Gadgetory

it's part of the complicated world of cars today hey that even Ford's humble little c-max comes in two versions that not everybody understands there's the hybrid and then there's this one the energy which is a plug-in hybrid which one makes sense for you and what's the big difference we'll check that out now as we drive the 2013 C Max Energy and check the tech let's begin with a refresher on what a c-max is in the first place before we even get to its variants it's bigger than most compact cars but smaller than any crossover think of it as a head-on competitor the Toyota Prius V which is kind of an odd little category into itself it's a compact with a skosh more room as they used to say about sansabelt trousers so it's ideal for Americans now a couple equivalents got an electric foot activated power rear hatch at the Ford thing and also a four segment LED ring around the charging door to tell you where the charge is that when you plug it in those are cool but they seem to me in an electrified car highly electrified that should treat every watt as precious they're kind of a weird thing to put in they're kind of wasteful familiar Ford design inside the c-max you've got a head unit here you've seen before we'll talk about that in a minute the other economic Tsar very Ford you could be in a fusion you could be any number of their cars now sync is in here along with my Ford touch as you can see and that's gonna be standard on your energy you don't have any kind of lowbrow non-sync non LCD head unit going on but navigation is optional you don't have that as a standard feature and the Ford apps I've shown you before not available in this car interestingly your media choices are well understood AM and FM satellite radio single slot optical up here USB two of those in the console actually as well as an SD card slot streaming Bluetooth stereo and RCA jacks here now the rest of the interface is over here on the Left where you've got the two wing screens you've seen those before I want to call your attention to the one on the left of the speedometer which Ford's done some changes to you've got these different modes you have engaged and you've got empowered as you can see depending on where you are oh there's also enlighten you have varying bands of information to be honest it's just too damn complicated it should basically be telling you how to drive efficiently or not and give you your battery and fuel level it does the last two well but telling me if I'm driving efficiently it doesn't get that across simply I just want a light that goes on it's just that simple look at the recent Honda Accord we did which has a couple of big old green lights when they're on your driving efficiently when they're off you're not end of story but I do like the brake coach it gives you an example of how gradual forward-looking braking put some more energy back into the car than stabbing the brakes the last minutes a very good point to get across and that coach does it like no other vehicle in terms of parking rear camera is part of a package it's not standard on this car and as you can see you've got some trajectory lines there as well also optionally as Ford's outstanding Park Assist which is one of the better if not the best self parking technologies on the market for a pretty modest price now the energy part of the name on this c-max spell disturbingly like Snooki means that this car's got a much bigger battery than a standard hybrid and here it is say hello to your new best friend folks that is a big old lithium-ion battery to charge that you have to plug this car in you couldn't begin to charge it on the usual regenerative braking that a standard hybrid uses the benefit is you get a lot of additional miles of pure electric driving which will detail in a moment the downside is as you can see it's not knowing anywhere it's like you're traveling around with a very large suitcase or two everyday and of course the reason that big battery lives in here at all is to help this power plant let you run more electric more often this energy c-max can run 15 to 20 miles on pure electric power before the gas engine ever kicks in at up to 62 miles per hour in that range once that charge is depleted you go back to a traditional hybrid mode 2-liter lean-burn inline four-cylinder engine sitting sidesaddle driving the front wheels only through a CVT gearbox the numbers are 188 total horsepower electric and gas combined Ford doesn't publish a torque number I'm gonna guess somewhere in the low 200s based on the horsepower figure and how this thing drives zero to 60 happens at 8.1 seconds which isn't exactly sporty except this guy weighs somewhere pushing thirty nine hundred pounds kind of porky so that's actually a very good number so is the mpg it's rated at forty four forty one EPA or one hundred mpge because it has the ability to run pure electric for a substantial amount of time the c-max is jekyll-and-hyde depending on whether you've plugged in or not if you have off you go with eerie silence and electric power for like I said 15 to 20 miles even up to freeway speeds then once it gets all petered out it goes into hybrid mode it'll still creep electric only at low speeds but not much more than that once the battery is down to hybrid level see this Evy button down here if you push that you can roll through three different modes that will put the car in either an automatic forced or no Evy mode you can decide if you want to go electric or if you don't within the parameters of the battery having enough juice it's not magic you can't just make an electric car by pushing a button but regardless of what mode you're running in electric or hybrid I find the c-max of fun little car to drive it's not a performance car by any stretch but because it's highly electrified you've got good torque when you dig in for it the CVT transmission those are normally not a driver's favorite but this one is pretty good I don't get a lot of rubber band e elasticity out of it which is their Achilles heel the c-max is one of my favorite Ford's to drive it doesn't feel so light as they're smaller cars can sometimes like Fiesta nor does it feel as big and kind of all-consuming as that giant Taurus we've had recently and I think for the everyday driver this is a nice everyday car I am a little concerned though about that reduced rear cargo capacity I want to take a few things down to the dump today and the recycle center I couldn't fit them all in so I didn't do it at all because I didn't want to pay two fees to get in those are real-world decisions you can get stuck with when you're just a few cubic feet shy of the capacity you need okay let's price our c-max Energi now this guy starts off about 33 7 delivered once you add in package 303 a which is all the C net tech stuff HD radio navigation backup camera power liftgate Sony audio and more that's twenty four ninety five extra power sunroof I would like that for 1200 now we're somewhere around thirty seven thousand four or roughly forty three hundred dollars more than a comfortably equipped non plug-in c-max so how do you justify that money it comes down to two things what kind of a commute do you have is it within the universe of this cars electric-only range a lot of people's are and you have the discipline to make sure you're always running evey and charging if so this guy could pay off its Delta rather quickly and put you in a very green space