wrangler Unlimited: So, while the 4.0 is pretty peppy, it was nothing like your Grand. As far as acceleration goes, the comparison between the Wrangler and the Fusion is about even, with a slight edge to the Ford. You may find that the "game" of hypermiling gives a different set of gradification, especially with all the cool graphics.

I maded my first "real" fillup this afternoon after a controlled experiment that involved 4 roundtrips to/from work. The route is about 70% highway, and has very much elevation change (through Phoenix) and is 38.5 miles one way. The weather has been relatively cool in the mornings and topping out around 109 for the trip home. The car stated 43.6mpg for this period, but the actual computed miles from the fillup is 41.25. I don't buy all the crap in the manual about why the two might differ (you filled up on a hill, blah blah blah). I'll be curious to see if this starts to track more accurate over time. Either way, I'm very happy with the results thus far, utilizing moderate "hypermiling" techniques. Hey wstcoaster07, we're of a similar mold. My lifted Wrangler also gets 15.3mpg. What a great change of commuter vehicles.

This is part of the attraction to the FFH, our first hybrid. We borrowed a friend's first gen Prius for a trip to wine country last year, and achieved our best mileage (around 50) through Phoenix. I've been driving this long commute for 15 years, and find it trying at times. In the FFH, at least for now, the mileage game is a great distraction from the monotony. And further, it causes you to hyper-focus on traffic patterns and maintaining distance from cars in front of you, so your safety is not compromized. What fun. Honestly, what sold this car was the this forum. Reading all the real reviews and enthusiasm from owners convinced me the FFH was as good on the road as on paper. Thanks to you all for hte push. Ford should be giving you a commission.

Yes, this drive is very flat. While I live in an area called the Ahwatukee Foothills, my elevation change between work and home is probably less than 100 feet.

This is certainly a message I receive loud and clear, as a consistent theme reiterated by a number of folks on this forum. Oddly enough, my Jeep Wrangler had similar behavior, albeit on a much, much smaller scale. I'll be greatly impressed if MPG improves above what is already spectacular at 43. I should also mention that I pulled 40mpg coming home from work yesterday (38.5 miles), where 5 of those miles were in heavy freeway traffic and the temperature was 109.