Mach-E stranded on a 3,000+ mile road trip due to faulty HV battery module. Full battery swap required.

[mikeflash]

Hey all. Strap in and go on a hellish fourth of July roadtrip journey with me in a Silver MachE that I purchased in March which almost, but not quite, made it to 10k miles and was almost, but not quite, able to actually deliver on the promise of all-electric non tesla roadtrips.

Over 4th of July weekend, we decided to take a road trip to Seattle from our home town of Boulder, CO (just north-west of Denver). One way it's about 1350 miles, so we split the drive into 2 days, took advantage of free charging (which most people didn't know was coming) on Electrify America, and made it to Seattle with zero issues. Aside from an odd "not available" outage that EA had, we had no fears at all of not making it to our vacation destination.

We had some weird motion sensor issues on the ferry, where car refused to turn off its motion sensors and the alarm kept going off in the ferry car bay. Other than that, we had a wonderful trip and headed home on the 9th. First leg, we drove through Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and some of Utah, where we stopped for the night for a car charge and a human re-charge at a hotel. By the next day, with 75% battery , we've had 2 uneventful charge sessions: 27% in Spanish Fork and 43% at Green River, and we were well on our way to either last or 2nd to last charge at Grand Junction, CO.

We stopped by to get some lunch before charging, turning the car off and walking into Chipotle. Burrito and tacos in tow, we were ready to head over to the Sams Club EA charger, less than a mile down the road. Ignition is hit, we get the "seatbelt" beep, but car won't go into gear and "Stop safely now" is displayed on the dash, hidden behind "Full accessory power", mind you, but we're busted. Uh-oh.

We figure, its 120F, we just juiced it up a hill from 110 miles away, and the car sat on a hot pavement while my burrito and my partners tacos were masterfully crafted inside, so maybe it needs to sit and think about what its done. We eat our food, return back 20 minutes later, same issue. Dang. Ok, Ford can help us, right? After all we just passed by a dealership, 2 miles up the road. We call up their service department, and Amanda there tells me, they won't be able to see us until the 7th of August. I plead, as nicely as I can, that I am broken down, less than 300 miles from home, is there anything they can do? Amada says maybe, but she makes no promises and says it is unlikely.

Alright, so local dealership is out, next nearest one on our stalled path home is in Rifle, CO. Call them up, they're closed until Monday. Fantastic, we're stranded. Call Ford roadside, tell them that 2 dealerships nearby aren't helpful, ask them what it would cost to tow the car closer to our house? Their answer: $1270 dollars. We still don't know whats wrong with the car, FordPass isn't giving any indicator of an issue (even now, more than a week later vehicle health says all is good), and ODB-II diagnostic dongle isn't pulling any codes. Decision is made to see if a longer wait (it is still 100+ degrees outside) would bring the Pony back to life and save us $1270 + a car rental, and maybe find a more willing tow truck to deliver it to Denver for less than $4 a mile.

Next morning, the car still won't start. So a U-Haul box truck rental later, as the city had 0 rental cars available, we're back on the road and the tow truck will be delivering my car to a dealership in the Denver area by open of business on Monday. With the hotel, uhaul, ubers to get all of this done, and a reasonable tow cost ($700) we're still under that $1270 estimate Ford roadside gave me.

Dealership provided a rental, a sexy EcoSport AWD, which took 5 days to approve & receive. Thank god we have a 2nd car and I work at home, otherwise last week would've been a nightmare.

So what went wrong? It took over a week to diagnose (dealer in town is just as busy), but they're saying bad HV battery module, requires replacement of the entire battery pack. ETA to get the car back? No clue.

TLDR: Stranded on a 3000 mile road trip less than 290 miles from home, Ford isn't very helpful in reimbursing or prioritizing broken down/stranded service appointments. Root cause is faulty HV battery module that requires a full battery swap and timeframe is unknown.

