Gigi

While driving on battery power I will hear the battery cooling fan come on high - the same sound as when charging - then I get the yellow wrench and the check engine light. The dealer seems to have no clue what the problem is. It seems to me that the cooling fan is coming on for some reason such as heat in the battery caused by something. This is a 2013 Fusion Energi with 60K+ miles. Battery range has fallen to 10-14 miles. Oddly, range increases after the yellow wrench for a while then goes back to around 14 miles. Loose connection between battery cells? Have you had this problem? What was the resolution? If you haven't had the problem, what do you suppose is going on?

. . . boat, graduate school, sky diving, career change. . .

Too much time and mental effort for me.

One might say that acceleration in the Energi is, shall we say, "deliberate." After a long steep hill has depleted the battery, I imagine that the computer is thinking, "How much engine power can I give to keeping the car moving and how much can I give to charging the hybrid portion of the battery back to its nominal level?" So long as a steady speed is being called for, it will balance the two as best as it can. If you want to go faster and press the accelerator, it will rev the engine higher and use whatever is available in the battery to accelerate until the battery is tapped out and you have only engine power available. Once the car settles into a steady speed, it will go back to matching the most economical engine speed with the demands for motion and charging. My experience driving over mountain passes back East is that I have enough power to do what I want to do, but we're talking Appalachian Mountains here, not Rockies.

My wife and I took Gigi, our Fusion Energi, and Effie, our Focus Electric, to the Atlanta event yesterday at the Central Park of Atlantic Station. We had around 15 different EVs represented. Only a limited number of cars were allowed to display so only a couple of Leafs were brought to Central Park. It was great fun talking with passersby about EVs in general and our two in particular. Here are Gigi and Effie between a Porsche Panamera S ehybrid to one side and a Tesla and a BMW i3 to the other.

In your situation, I would be inclined to just do it and ask forgiveness later. If challenged, though, you really do have to be repentant and not act like a jerk. My wife asked at her government facility and was told that plugging in was the same as an employee having a personal refrigerator or coffee pot at work, which are allowed. If you ask, advance the argument that this is "de minimus" use of the county's electricity, that is, an amount that is too small to spend the effort to try to keep track of.

I refer to the acceleration in our FFEnergi as "deliberate" when it is in EV mode. With the engine on, she can "pick up her skirts and go," however. If your wife doesn't like "deliberate" acceleration in the mid-sized Fusion, get her a Focus Electric. It's fun!

Outstanding. My best so far has been 1600 on 9.5 gallons over a 7 week period. I could have gone longer, but we had a trip coming up and needed a full tank of gas.

Nope. You got it. I don't think it is worth it for PHEV. My wife used a Blink once in the middle of the day because leaving work to attend a funeral added more miles to her commute than her range on the Focus Electric would allow. The cost per mile isn't so bad with 6.6kWh charging on the Focus, but still, I regard public charging as useful only in case of emergency.

Lightfoot, I'd say you've got this figured out very well. My assumption is that the computer is smarter than I am when it comes to running vehicle efficiently. I go with cruise control pretty much anytime I am above 45 mph.

You will have to do the math for your unique situation to figure out whether it is economically worth it to buy a Fusion Energi. Factors to be considered: purchase price, tax incentives, miles driven as a hybrid, miles driven as an EV, mpg for your kind of driving, cost of gasoline, cost of electricity, cost of EVSE and installation, projected maintenance costs. Generally, if you can do most of your regular daily driving in EV mode, the Energi should be the best deal. Ideally, that would be a 40 mile round trip commute with the opportunity to charge at work. Somewhere along a continuum, as the length of the daily commute increases and the number of miles driven burning gasoline increases, a hybrid will become more economical. The exact point is a function of all of the factors above. If you put economics aside, driving on electricity is a unique experience. It's quiet. There is no engine vibration. If you think of the math while you're driving, in EV mode, you are driving at a cost of about 3 cents per mile vs. around 8 cents per mile if you were driving a hybrid and more than that if you were driving a gas vehicle. If the comparison of, say, a hybrid vs. an Energi works out that the hybrid is more economical, you might want to go with that, but the experience of driving on electricity is something else. It was mind-blowing enough for me that we went out and got a Focus Electric so that we could get more of the experience. And at the same time, when I went out to get a company car, I bought a Fusion Hybrid because it made better economic sense for driving 3,000 - 4,000 miles per month. Good luck in your decision-making. Both the Fusion Energi and Fusion Hybrid are great cars.

Not in a million years! The Energi was supposed to be her car. After I bought the Electric, we decided to switch cars. I think she was just looking for an excuse to drive Gigi again while I was on the road.

I was away on a business trip and noticed a text from MyFordMobile saying that our Focus Electric had finished charging at 9:30 a.m. That being an odd time, I checked and found that my wife, who had forgotten to charge the Electric overnight, had driven our Energi to work. Her drive in to work was 91% EV - but her drive home was only 50% EV. Oh, the horror! Only 32 mpg for her 26 mile ride home when, if she had remembered, could have been 100% EV in the Electric she drives daily. How do you think I should approach her about being so wasteful?

I'm wondering the same thing. Any experience with this?

Checkers, I'm with you. I think that 30 mpg is on the low side. The worst mpg I have gotten on a long trip on the highway at 70-75 mph speeds has been 37 mpg and that was with 4 people and luggage. Take it to the dealer and see if the PCM needs an update. I have seen what you describe, the engine running constantly at highway speed without shutting off. This has been on a long trip with the battery depleted or driving in EV Later mode while driving on flat terrain with the cruise control on and very little variation in elevation or speed. The car will settle into a constant rpm and just stay that way until there is some relief (slowing or downhill) when the engine will shut down and EV will kick in. Driving on the highway in Auto or EV Now mode at 70+ mph with a fully charged battery, my car will stay in EV without the engine coming on, but that's good for only 15 miles or so. Generally, whenever I head down an entrance ramp to a freeway, I put the car in EV Later mode since using the engine is more efficient at highway speeds than the electric motor.