Mach_Enrique

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After almost six months of owning my GT, I finally took a long distance road trip after around 8000 miles of commuting and local trips. Nothing too exciting of a journey as was just a round trip from Denver to Kansas City. My daughter needed to get some work done on her Trombone in Kansas City (plug for B.A.C Music in KC…great custom brass instruments and restoration) so we thought this would be a good chance to try the MachE on a road trip. I was very excited to post a positive story given the inherent bias to post problems more often than success types of posts. But spoiler alert…the return trip took an unfortunate turn, so you can scroll down to Chapter 2 if you want to get to the drama.

Chapter 1: The Best of Times…Denver to Kansas City


The trip was 600 miles and was mostly a simple straight shot across the plains on I70. The car was a dream to drive…smooth and quiet for ~75MPH on a long highway drive. My daughter had not spent much time in the car and drove for some legs. She loved driving and it was new driver unbiased opinion. As a point of reference, we made this trip a year ago in an Acura MDX. The MachE is by no means a luxury ride, but I was surprised that there was very little difference in drive feeling/fatigue due to quiet and comfortable cabin, great infotainment systems and overall ride/feel vs. what I remembered from our MDX trip (note we used Whisper for the whole trip until I was doing in-town driving, which I think helped on the highway comfort).

Notable highlights for those interested:

Bluecruise: I have learned to compensate for the “right side pull and bias” problem since I got the car back in September. I have seen a lot of posts on this “right side bias” problem, so I am not alone on this observation. Besides the “pull right” thing you have to deal with, it made some of the long highway stretches easier, especially when you are grabbing a snack/drink or stretching. The option to take a break from manual driving is a great option to have. Can’t wait for the next software update to see if something is improved. One last note…we took to calling it “blues cruise” during the trip as one of us called it that by accident on the drive and it stuck (if you ever had experience with kids TV shows, you will get the pun/reference).


Range and Charging: The outside temps were perfect (after sunrise) for happy batteries in the 60's and the car hardly showed any energy use for "external temperature" nor did we need any climate control but for fresh air fan blowing a little (non AC and no E-heat). The 5 stops needed were about right for stretching and breaks with fairly short charge times back to 80% or less (usually 60% would get you to the next EA charger on I70). We used the plug and charge feature to make use of the free hours I had from EA (thanks Ford!) and but for the last stop in Topeka, no issues. In Topeka we had to try 3 different stations to not get any errors, losing ~30 minutes and walking back out of Walmart twice to futz with the charging situation after errors stopped the charging. But other than that, EA worked flawlessly with the plug and charge at every other spot. Never saw another EV while charging at EA stations, which was disappointing. The starting charge rate usually hit 150-160 kW while I stood there and watched the screen before stepping away (used the 350kW stations and I do not have the new charging curve software update). I averaged around 2.3 mi/kWh on the trip.

Compliments to EA for the charger spacing on I70. Between charging stops, we drove for ~90 minutes and around 100 miles between chargers. The “80/80 range” as I took to calling it, which is range I estimated going ~80 MPH from 80% SoC, would have supported around 170-200 miles of range. So if you wanted to make a longer sprint between stations, you could not quite do it, as to skip a station put you at 200-210 miles of distance which won’t work on the MachE at ~80 MPH. I am hoping my next EV would have closer to 300 mile 80/80 range which would allow for longer legs before charging as do sometimes like to stretch that last leg of a trip just to get to the destination for the night.

Shout out for the first stop heading out from Denver in Flagler CO at the “I-70 Diner”. One of the two non-Walmart EA stops on the trip. Awesome “Starlite Diner” with the best green chili omelet I have ever had. If you do an early morning road trip leaving Denver, plan breakfast there while you charge!
Ford Mustang Mach-E My first MachE GT Road Trip...It was the best of times...it was the worst of times...but Ford stuck the landing! IMG_1228



Navigation and Software: Normally I am a Waze person for the crowd sourced daily drive info. But used the Sync Nav in the car for the trip and was very pleased. The charging stops it added matched ABRP and no complaints, but again this was a pretty simple trip down the highway which is EA’s sweet spot. In KC the 3D rendering of buildings on the screen was really cool and helped us find our way around nicely. I may start using it more often. I do have an ongoing issue where from the Fordpass app cannot save/push trip planning from my iPhone app to the car (I get “Sorry, Fordpass isn’t responding. Please try again later”). This was minor annoyance and had to setup trip in the car itself. Have not seen a post on this but did not look that hard to see if it is broader issue.


