After just a couple of weeks driving my 2013 Ford CMax Hybrid, when I would place the car into reverse to back out of a parking space, the car would not move. It was as if it had been glued down to the pavement! I tried several times, but it just would not budge. So I placed it into Park, then back in Reverse and tried again. It still would not move. I looked down to be sure I hadn't set the handbrake/parking brake, and discovered that I had not (I never use it unless I park on a steep hill). I then tried driving forward about a foot, which is all the room I had available, and the car did move forward. I then tried using reverse again and this time the car moved. This happened off and on, and as long as I had room in front, I could work around the issue by moving forward before moving backward. I decided I better mention this the next time I went in to the dealership.
The weather began to get a bit cooler in the
morning later in November, so I decided to try the remote start feature, even though it still
really wasn't cold enough in my opinion to warrant it. This was the
first time I had ever had this feature on a car, so when the car alarm
started going off whenever I tried to start it per the instructions in
the Owner's Manual, I figured I must have misunderstood something and
resolved to go back to the dealership to ask them to show me how to do
it. I figured this would be a good time to mention the disappointing fuel economy as well.
I drove the car in to the dealership and
asked the salesman to show me how to start my 2013 Ford CMax Hybrid via the remote start feature. He tried a couple times and it failed for him as
well, so he asked me to drive it into the Service Area. The service guy
tried it several times, also to no avail, and was completely puzzled. He then told me the
car was so new that they were not very familiar with it, and proceeded
to look something up on his computer. He said it looked like it was a
known issue with models that had the push button ignition, and that a software patch would be issued for it within a couple weeks. Since remote start is not exactly a critical issue from my perspective, I was perfectly happy to accept that and simply planned to wait for them to call me and let me know when I could bring it back for the update.
Having addressed that issue for the moment, I then mentioned the issue regarding the occasional inability to move the car in reverse after parking. The service gut said it was a bit strange, but that the car had an "auto brake" safety feature when parking on hills, so this might be normal, and he felt that I probably just needed to give it more gas to "break free". I assured him that I had tried that to no avail, and had no interest in damaging my car or any other car in the process. Still, he had no indication from Ford that this was an issue. So, no resolution for this issue at this time.
At this point I mentioned to the service guy that my gas mileage was no where near the EPA estimate. He asked me what I had experienced, and then looked at how many miles I had driven thus far (about 2,000) and told me that there was a 3,000 mile break-in period so that was probably why it was so far off. I was taken aback by that as I had never had a new vehicle that required such a long break-in period before. My previous vehicles began achieving their average MPG within a couple of weeks. He also asked if I was using the braking coach, acceleration coach, etc. and I
explained that I had indeed been doing that specifically to maximize
the fuel economy. He had no other suggestions, but said he would be glad to consider a complete system reset during the first official service appointment at 5,000 miles, so I left feeling rather disappointed, and frustrated.
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