Ford Focus EV and C-Max Energi Plug-in Hybrid

19 January 2025

A lot has transpired since my last entry on our plug-in vehicles in 2022.

In October 2024 I traded my Ford Focus EV for a "near new" 2019 Jaguar I-PACE EV with only 7700 miles on the odometer, although it was nearly 6 years old. That car has a rated range of 240 miles, and has almost 400 horsepower--it goes places when I stomp on the accelerator!  The car had nearly 4x the range of the old Ford Focus, which was still running well at 85,000 miles; it had no noticeable range degradation. The Jaguar isn't as efficient.; it is larger, heavier, and less aerodynamic, but it is a sweet set of wheels. It also is capable of fast DC charging, so we have used it for long trips.

My wife, not to be outdone, bought a new EV, replacing the Ford CMAX plug-in hybrid.  The CMAX was beginning to show its age, and its battery was degrading after about 112,000 miles. Almost half of those miles came from the EV battery alone! Because it was a small battery that got deep-cycled much more frequently than the battery in the Ford Focus, it was the first to show degradation. 

So, in November my wife bought a new 2024 Chevy  Equinox EV with 319 miles range.  It is now our long-range car.  It has front wheel drive.

We're now a two-EV family. I still have the pickup truck, but it gets used less 1,000 miles/year now, and I may get rid of it entirely.

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20 April 2022

After 8 years of electric driving, the Ford Focus EV has about 74,000 miles on the odometer, for an average 0.235 kilowatt-hours per mile. The batteries show no signs of losing range. Aside from the occasional electrical connector problem and software issues discussed below, the only maintenance the car has required is for tires, windshield wipers, and windshield wiper fluid. I figure electrical/electronic/software issues are common with cars of any type these days, and these issues have been relatively few for this car. 

I have driven the car to battery depletion on perhaps three occasions. Driving to depletion frequently may shorten the life and range of the battery, but so far, no problem. Most of the time my trips retain 1/3 of a full charge or better upon my return. I think this bodes well for the future, and expect several more years of service with few issues. 

Over the life of the Ford Focus EV, the energy costs are about 1/6 the energy costs for my Ford Ranger

• I average about 4.25 miles per kilowatt-hour of charging. That's 18,175 kilowatt-hours for the life of the car, so far.

• Electricity at local utility rates is $0.085 per kilowatt-hour.

• That means charging at local rates would have cost me about $1478.

• Figuring it another way, that's:

• 0.235 kwhr x 0.085 dollars per kwhr = $0.02 per mile... Only about 2 cents per mile at local utility rates.

My Ford Ranger pick-up truck gets 24 miles per gallon--better than many trucks and SUVs probably get.

• For that same 72,700 miles, I probably bought about 3030 gallons of gas, assuming the average MPG (since I drove in a lot of congested Washington DC area traffic, the real usage is probably more than that). 

• According to Statista, the average price of gas between 2005 and 2021 was $2.80 per gallon. That's 11.7 cents per mile--nearly 6 times the cost of energy for my electric car.

• That results in a an estimated gas cost of over $8470 dollars for gas for that truck. 

After 9 years with the Ford C-Max Energi Plug-in Hybrid, the odometer reads  95,500 miles, and the miles per gallon indicator reads 58.9 MPG. We may have some range degradation with the battery--perhaps 1 or 2 miles reduced from the nominal 18 mile range. If so, I would guess that is because the short-range battery is frequently driven to depletion before the gas engine takes over for intermediate-range and longer trips.  I think that we've never had to have brake work, engine work, or exhaust system work. 

17 July 2017

After several trips to the dealer, it seems that the intermittent problem with the Ford Focus EV has to do with an ill-fitting high-voltage connector somewhere between the battery and the motor. When I hit bumps or potholes, the connector briefly loses contact, and the computer freaks out. I have no clue how common this irritant occurs for other owners of this vehicle.

6 January 2017

After nearly four years with the C-MAX Energi, the lifetime average gas mileage is 59.1 miles per gallon. We've had few issues with the car--the main one being that the rear liftgate that sometimes seems to be balky. It has one of those sensors that lets you use your foot to open and close it, but sometimes the computer that runs it seems to get confused and we have to reset it.

