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Ford Motor Company announced today it is lowering the fuel economy ratings for its 2013- and 2014-model year hybrid and plug-in hybrid vehicles, as well as most 2014-model year Fiestas. View the full article

Well today I took my work van, an E250, in for service and as usual rather than sit waiting I wandered the lot looking at the vehicles. There were not may FFH's in stock but those in stock had an additional sticker next to the normal sales information stating that the MPG's of 47, 47 and 47 was wrong and that new stickers were being printed! Well the salesman knew nothing about this and did not seem interested in finding out, so tonight I googled it and found this http://www.freep.com/article/20140617/BUSINESS0102/306170099/Ford-Fusion-Fiesta-C-Max-Lincoln-MKZ-EPA-mileage-mpg-checks Looking at the Ford website the new rating is 44 MPG City / 41 Highway

I looked back through my trip logs today and found the following data for the city route trip to my parents' house. On Saturday I had my best ever Regen miles for a trip home from their house with 1.0 Regen miles. Without that trip the Avg Regen mi is 0.8. I consciously tried to wait longer and brake closer to the 35 kW max as often as possible. As you can see in the table above, the black FFH did consume more SOC from the battery on average, leading to higher MPG. The black FFH consumed an average of 31.64 more wH from the HVB on these trips (3.14 - 0.88) x 1.4 / 1000. This amounts to 0.003 extra gallons of gas, assuming 33% efficiency of the ICE 31.64 / 33705 / 0.33. Since the black FFH consumed an average of 0.193 gallons if we add the extra gas we get 0.196 gallons instead. The white FFH is consuming an average of 0.219 gallons of gas. The adjusted black FFH MPG is 59.7 MPG. This leaves a difference of approximately 10.5% between the two cars. Some of the difference could be "break in" related since the white FFH had 1000-4500 miles on the odometer when I gathered this data and the black FFH had 18,000-19,000 miles on the odometer at the time of this data collection. But most of it I attribute to rolling resistance. I don't have warm weather data from the black FFH with SOC values to compare, but I will continue gathering data from the white FFH to update this data in the future.

I have said since January after driving our car on a long road trip and investigating the EPA test cycles and everything else that Ford took a calculated risk here. I doubt they planned for this decision to cost them upwards of $15 million in the cash payments, not counting the brand image damage, stock price hit and lost sales. I'd figure the stock damage alone could be hundreds of millions of dollars depending on how the market reacts today to this news. I wonder now how many people will lose their jobs who were part of the decision to save a maybe a few tens of thousands of dollars by not testing the C-Max separately (I have no idea what it costs a manufacturer to run the EPA cycles on their cars so I'm just guessing) when that decision will now cost Ford hundreds of millions. Some people place the blame squarely on Ford for this saying that they were unethical. The objective of a public company is to bring a return to their shareholders, ethics is not a part of business. I know that many of us likely go through yearly ethics training at work, but I also analyze and audit our employees' p-card usage and I see employees bending the rules and pushing the limits every single month. Just as individual employees think that way, the collective decision making of most companies thinks the same. If companies behaved ethically of their own accord we would never have had the Enron, Worldcom, Tyco, et al scandals. If companies behaved ethically there would be no need for Sarbanes Oxley. We aren't privy to the internal discussions between Ford executives and the EPA to know what happened, but I would venture a guess that the EPA tested the C-Max, got lower numbers and they gave Ford the chance to address it. Ford technically didn't break, or even bend, any rules, but the EPA would have had to release their results which would have made Ford look bad. I think that just as much blame belongs with the EPA as with Ford for having such stupid rules that caused this to happen in the first place. If the EPA had better rules, i.e. mandating all 5 cycles for all vehicles and no more of this letting one vehicle determine the ratings for another when the cd is so different that it will have a material effect on the results. It's also important to note that Ford isn't the only company to do this. Honda just released a new hybrid in Japan that beats the Prius on the Japanese test cycle for fuel economy, but everyone knows that the Honda hybrid will not beat the Prius fuel economy in the real world. Honda merely programmed that car to ace the Japanese tests. So what? Buyer beware is still the adage that we should all live by.