I almost had the same problem. I left the Milwaukee area and drove straight through to Charleston Sc. 22 hours of travel time including charging, food and bathroom stop. Car was perfect. Except for the usual complaints about Ford pass and CarPlay interoperability. Stayed and vacationed in Charleston a couple of days before heading home. Got as far back as downtown Chicago when a bad morning accident shut down the freeway. After about a 40 minutes wait the battery was going down and I started looking for a fast charging Station. Which I found. Tried plugging into the EA station and got the orange fault light. Tried 4 more stations all had plug faults. The slow level 2 charger on site worked fine but since I was only 30 minutes from home I didn’t want to wait 3 hours to get enough of a charge so I found another location about 2 miles away. It was an EvGo site and I got the same fault. The manual says to contact a dealer for service. Again there was a Ford dealership only 2 miles away. Great I thought! Well they offered me their free charger but could not look at my 1st Edition AWD for at least a week even though they realized it was sort of an emergency. But they were busy. And since I had been driving the car over night that was not what this car was for and I had too many fast charges in a row. The car would probably be fine if I could just let it charge on a level 2 charger for several hours. Sorry can’t do anything else at this time-good luck. I let it charge long enough to get home and put it on my home set up; which is the provided Ford mobile charger. It has been a couple of days and it seems fine now. If you can’t drive continuously and fast charge as needed; Ford should step up and say so or there’s going to be lots of unhappy customers out there. Plus the dealership experience is not good when you are not at home.

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[JoeDimwit]

It will be interesting to see if “we” get any real information from Ford beyond them telling @vulpes “your battery pack failed”. Sure, they will do an autopsy on the pack once they get it back to Dearborn, but it is unlikely that they will even tell the vehicles owner exactly what they find.

 

[pt19713]

I don't ever recall seeing a temperature gauge where green was between yellow and red!

Green, Yellow, Red - Yes
Yellow, Green, Red - NO

Yellow is for the coolant warming up, which can apply to the battery pack. I don't know the specifics on the Mach-E BMS, but the Tesla 3 and Y packs want to be at least 50F but ideally around 70-85F, but those temps aren't really feasible in the colder winter months. When ambient is less than 40F, the battery pack eventually warms up but takes some time if you don't precondition. Even if I precondition for 10 minutes and the pack goes from ~ 40-45F to 55-60F, it doesn't warm up any further since the motors aren't generating enough heat to warm the pack. Rear stator motor hovers around 90-110F, front motor hovers around 70F (car is primarily RWD unless traction is lost and/or more aggressive acceleration).

 

[Mach-Lee]

I almost had the same problem. I left the Milwaukee area and drove straight through to Charleston Sc. 22 hours of travel time including charging, food and bathroom stop. Car was perfect. Except for the usual complaints about Ford pass and CarPlay interoperability. Stayed and vacationed in Charleston a couple of days before heading home. Got as far back as downtown Chicago when a bad morning accident shut down the freeway. After about a 40 minutes wait the battery was going down and I started looking for a fast charging Station. Which I found. Tried plugging into the EA station and got the orange fault light. Tried 4 more stations all had plug faults. The slow level 2 charger on site worked fine but since I was only 30 minutes from home I didn’t want to wait 3 hours to get enough of a charge so I found another location about 2 miles away. It was an EvGo site and I got the same fault. The manual says to contact a dealer for service. Again there was a Ford dealership only 2 miles away. Great I thought! Well they offered me their free charger but could not look at my 1st Edition AWD for at least a week even though they realized it was sort of an emergency. But they were busy. And since I had been driving the car over night that was not what this car was for and I had too many fast charges in a row. The car would probably be fine if I could just let it charge on a level 2 charger for several hours. Sorry can’t do anything else at this time-good luck. I let it charge long enough to get home and put it on my home set up; which is the provided Ford mobile charger. It has been a couple of days and it seems fine now. If you can’t drive continuously and fast charge as needed; Ford should step up and say so or there’s going to be lots of unhappy customers out there. Plus the dealership experience is not good when you are not at home.

Your battery is fine, have your dealer perform TSB 21-2190 to update the off board charging controller (OBCC). This module controls DC charging. Ask if they could update the other modules as well while they're at it.

 

[ClaudeMach-E]

I would hope that the battery pack environmental controls/software are programmed to run until 'cooled'.... but I don't KNOW that they are set that way for sure. Things might be set to turn off too soon under certain conditions to save battery energy.

