Ford cuts fuel rating of C-Max hybrid

Bowing to criticism that its C-Max hybrid did not get the fuel economy claimed on its window sticker, Ford Motor Co. has changed the compact car’s mileage ratings and said it will issue payments to people who own the vehicle.
Ford said it would make a goodwill payment of USD550 to people who purchased the C-Max and USD325 to those who leased the vehicle.
Everyone will get the same payment regardless of when they purchased the car or how many miles they have put on their vehicle, said Raj Nair, Ford’s group vice president for global product development.
Nair blamed the fuel economy label problem on “testing anomalies.”
The fuel economy rating on the C-Max actually comes from a test of its sibling, the Ford Fusion hybrid.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said regulations allow, but do not require, vehicles with the same engine, transmission and weight class to use the same fuel economy label value data because, historically, such vehicle families have had nearly identical results.
But Nair said it turns out that the more aerodynamic design of the Fusion yields better results. Ford is now labeling the cars separately based on separate tests. It is also making some transmission gearing and aerodynamic changes to the 2014 version of the C-Max to improve fuel efficiency, he said.
The new fuel economy estimates for the 2013 model year C-Max are 43 miles per gallon (mpg) for combined driving, 45 mpg in city driving and 40 mpg on highway driving, said the EPA, which regulates the fuel economy ratings that go on car window stickers.
Previously, Ford said C-Max hybrids get 47 mpg for all measures. Last month, it offered hybrid owners a software update that it said would improve fuel economy.
The agency said it would work with consumer advocates, environmental organizations and automakers, “to propose revised fuel economy labeling regulations to ensure that consumers are consistently given the accurate fuel economy information on which they have come to rely.”
Nair also noted that fuel economy for hybrids varies greatly by weather conditions, driving speed and the break-in miles on the vehicle, and those variables have caused owners’ real world results to range both below and above what’s specified on the car’s window sticker.
Ford is not the only company to have issues with mileage statements. Last year, the EPA tested multiple Hyundai and Kia models that had become the focus of consumer complaints about fuel-economy ratings, and ordered changes to the labels. The agency said Hyundai and Kia overstated the fuel economy on more than a third of the vehicles they had sold in recent years.
The South Korean automakers issued an apology and said they would give special debit cards to nearly 1 million owners of the affected models to make up for the difference in the lower miles per gallon logged by the cars.
Ford, Hyundai and Kia are facing class-action lawsuits over their fuel-economy claims.
Last year, Consumer Reports said it was unable to obtain the stated mileage in its tests of the Ford hybrids, calling the real-world fuel economy “far below Ford’s ambitious triple-47 figures.” The magazine operates its own testing center.
(August 16, 2013)