As for the Focus EV, it has been mostly reliable after 3 full years and nearly 40,000 miles of service. In the past year I've had a some puzzling issues with an emergency warning to "pull over safely" that was resolved with an update to some software. This was the focus of a recall a couple of years ago that I had missed. In addition, a couple of times a year the car's computer evidently didn't boot-up correctly (sounds like your standard Windows computer, right?). This was quickly solved by shutting the car off, waiting a moment, and starting over again. I wonder if this is becoming more common across brands as computers become more integral to the operation of modern cars, or is it peculiar to the Focus? At any rate, I have not had that issue since the computer update. All-in-all, I am still very satisfied with the car, and enjoy never stopping for gas or worrying about the price of gas!

18 July 2015

After nearly 2-1/2 years with the Ford C-Max plug-in hybrid, our average miles per gallon for the life of the car is 58.3! . So far, we have put 27,501 road miles on the car. During our recent vacation in Tennessee, we operated the vehicle in regular hybrid mode (we did not plug in to recharge the batteries), and achieved about 46 miles per gallon during the trip.

The Ford Focus continues to perform well after 1-1/2 years. It has about 19378.5 road miles on it--almost time to take it for its second scheduled service (only required every 10,000 miles). Out of those miles, about 2414 were regeneration miles--power recovered from braking by turning the car's motor into a generator to reduce the car's speed. That's about 12.5%.

7 Feb 2015

After a little over a year of electric driving, the Ford Focus appears to be pretty reliable. I've had two minor issues:

- In January 2015, some of the dashboard electrics seemed to be stuck in a loop. The radio wouldn't shut off and the voice commands wouldn't work. This was solved by pulling the appropriate fuse. Apparently a computer or something was stuck in an endless loop.

- The aforementioned dead accessory battery. May have been my fault, or might have been caused by another piece of electronics/computer stuck in an endless loop and draining the battery.

We showed both cars off in a couple of car shows over the summer. One was an EV-only show in St. Louis The other was a conventional car show in Troy, IL. A good number of interested parties stopped by. Some patrons were seriously shopping for electric vehicles, others were only curious. At the conventional car show, we did meet with the occasional sneer or snotty comment.

Despite the occasional car show patron who asked snottily "What would you do if you ran out of juice, did you ever think of that?", I have never been stranded. As with a gas-powered vehicle, one must plan one's trips and watch the gauge to avoid running out of fuel.

The C-Max continues to be a great car, too. It is our go-to car for long trips or when the Focus is still charging.

4 July 2014

I'm finding that during the summer months, the Ford Focus's on-board computer will estimate a range of as much as 100 miles, depending on how I drive. If I drive highway speeds or use the air conditioner, that range decreases, and I might only get about 80 miles range overall. If I drive like an old lady in town or on local roads, the range tends to be above the rated 70 miles.

So far, the only problem that I've experienced is a drained 12 volt battery (basically like the battery in a conventional car that is used to activate relays, lights, etc.--NOT the drive battery). I think that I must have left something on that drained the battery, but I'm not sure. Ford replaced it without any problem--the car was still under warranty.

28 March 2014

I ordered a level-2 charging station (220 volts) from Home Depot this week, and it arrived today. The higher-voltage charging station should allow me to charge 2-3 times as quickly as the small, portable 110 volt charger cords supplied with the two cars.

16 February 2014

I've gradually ramped up my driving of the Focus EV over the past couple of months. I'm getting more comfortable driving the EV to work and back--even in the coldest weather. I am down to the last 10 miles or so if I use the heater much (it's been around 0 degrees F a lot of days lately, and I've had to use the defroster to remove fogging from the inside windshield).

I have found a ChargePoint charging station in St. Louis within a few blocks of my place of work. It turns out to be pretty cheap to charge there, and it only takes an hour or so to be sure I have enough charge to get home or to run errands enroute. It only costs $1.50 per hour to charge there; if I read the data right from the website I get about 5.8 Kwhr for that hour of charging. That gets me about 20 miles--not bad for $1.50. That's about what It would have cost me to drive my SL-1 Saturn for 20 miles.

Ford provides some pretty useful websites that allow me to track power consumption, efficiency, carbon reduction, etc. Overall, it looks like I am averaging about .270 KWhr/mile. I use between 10.0 and 15.0 KWhrs for the round-trip to work, depending on how fast I drive, and how much I use the heater/defroster or other appliances. At that rate, the round trip of about 44 miles costs between $1.00 and $1.50 at Ameren Illinois' home electric rates--less if you consider our solar power contribution.