Could be problematic after a long hill climb and turning vehicle off while the motors and battery pack are still dumping heat into the coolant system if you stop and turn off the car right after running it hard.

But the fans and cooling system are still active in that condition.

 

[cloud9]

We have a MME on order but plan on using it strictly as a commuter car for the first year or two. Maybe a few quick trips where the down and back van be done on the same charge. I just read it has problems going downhill so we will try to stay away from elevation changes.

I expect Ford will continue improving the MME but it could be 3 to 5 years to work the kinks out. I think it is a great commuter or second car for the time being.

Agreed, which is why I'm going to hold onto my 2016 F-150 for a while instead of trading it in despite a used vehicle market hotter than cold rolled steel right now........

 

[BIGBIGSURGE]

Hey all. Strap in and go on a hellish fourth of July roadtrip journey with me in a Silver MachE that I purchased in March which almost, but not quite, made it to 10k miles and was almost, but not quite, able to actually deliver on the promise of all-electric non tesla roadtrips.

Over 4th of July weekend, we decided to take a road trip to Seattle from our home town of Boulder, CO (just north-west of Denver). One way it's about 1350 miles, so we split the drive into 2 days, took advantage of free charging (which most people didn't know was coming) on Electrify America, and made it to Seattle with zero issues. Aside from an odd "not available" outage that EA had, we had no fears at all of not making it to our vacation destination.

We had some weird motion sensor issues on the ferry, where car refused to turn off its motion sensors and the alarm kept going off in the ferry car bay. Other than that, we had a wonderful trip and headed home on the 9th. First leg, we drove through Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and some of Utah, where we stopped for the night for a car charge and a human re-charge at a hotel. By the next day, with 75% battery , we've had 2 uneventful charge sessions: 27% in Spanish Fork and 43% at Green River, and we were well on our way to either last or 2nd to last charge at Grand Junction, CO.

We stopped by to get some lunch before charging, turning the car off and walking into Chipotle. Burrito and tacos in tow, we were ready to head over to the Sams Club EA charger, less than a mile down the road. Ignition is hit, we get the "seatbelt" beep, but car won't go into gear and "Stop safely now" is displayed on the dash, hidden behind "Full accessory power", mind you, but we're busted. Uh-oh.

We figure, its 120F, we just juiced it up a hill from 110 miles away, and the car sat on a hot pavement while my burrito and my partners tacos were masterfully crafted inside, so maybe it needs to sit and think about what its done. We eat our food, return back 20 minutes later, same issue. Dang. Ok, Ford can help us, right? After all we just passed by a dealership, 2 miles up the road. We call up their service department, and Amanda there tells me, they won't be able to see us until the 7th of August. I plead, as nicely as I can, that I am broken down, less than 300 miles from home, is there anything they can do? Amada says maybe, but she makes no promises and says it is unlikely.

Alright, so local dealership is out, next nearest one on our stalled path home is in Rifle, CO. Call them up, they're closed until Monday. Fantastic, we're stranded. Call Ford roadside, tell them that 2 dealerships nearby aren't helpful, ask them what it would cost to tow the car closer to our house? Their answer: $1270 dollars. We still don't know whats wrong with the car, FordPass isn't giving any indicator of an issue (even now, more than a week later vehicle health says all is good), and ODB-II diagnostic dongle isn't pulling any codes. Decision is made to see if a longer wait (it is still 100+ degrees outside) would bring the Pony back to life and save us $1270 + a car rental, and maybe find a more willing tow truck to deliver it to Denver for less than $4 a mile.

Next morning, the car still won't start. So a U-Haul box truck rental later, as the city had 0 rental cars available, we're back on the road and the tow truck will be delivering my car to a dealership in the Denver area by open of business on Monday. With the hotel, uhaul, ubers to get all of this done, and a reasonable tow cost ($700) we're still under that $1270 estimate Ford roadside gave me.

Dealership provided a rental, a sexy EcoSport AWD, which took 5 days to approve & receive. Thank god we have a 2nd car and I work at home, otherwise last week would've been a nightmare.

