Fortysomething Geek

As many of my regular readers know, about 2 months ago, my wife bought a Ford C-Max Energi Plug-in Hybrid.  The car that happens to have the worst 2013 year Consumer Reports reliability rating. However, it happens to have one of the highest number of owner satisfaction.
When asked, "Would you buy this vehicle again?" It ranked # 3 out 19 hybrids. It also got a high score of 83 from Consumer reports. No issues report for mechanical drive-train from their users. A majority of the complaint is from the Navigation Infotainment system, designed/powered by who else, Microsoft. Go figure, Microsoft is mostly responsible for bringing down a fairly advance, high-tech car. Yes, the Infotainment can be clunky for a non-techie person!

Well, it has been almost two months since she got the car and it has grown on me. I'm a petro gearhead and this car has pretty much help change my outlook a bit on cars. It is now shaping my opinions on cars in general. Don't get me wrong, I still love horsepower and European sports cars.  So this is my two months observation for those interested in a plug-in high tech gadget car.

In short, amazing little ride! Now, I know why this car has a high number of satisfied users.

First and foremost, the incentives are pretty much worth it. We'll be getting back more than 5,000ドル in tax credits/rebates which offsets the price (and I'll detail later below). But the main kicker are these green stickers.

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I'm into fast cars. I'm into European luxury and sporty cars. I love cars in general. You can call me a gearhead. My wife is into practicality. She recently got one of those brand new Ford plug-in hybrids, the C-Max Energi. This is completely out of left field for me. The picture you see above is the average MPG of driving roughly 40 miles over a period of two days. Even as a gearhead, I can totally appreciate that 80 MPG number I am seeing above.


This is not my kind of car I typically look into. Politically correct and green trendy. The visual exterior won't turn heads. The handling and drive characteristics is nothing to rave about.  I'm currently in the market for a mid-life crisis sports car so this is the polar opposite of what I look into.  However, the C-Max Energi is already growing on me. I'm starting to really like it. It is also packed with a lot of gadgetry and electronics. This blog is not going to be a full on review of any sorts. I'm just going to give my readers my impression of a car that I will driving 20-30% of the time.

Just look at how cool the plugin port is. The blue surrounds shows you how far along your charging is. The outer edge of the port lights up fully to indicate the charge status.

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