I bought a used 2010 Ford Fusion recently. We have had a wicked winter in Illinois. The car has 87,000 miles on it or so. WHY am I only getting 28 mpg? I'm not an aggressive driver. My tires are good, the engine is good, I get regular oil changes. Any suggestions would be much appreciated!!!

There are a number of postings on fuel economy on the 2013 Fusion Hybrid, but most are "spot" or "trend" reports with no indication of rate of change. I am seeking information on improvement over break-in, mileage, etc in that I am not pleased with my fuel economy on my second Hybrid. Off the lot, I got 36 mph and am up to 38.3 over 2000 miles and one month. Any insights as to probability of getting 43+, or at least over 40? On our first '13 Hybrid, we got 40 off the lot and it quickly improved to 43.2 (was in an accident at 4 months and 4200 miles, so ended that history). Otherwise, am extremely pleased with the Hybrid, including walking away with no injuries from the accident in which we were rear ended and our car was a total loss.

I have come up with a simple installation for the Grill Covers now available. It will take about 5-10 minutes to install and only a minute to uninstall. No drilling into the car is required and almost anyone can install the covers with ease! The cover is attached with one screw with one bracket to grab the backside at the center of the grill. It is tightened flush at the center and ends of cover are secured with Velcro tabs on plastic blocks that are attached with double sided automotive foam tape. The lower Grill Cover is attached with three bracketed screws. Upper Grill Cover is $75 plus S&H of $22 lower Grill Cover is $25 and S&H is free with shipped with upper Grill Cover. I have a 14.4 mile test loop from my shop(1/2mi) down I85 to next exit and come back. I set ECO Cruise for 70mph with GPS . I monitor OT,WT,EV,Reg,HBSOC, BKS and MPG Cover Off OT 60degrees Cover on OT 65degrees WT start 94degrees, 7mi. 182degrees, 14mi 195degrees WT st. 64degrees, 7mi. 195degrees, 11mi. 230degrees EV 3.8, Reg .7mi., BKS 100%, 42.4MPG EV 3.6mi., Reg .7mi., BKS 97%, 43.8MPG HBSOC ST 30%, End 80% HBSOC 70% As you can see FFH heated up a lot quicker and hotter with the Grill Covers on. Paul

Got the update some time ago (couple of months) and in the past 3-4 weeks I have been easily exceeding the 47mpg figure. I am getting mid to high 50's with some regularity, and I am not trying to hypermile the car. I think I have gotten better at driving a hybrid, after 6 months, and I am not using air at all lately, or heat for that matter most of the time. Still, a 15 to 18 mi trip and a 58mpg average? I know some members have read how much I like this car, but now it seems magical at times. I also can easily get no ICE at 60 or better mph. Most of the time I admit my mileage is around 46 mpg or less, but if I drive very sensibly I can count on some pretty nice mileage. I still don't love the voice nav, but I have the SYNC update loaded on a flash drive and I'm hoping after I install it that will improve.

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Got the update some time ago (couple of months) and in the past 3-4 weeks I have been easily exceeding the 47mpg figure. I am getting mid to high 50's with some regularity, and I am not trying to hypermile the car. I think I have gotten better at driving a hybrid, after 6 months, and I am not using air at all lately, or heat for that matter most of the time. Still, a 15 to 18 mi trip and a 58mpg average? I know some members have read how much I like this car, but now it seems magical at times. I also can easily get no ICE at 60 or better mph. Most of the time I admit my mileage is around 46 mpg or less, but if I drive very sensibly I can count on some pretty nice mileage. I still don't love the voice nav, but I have the SYNC update loaded on a flash drive and I'm hoping after I install it that will improve.

