My test drives of the Ford C-Max Energi and Mercedes B-Class showed me how far we've come with the engineering of small efficient cars, their differences and compromises, and how far we need to go. First to the C-Max.
The C-Max Energi feels great getting into it. The seats are at a reasonable height and the doorframes are tall--no danger of clanging my head on entry. Inside is well appointed with touch points covered in soft stuff. I'm not a fan of Ford's Sync system, but like anything, I'd probably get used to it. I don't think using the touch based screen would be easy at all, but steering wheel plus voice controls seem to be well deployed. Rear passengers have plenty of room with supportive seats and a nice amount of legroom and ability to see out of the car. Driving the car is very pleasant (for an automatic). On battery power, it is very quick off the line and torquey. Corner is flat and confident and road noise seemed minimal. Overall the car is only 174" so a foot longer than my Fit, but not overly large by any means. The only downside to the C-Max Energi is the compromised cargo area that is intruded on extraordinarily by the battery pack yielding only a 19.2 cubic foot capacity. The load floor is raised about a foot over where it would normally be without the battery. Interestingly, with the rear seats folded, there is a flat load floor, but again, it's high up making for limited cargo capacity of 42 cubic feet--a deal killer for me. I looked at the C-Max Hybrid (but didn't drive it) and it's load floor is about 8 inches lower than the Energi making it much more usable. Claimed electric range is about 19 miles, then it gets about 37 MPG after that.
The Mercedes B-Class electric is so close to perfect, but misses in a huge way. By placing the battery at the bottom of the car, everything about the car seems normal. Good entry and egress. Good cargo area with a low load floor and plenty of space, good handling and ride and quietness. Great touch points. The not so good is that Mercedes seems to overcomplicate everything they get their hands on, and the B-Class is no exception. There is a high center mounted video screen for info, back up cam (if equipped) and GPS that sticks up out of the dashboard in a really unfinished way. I get you don't want your dash to go that high, but neither should you just keep piling stuff on. The B-Class is powered by Tesla, but they left the Tesla acceleration at the factory. The compromise here is the size of the battery only gives a claimed range of 85 miles. The used 2014 model I was looking at had an asking price of $25K--too rich for my blood
The big news of the day is first report of a Honda dealer having parts for the inflator fix. According to posts on FitFreak.net, dealers in Connecticut and New Hampshire have parts and will be fixing this posters' Fits today. Huzzah. The parts coming in have the VIN# of the car to be repaired, so it's definitely a coordinated effort.
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