acdii Report post Posted February 13, 2013 (edited) Or continue to blame the driver? That is the question here. Hopefully my woes with this new car and the trouble I have been going through will help others down the road who also have this problem. As most on this forum know by now, as one person put, Infamous!, I have had poor gas mileage issues with my 2013 Fusion Hybrid. This is not my first Hybrid, as Ford would have me think in how they have responded to my complaints, but my fourth. My first was a 2007 Prius, which I had for about a year, put 22K miles on it, but needed a bigger car. During the time I owned it, I achieved a 53 MPG lifetime average, with a trip to and from PA, which netted me 65 MPG highway, with a couple hundred mile stretch at 75 MPG. I have pictures somewhere of the display from that trip. My second Hybrid was a Toyota Camry Hybrid, which we put about 32K miles on it until we had an issue with it, and it was during that time when Toyota was having issues with runaway cars, and ours was having this funky brake problem that could not be duplicated unless you drove it an exact distance and applied the brakes, and only on the one road we drove on. During that time we averaged 38 MPG in that car. It was rated at 34. Our third Hybrid is a 2010 Fusion which we still own Thank the lord! We are averaging as you can see by me sig tags, 36.4, lifetime, two winters, one summer. It doesnt like the cold, but loves the summer, we get 34+ in winter, and 43 in the summer, and we just drive it, its shared between me and my wife, and we have different driving styles so our MMV. However, when we do drive it to maximize it, even when its 11* out we can still meet EPA combined of 39. When we first got the car it did good, around 38-40 as we learned the car, then it dropped like a rock, and set a check engine light. We bought the car used, with 800 miles on it, it had sat in a garage for at least 6 months, the original owner had passed away so it sat until the legal stuff was finished. It was in Iowa, so they had to pick it up and deliver it to IL. A MAP sensor had gone bad, spider got in it and clogged it up, and the entire system was reset, so it took a few thousand miles to correct itself, plus a few tanks of mid grade, then BOOM back up to where it should be, but that did bring the overall average down. When it started running right again, the average jumped from 32 to 38, then stayed there until we had our little cold snap of weeks below 20*. Overall we are very pleased with the car and can meet and exceed EPA! Most of our driving is rural highways at 55MPH, maybe 15% city 35-45 tops. That puts it right under combined of 39. Now onto my new 2013 Fusion Hybrid. When I got it, I should have paid more attention during the test drive, as the MPG was not very good, even for it being brand new, it was around 32 during my test. I had previously test driven a Cmax that day, and got around 38. It was cold and windy, so I brushed it off to the weather. Well for the first week I did not go over 39 MPG in the car, then it started dropping a bit, and attributed it to the temps as it was after Thanksgiving and it was getting cold. Then I had to take a trip to Florida, we live near Rockford IL, so its a two day haul. I figured this would be a good break in drive for the car and I should get pretty good MPG, boy was I wrong. I was averaging 300 miles per tank, with the Eco cruise set to 65, it barely touched 36 MPG, I dropped it down to 62 and barely got to 38. By the time I got to Florida I had already filled the car 4 times, the 2010 would have been 2 fills and consistent 38. When I finally got down there, the temp was 78*, and you would think perfect temps for high mileage, but again, not the case, I barely touched 38 the entire time. One one time did I see good mileage and that was during a city trip where we were traveling about 40 MPH with enough regen and soft lights to not have to stop, and not have to accelerate. I saw 50 for the first time over 9 miles, however, no HVAC was used. On the trip back I ran tests over the first few hundred miles, temps mid 50s-60s, various speeds on the ACC, and at 55 MPH on a 70 MPH highway, it got 40, at 60 it got 38, 65 and above, 34. So basically the car was using too much fuel no matter how I drove it, Ecocruise, hypermiling, even drafting a flat bed semi like I did in the Prius to get 75 MPG had no affect. So the next week I dropped it off and asked they check the car out. The service manager drove it home with his computed hooked up, and got 40-44 using eco cruise @ 55 MPH, and in the upper 30's driving manually up to 70 MPH. Ford said, no problem return car. Have customer learn how to drive. They didnt say it that way, but they had a bunch