Me and my wife recently bought a 2014 Fusion hybrid. We had a 2011 Dodge Challenger SRT8 that we loved and considering what it was, it got pretty good gas milage. However, feeding a hungry 392 CID engine does require a little more fuel than we liked.(16MPG/average) Plus, when you have that kind of power on tap, it's hard not to accelerate faster and brake harder and it's kind of a mental game! Anyway, we traded in our hot rod for what I hoped would about triple our gas milage. We bought the car about two weeks ago with 3 miles on it and the computer averages around 35-38 MPG which I haven't been crazy about, but ok with. We have really changed our driving styles with much easier acceleration, more coasting, easy brakeing, and it hasn't really seemed to help much? The last tank we just checked our milage and even though the computer said 35 MPG average, we only got 31 MPG real world numbers? That's double what we were getting but from what I have seen on here, many people are getting 40+ which I would be perfectly happy with but 31 is really disappointing:( Anyone else having issues getting the awesome numbers people seem to be able to get. By the way, we live in a fairly flat terrain and most of the milage on the last tank was in town driving which is where I figured the hybrid would really shine. Ed-

My average is 40.7

Fuelly has now broken out the FFH as a separate model per requests from members of this Forum. To update your vehicle click on the vehicle in your garage. Then click the "EDIT CAR" option. Then click on "change type". Then in the drop down box where it says "Fusion" you can now select "Fusion Energi" or "Fusion Hybrid". Once you select "Fusion Hybrid" you an click the button "Update Car" and your FFH will now show up correctly on Fuelly.

I was doing some research on the history of the FFH and discovered that the new FFH isn't the first time some have questioned Ford's EPA ratings. Just as how we've come to the conclusion that the FFH was specifically engineered to get high EPA numbers while hybrids from Toyota have not been it appears that the 2010 FFH may have been designed the same way. All three articles cited below call out the 2010 FFH for not coming close to EPA numbers in comparison to other hybrid competitors, most notably the first gen TCH. From Edmunds http://www.edmunds.com/ford/fusion-hybrid/2010/long-term-road-test/2010-ford-fusion-hybrid-200000-miles-of-fuel-economy.html From Motor Trend http://www.motortrend.com/roadtests/alternative/112_0901_2010_ford_fusion_hybrid_2009_toyota_camry_hybrid/viewall.html Hmmm...very interesting...

I am going in this afternoon for the PCM update. I will use this thread to post my observations after the update.

As we near the release of the updates I was thinking it would be good to know who exactly on the forum is willing to get the update first and share their results. If you're willing to get the update first and report back on your results please say so below. My idea is to then create a topic for each user who gets the update early on so that each person can individually report on their results, independent of what other users might say. Also, while we all love sharing our personal experiences and reading those of others they don't always add a lot of value. So also please comment below any ideas you have of more scientific tests that we can do to see the effects of the update. Ideally the guinea pig volunteers would run the tests before the update and then again after the update. Please don't use this topic to discuss the update or say things like "I'm not going first!" as that can be done here. Thank you.

Since we've established that your Brake Score has an impact on Fuel Economy and that a Brake Score of 80% would cost about .5 MPG over a few thousand miles like in the case of clummus I wanted to create a thread for users to share what their Lifetime Brake Score is, along with the number of miles that the aforementioned score is applicable to. Like this: Brake Score 99% over about 15,700 miles

As some may have seen my other post, I will be buying a new car next year. But what is scaring me away from the Ford Hybrids is the cars not meeting there EPA numbers. As someone who drives a 11 year old VW Jetta TDI with 195K miles on it, I am use to 40 MPG. I average 40 MPG last tank full & this week decided to drive it like a Hybrid and got 56 MPG. Of course it was a lot of work. I am noticing the Toyota & Lexus Hybrids always make the EPA numbers. My daughter loves her Lexus Hybrid. Also a diesel always exceeds the EPA numbers with out trying. The new Passat will get 50 MPG on diesel and you do not have to baby it. I REALLY like the Ford hybrids but am very disappoint with the numbers being in the 30's not 40's. Maybe by the next year they will address this.