Chapter 2: The Worst of Times…Kansas City to…

We spent a great couple days in KC, saw some great sights, ate great BBQ, etc. KC is a very chill city and we enjoyed our stay downtown near Union Station and the WWI memorial. We started bright and early back to Denver, leaving at 100% SoC as we had stayed in a hotel with L2 chargers.

Just after our first charging stop and bit of breakfast, we were about 200 miles out of KC when the car started throwing every possible error you can imagine on the screen, then the dreaded “pull over car safely now” message as the car started to turtle. Once pulled over, she was dead…could not open frunk, could not move the car, etc. My daughter and I were stuck on the side of the I70 in the middle of Kansas.

I cannot begin to say how disappointing and frustrating it is to have your shiny new MachE turn into a brick during a road trip still 400 miles from home. But I will put that aside for a minute and focus on the rest of the experience.

The Place: We crapped out just short of an exit to Junction City KS, a small military town on I70. The miracle of this situation is we were TWO MILES from a Ford Dealership with a service center. I had to think if I was driving an EV from a “startup company” like the ones that stats with a “T”, “L” or “R” I have no idea how far my car would have to get towed to get fixed. It was not lost on me this was one of the reasons I went with the MachE in the first place: The service center network.

The Towing: I started with Ford Emergency Roadside and that was a disaster of waiting (sorry Ford, it should not take hours to get you a tow when stranded and the service should send you status updates every 15 minutes). A state trooper stopped by to check on us. As windows would not roll down, I got out of the car and explained this is an EV…etc. etc., can’t move the car, waiting for a tow, etc.. He was super helpful and printed the local tow contact info for me. Calling myself, I had a truck to us within an hour. I found a company/driver who knew how to tow EV’s and sports cars, so $75 out of pocket to get the two miles to Valor Ford. As a well-informed forum member, I did have the full print out of the towing guides at the ready and reviewed carefully with him before he hooked up the car. Ford Roadside said I can get reimbursed…still need to figure that out.

The Service Center: At the service center, they had a MachE certified tech and about half way through day was able to get my car in and try to get her running. I was guessing (as I read this forum) it was a 12V battery issue. While waiting for a tow, I checked the 12V with the tester I keep in the car and the 12V did show as very low. But that did not seem to be the problem. By the end of day, they told me they could not get it to run and needed to contact a Ford rep (their main person was on vacation). So this repair was going to take a while. It has been a week now since this happened, and my car is still at the service center in KS. I am snooping via secure alert so I know they are working on it today it seems. Crossing my fingers it is fixed this week.

The People: I was so appreciative to everyone who helped my daughter and I that fateful day. From the police that stopped by to check on us, to the awesome tow driver, who even though was not an EV fan (I could he tell did not fully appreciate an electric mustang either), made sure it was towed safely and properly.

Everyone at the service center was kind and empathetic. They could not make things go faster, but everyone we spoke to was kind and helpful. I HAD to get home that night as I could not miss work next day. So at the end of that first day, the service manager, their team and I all were trying to find me a rental car as they really did not want to do a loaner for us to drive back to Denver. No rentals in 100 mile radius without a 2-3 day wait (spring break week for a lot of KS). So in the end, the service manager found us a loaner so we could get home. I will still have to drive back 400 miles and retrieve my MachE when it is fixed, but given my car could not be repaired in 1-2 days, this was the best outcome I could hope for given the situation so I could still get myself and my daughter home.

To be continued...
That is the story so far. I still have not received a detailed explanation of the issue with the car, other than Ford told them they had to replace a couple of wiring harness connectors. I will add an epilogue to this post once the car is fixed, get the story on what broke and I make the return trip. Sorry for the long story but wanted to share for those who like the details. Wish me luck and the repair and shedding my new found EV road-trip anxiety!


March 24th Update to original post:
The service manager called to give me the bad news: They are going to need to replace my entire HV battery. To make matters worse the car won't respond to the process to deplete the battery pack so they can remove it and install a new one. So someone has to fly in to help with the process it seems. Guessing this will push the repair from 1 week out to 2-3 weeks. Still thankful I died 2 miles from a Ford service center certified to work on the MachE (they have all the "stuff" needed to remove/change batteries, etc.). Rough warranty issue though...really starting to miss my MachE after having to drive an ICE again...reminds me daily why I went with an EV.

