Ford to lower fuel economy rating on C-Max hybrid!

They defnitely didn't cheat they followed the rules.

The rules are extremely screwed up. They are not as screwed up as they were in 2007, where the c-max would have rated much higher. They are better than the rules in europe or japan, but that is not an excuse, we should do better.

Hyundai and Kia were caught cheating. That is a much different case.

 

They didn't cheat, but the certainly took advantage of the rule.

 

I'm curious what the internet tenor of c-max owners is these days: happy with a car adverted at least 10% higher MPG than most owners will ever see but $500 richer, or feeling scammed ?

 

Yes, exactly right, and most had no idea that there were those giant loopholes in the rules. Bad on ford and bad on the EPA. Its fairly easy to close the loophole that a less aerodynamic car with the same weight and drive train can use the same number. Its not used much. Using the dervied 5 cycle (which uses math from two cycles) is harder to get rid of, it looks like most cars even from toyota and honda use this. If the EPA gave an extra 10% penalty on the math, then maybe more cars would be tested.

Finally we have the 3 cycles of the city test that are based on driving in LA in the mid 60s, with acceleration slowed down because they didn't have proper hardware when it was created. Until they fix that some cars will do better on the test than the real world.

 

The first part is easy. The second will require a political will that we don't have at the moment.