Alright, newbie here, just got the 2013 Fusion se Hybrid couple weeks ago. Happy so far besides the color. I'm considering purchasing aftermarket wheels, so far I've read that I will likely loose some mpg. Mine came with the 17" wheels. The wheel I'd like to get starts at 18". There's my question. Has anyone done this? All I've read is people changing from factory 18" to factory 19" with minimal decrease in mpg. I only have 400 miles on car so far and have averaged 30mpg. I also "heard" there is a "brake-in" period, after which the mpg would increase, where's my 47 as advertised? Any truth to that? 30 is great, just wondering if it gets better, or the way I drive. My other Ford is an '05 F-350 powerstroke 6.0 diesel utility truck for work. After all the mods on that I've averaged 11mpg in town, highway, loaded, empty, whatever, 11mpg solid. If anyone has any experience or references on 17" to 18" wheel size change on this Hybrid and the effects, please share.

Thursday leaving work in Owatonna I got into a very hot car that had been sitting in the sun all day. The outside temperature was 93 degrees. When I got in and started the car the temp display showed 100 as seen below, I had to take a pic of that because it looked neat. I also can see in the picture that I need to get out my California Duster and dust again lol Anyhow...I had a mile or so to get on the freeway from our factory in Owatonna so I drove that stretch with all the windows down to help get the hot air out of the car. Once I started accelerating onto the freeway I turned on the AC. Check out the graph below. You can see that the first 2 bars (12 minutes) of driving have lower fuel economy because of the electricity being used by the AC to initially cool the car. Once the car was cooled down the electricity required to maintain that temp is much less and the subsequent bars are much higher. My MPG results for the whole trip at 65-70 MPH on the interstate are below, not bad for running AC at that temp. Those first two bars show what happens when using the AC on short distance trips. When you're getting into a hot car and driving only a few miles you don't drive long enough at the lower power draw to make up for the high initial power draw of the AC. If the first 10 minutes or so come at lower fuel economy while the car is cooling down you'll need to drive many minutes more to bring the trip efficiency back up or else your trip MPGs will be very low. When it comes to hot weather here are some observations I've made about how to be comfortable while using the AC efficiently. When the car is hot and you first turn on the AC set it to a higher temp and make sure that recirculate is on - we usually have the AC set at 72 or 73 to be comfortable while driving, but when first turning it on in a hot car I'll set it to 76 or 77 until the auto climate control drops the fan speed, once the fan speed starts dropping I gradually decrease the temp one degree at a time over the next few minutes until it is down to 72, doing this gets you to the lower power draw state more quickly because then decreasing the temp one degree at a time doesn't increase the load or fan speedTry to do without the AC on short city trips - even in the hot humid weather we've been trying to do without the AC on short trips, if you're only driving for 5 minutes the AC isn't going to do a whole lot anyway and will really hurt your fuel economy, it's better to have the windows downIf you're driving a short city stretch and then on the highway don't turn on the AC until you reach the highway - often times leaving our house we are driving a couple miles and then getting on the freeway, we'll leave the AC off until getting onto the freeway and then turn it on for the highway portion of the journeyIf you're using AC it's better to drive the freeway rather than take the city route - we can view AC power consumption as a rate over time, as long as the AC is running it will draw x kWh from the HVB, when using the AC it's better to take the highway route because then your total driving time is shorter and thus your kW consumed by the AC is less and thus your MPG is higher. For example: to one of our frequent destinations we usually get 55-65 MPG over 6.6 miles depending on the lights taking the city route with no AC, taking the city route with AC drops that to 40-45 MPG, or we can take the highway route using AC as mentioned above only on the miles spent on the highway and get 50-55 MPG (since discovering this over the weekend we won't be driving the city route anymore unless the weather is cool and there's no need for AC)Hoepfully these tips will help all of us to keep cool in the summer while still getting the most efficiency out of our cars. Please feel free to add additional tips below to maximize efficiency while using AC

Gkinla commented this in another topic and I thought it was worth starting its own topic to see if everyone has this. I'm curious if the drivers who are doing mostly freeway miles have less soot build-up. Below are pics from our car. We have just over 10,000 miles now