So what went wrong? It took over a week to diagnose (dealer in town is just as busy), but they're saying bad HV battery module, requires replacement of the entire battery pack. ETA to get the car back? No clue.

TLDR: Stranded on a 3000 mile road trip less than 290 miles from home, Ford isn't very helpful in reimbursing or prioritizing broken down/stranded service appointments. Root cause is faulty HV battery module that requires a full battery swap and timeframe is unknown.

? this is crazy.

 

[highland58]

On my turbo diesel F-350 I had, I added a "turbo timer", which kept the engine running for some period of time after the ignition is turned off, so that the turbo had time to cool. It would seem that a similar function could be used to keep some cooling happening with the battery and charger after the car is switched off.

 

[Brofessional]

Ditto. 2 Teslas in the garage, zero mechanical or electrical issues. Most battery or drivetrain issues, if they do occur, typically happen in the first 1000 miles, if not sooner. They're reliable cars but social media (ie YouTube) likes to make the click bait videos on little issues. I'm starting to see it with the Mach-E now, too.

While it is likely true that Tesla quality issues likely have an outsized publicity presence for various reasons, it 100% does not mean they are "reliable." In fact, if you use only relevant statistical data, ignoring "social media," they would not be considered to have high reliability.

But even so, I still think the Tesla models (as well as many other EVs) provide good value for money. People will go drop thousands more on land rovers, aston martins, lotuses, etc. because of "performance" or "tech" or whatever other justifications they can pull out of their posterior side, while Tesla unequivocally gives you better reliability than those timebombs with better performance, more advanced tech, convenience of charging at home, OTA updates, etc.

 

[LNFitz]

Hmmmmm. Have pretty much anticipated Beta testing status but makes me rethink the idea of selling my ICE auto for a little while.

 

[deadduck]

While it is likely true that Tesla quality issues likely have an outsized publicity presence for various reasons, it 100% does not mean they are "reliable." In fact, if you use only relevant statistical data, ignoring "social media," they would not be considered to have high reliability.

But even so, I still think the Tesla models (as well as many other EVs) provide good value for money. People will go drop thousands more on land rovers, aston martins, lotuses, etc. because of "performance" or "tech" or whatever other justifications they can pull out of their posterior side, while Tesla unequivocally gives you better reliability than those timebombs with better performance, more advanced tech, convenience of charging at home, OTA updates, etc.

I think this is a good post.

There's almost no objective way to look at a Tesla and think it's quality as we think about it. That doesn't mean it's not a decent value, given what you get. I think "whoosh" covers over a lot of bad paint and panel gaps.

Tesla also has things that they legitimately do well, the charging network, for instance.

I can't see buying a Tesla, and I'm starting to struggle with a MME, as a single car owner, but I get why people buy them. We should just be honest when vehicles have problems and with the brands that make them. The MME may prove to be an excellent vehicle over time, but Ford does not have an excellent vehicle reputation, nor does Tesla.

 

[SnBGC]

On my turbo diesel F-350 I had, I added a "turbo timer", which kept the engine running for some period of time after the ignition is turned off, so that the turbo had time to cool. It would seem that a similar function could be used to keep some cooling happening with the battery and charger after the car is switched off.

Remote start will run for 15 min and shut off if no other action is taken.

 

[JimmyL]

This kind of highlights why I'm still on the sidelines.

• Ford reliability.
• Ford dealers.
• Ford itself.

People change, organizations change, but, rarely, do they change over night. It's also what scares the crap out of me about my backup choices: Ioniq 5 and EV6. Although, Kia and Hyundai are legendary for their dealer experience. <sarcasm tag in case needed>

Been reading about the 2022 NX PHEV, maybe that'll be the ticket. At least you'll get treated right at the dealer, probably.

However, I am curious, how is a dealer 100% booked for almost 3 weeks. There have to be some openings for exactly this kind of thing.

I am also worried about the Ford dealers service dept's. I assume the mechanics get some "training" but trying to figure out the failure with minimum service bulletins is a concern. I'm still a fan but with many new EV's coming to market in 2022 says wait a bit longer.

 

[agoldman]

In all fairness, isn't this the first battery swap case we have heard of? Doesn't seem like a remotely common issue , right?

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