3 January 2014:

A few days ago, we bought a Ford Focus electric car to replace an aging Saturn. Unlike our CMAX, it is electric only, and has no gas engine. The approximate range is about 72 miles, depending on driving conditions, and how much we use the heater, air conditioner, lights, etc.

The car is otherwise very similar to the CMAX, but is a hatchback rather than small SUV/wagon. It is a little more aerodynamic and sporty, and has less trunk space and less headroom. The electronics and driver's interface are very nearly identical to the CMAX.

I drove it to work today for the first time. It was well below freezing, but the car had been parked in the garage and fully charged overnight. My commute is about 23 miles each way, which sounds easy given the 72 mile range, but given the low temperatures, I had to keep kicking in the defroster, cutting back on my range. Still, I managed to make a round trip without recharging, and still had enough juice to get to the YMCA and back, with 12 miles of range left. I was concerned that leaving parked in the cold all day would shorten the range significantly, but it looked like it was not a real concern. The larger concern is how much the defroster cuts back on the range if I were to use it for the whole drive in nastier weather.

As you should expect. the larger battery pack in the Focus requires significantly longer to recharge than the one in the CMAX. It looks like if I nearly drain the battery it will take all evening and all night to have a full charge by the time I leave for work in the morning--that's with the low-speed 110 volt charger.

Now that we have two electric vehicles, I'll want to install some more solar panels this spring to power them with. I may also consider buying the faster 220 volt charger.

 Our new Focus EV; the CMAX Energi is parked behind it.

December 2013

Our Ford C-Max Energi - March 2013

1 November 2013:

Here are some statistics after several months of operation.

For the first seven+ months (which includes a lot of highway driving):

• 59.4 average miles per gallon of gas

• 9191.5 miles driven

For the last 187 days (about six months), we used 720 kwhr of electricity (about $72 worth of power at local rates).

Overall the vehicle seems very dependable, and we remain very happy with it. It has much lower road noise and smoother ride than other small economy cars we've owned. We have have had a few minor bugs with the rear automatic liftgate behaving erratically, however. We've taken it to the dealer for software and sensor fixes; this has not completely solved the problem.

August 2013:

We are continuing to average about 65 miles per gallon, and generally only buy gas when we need to make long treks to Indiana. As Peggy gets accustomed to driving the car, it is delivering as much as 30 miles of battery-only driving on a full charge. It gives good feedback on braking performance so that the driver can regenerate as much electricity to feed into the battery as possible when braking. This,combined with gentle driving around town, is what allows us to extend the range a bit.

May 2013:

The way we drive the vehicle we are averaging over 62 miles per gallon.

The power usage for the car drove our power rates above our solar production capability.  According to my "kill-a-watt" meter, we are using about 5.3 KWHr/day on average. So, it looks like to make up the difference, it looks like I will need to add about 5 more solar panels.

April 2013:

After nearly a month of driving the vehicle, it looks like average gas mileage we are getting is nearly 60 mpg the way we drive it. Most of our shopping and errands are within the 22 mile range of the electric power, so we can drive for weeks at a time without using more than a gallon or two of gas.

The car's computer estimates electric range based on our driving habits. In some cases, it will tell us that we have as much as 26 miles of range in a charge, owing to regenerative braking, gentle driving, and down-hill coasting.

We have been using about 6.7 KWH of electricity per day, on average to recharge it. That's about $0.67 worth of power at the local electric rates (or nothing if we generate enough power from the sun). At this rate I anticipate needing to add a four to six solar panels to our array make up the difference needed to recharge the car.

March 2013:

We're still learning how to operate the car - it's a bit more complicated than a standard gas-burner. It has multiple options for engaging the electrical portion of your drive. For short drives (under 21 miles round trip) you can drive all-electric; for cross-country drives, you can set it to use gas until you arrive at your destination, where you plan to have stop-and-go traffic and can engage the electric more usefully.

As we learn how to drive the car more efficiently, the 21-mile all-electric range should allows us to commute around town or to visit one of the nearby towns for shopping without using any gas at all.

For the first couple of charges, it looks like it required about 7.5 kilowatt-hours, according to my "kill-a-watt meter". That means we can expect to pay about $0.75 to recharge it at current rates - or NOTHING AT ALL if we recharge it with our solar panels!

On our first tank of gas (mostly cross-country), we averaged about 36 miles per gallon - not bad for a small SUV!