of links going to various things related to maximizing fuel economy, which to me mean exactly that, learn how to drive. A rep from Ford, named Sandy called me, and she basically told me the same thing, and when I mentioned I have no problem obtaining or exceeding the EPA in my 2010 Fusion Hybrid, she said irrelevant. When I said I have never had an issue meeting or exceeding EPA in any of my hybrids,again, irrelevant, its only an estimate, nothing wrong with the car. Well, that was the first one. Then a week or so later, while pulling onto a highway, the check engine light started flashing and the car ran rough. After a few miles it cleared up, and the CEL turned off. The next turn and accelerate, it did it again. We got to where we were going, and did our thing(dinner), and on the trip home, no CEL, car ran OK. The next day on my way home from work, going up a hill, solid CEL, so I dropped it off at the dealer the next day. It took 3 days to get the car back, so now it has been out of service 5 days. The CEL was caused by misfire due to all 4 spark plugs carbon fouling (see a pattern here?). The car has around 4500 miles on it by now. They replaced the plugs and test drove it again, and Ford told them, return the car, no problem found. :confused: For the first week I was Optimistic, did Ford get a bad batch of spark plugs? The car got 41 the next 2 days, then slowly dropped off. First two tanks, 39 MPG, 38 MPG, then it went off the cliff and was down in the low 30's once again. No check engine light, but I did ask to have the plugs checked which they did, and I can see carbon building up around the rim of the plug, nothing on the center or ground yet, but still a good layer of carbon, at least 1/64 of more was caked on the rim. For only having 900 miles of engine time, that to me was too much carbon, but the service manager thought other wise, but then again I didn't see the original plugs, so they probably look OK compared to those. The poor fuel economy continues, no matter how I drive the car, like a granny, not exceeding 2000 RPM, maximizing EV, using Eco cruise, hypermiling, it still does poorly. So now its back in for the third time, I have been hounding my dealer to get Ford to look at my car and fix or replace it, you know, the FORD thing, Fix or Replace Daily has become my motto to them. SO finally I get a call last Friday that a Ford engineer will be out Wednesday (today) to look at my car, so as I type this, the car is in the shop for the third time, day 6 out of service. During my time with the car since my last visit I picked up a ScanGauge ii, which many Prius owners swear by to achieve very high MPG in their cars, so I hooked it up and calibrated it per the manual , and the speed matched to GPS. I have found the trip to vary on each trip by as much as a 1/2 mile, and the MPG as much as 2 MPG. The accuracy of the scan gauge is under 2%, cant get much closer than that. I documented each trip, dash vs SG, and noted the max engine temps. A Cmax owner who frequents this board mentioned they block the grill which had me thinking back to my mechanic days, what happens if the engine is running cold, It burns more fuel(lightbulb), so I started watching the engine temps, and sure enough, this thing is COLD! For the majority of my drive, which is 55 MPH, the engine runs between 150-170* F, and only when I come to a stop light for more than 45 seconds does the temp reach 182*, unless I have full defrost, then it never goes that high. more like 170*. I put all my data on a spreadsheet, took photos of the dash and scan gauge as I could and sent them to my dealer. So here is where it sits, Ford has my car now, they have my data, and if they ignore it, well, then they have a problem. They may think they are dealing with an average Joe who has no clue what a spark plug is to an O2 sensor, but they are dealing with someone who used to work as an ASE certified mechanic back in the mid 90's, when ODB2 came out, so I do know quite a bit about ignition, fuel, etc. I may not know much about Hybrid systems, but The Hybrid system is not the problem, the engine is. Time will tell, hopefully I should hear something later today, but in the meantime, I wait. Here is the Ironic part, the loaner they gave me is a Focus sedan, base model. I got 37 MPG in it this morning to work, same roads I take every day, and I get 3-4 MPG m0re in it than I do in my EPA rated 47 MPG Fusion. Last night on my way home from the gas station I go to, an 11.5 mile trip mostly at 55, I got 39 in it. I never got 39 in the Fusion on that trip. I'm hoping this thread gets picked up on Google, hoping the thread title is going to do it. Edited February 14, 2013 by acdii Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