March 25th Update to this post:
Turns out is was just the Battery Controller (BEC module as @Rabidsquirrel22 hypothesized below). Changing that out still is a lot of work as you have to discharge and drop the battery to change the module so I am told. This also requires removing a bunch of panels. Sounds like the local team, Ford and a supplier worked hard together to today. So now they just need to do some testing and get it signed off. I should be back in my MME next week!!

Special thanks to @Ford Motor Company for their help and support along with the team at Valor Automotive in KS. Things will go wrong with cars, even EV's and they will break down, and that is when the service really matters. Ford gets high marks on service across the board from this customer!

Epilogue - April 1st (no jokes)
Made the drive out to get my GT and brought her home. Happy to report the drive home was great and no issues. Three DCFC stops later and we were home. I had a great chat with the tech who did the work, he showed me a lot of pictures of the dropped battery, the BECM, etc. Was very cool to see (been a while since I watched the Munroe tear down). A few quick highlights of the trip home:

DCFC: The car got all the latest updates so I noted the new charging curve was in place. The car seemed to charge faster to 80% than I remember. It would peak at 160kWh on the EA charge at the start and seemed to by between 70-100 as it approached 80. I stayed much higher on the 80-90 I noticed when we stopped for lunch which was a one hour stop and I ended up going from ~8% to ~94% in that hour.

Range: I had the same experience on range as the first trip. With the 75-80 mph on I-70 we averaged about 1.9mi/kWh as it is a gentle up hill slope on average back into Colorado from Kansas. Not the best 80mph/80% SoC range (88kWh @ 80% = 70.4kWh * 1.9 mi/kWh = 134mi). So the roughly 100 miles of distance between EA chargers on Kansas I-70 is about right for the MachE. That is about 1.5-2 hour driving stretches which is not bad for most people...my traveling companions normally don't do well with longer sprints than that so it works out. For me personally, for highway trips I would like to have the option to run 200-250 miles between charges from 80%.

Blues Cruise: We used BC a lot on the way home. I stupidly forgot to ask the tech about what software updates they did (I was told before I picked up the car they did "all of them" but meant to get the list and forgot in my excitement to get on the road). BC did seem to behave a little better on the way home. I did not notice the "right side bias" as much. I was also impressed with how BC handled a Kansas cross winds. The drive home was pretty windy (as Kansas is, hence the massive wind farms you pass) and the BC handled keeping the car in lane fighting the cross wind and gusts. We mostly had hands on the wheel so BC continues to be more of a luxury to take your hands off the wheel to stretch, eat, take a cap off your drink with two hands, etc. Definitely helps on the long rides. Tough call to decide if I would pay a subscription for it vs. CP360 Adaptive Cruise.

Suspension: Quick word on suspension. Someone above pointed out how bad the roads are on I-70 once you cross into Colorado from Kansas. Holy bounce o rama Batman did I feel it the second we passed the "Welcome to Colorado" sign. I was in the passenger seat for this and must say it was pretty brutal. By the time we got closer to Denver and to better highway quality, I had wished I had gotten the GT PE. I was close to placing my order for PE back in early 2021 but that was before they updated the ranges and I did not like the look of the seats. But with 20/20 hindsight, the cooler wheels and magneride would have offset my dislike of the seats and I coulda/shoulda/woulda dropped $5K more.

Conclusion: Well that's all she wrote! Glad to have the car home, clean and ready to drive every day again. I still love my GT and still get excited every time I drive it. Despite the BECM brick issue that took my car out, the service and support made the year-one early adopter risk still worth it. Will I take long road trips (more than 1-2 DCFC stops) again? I will not. We will take our MDX. Maybe my next EV will have the range, comfort and confidence for long trips, but not the MachE. I have a ways to go before I can see becoming a two EV family. But I will, until I have to uber and mooch rides from my kids (aka get too old to drive), drive an EV. If Ford keeps up the pace they are on, my next one will be a Ford EV too.
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Mathington

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Sorry to hear about the horrible experience at the end of your road trip! I hope that they can get your car up and running quickly, but it is worrisome that the car suddenly died out of nowhere.

I'm planning a road trip in April and really hope my experience doesn't end up like yours as I'm driving from Canada to the USA.
 
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Mach_Enrique

Mach_Enrique

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I really think my situation is rare given the amount of miles and MME's on the road now. The key is to be prepared for situations such as knowing how to make sure you car is towed correctly, take a fob on long trips, etc.

I almost did not post my story as I am still a MME fan and did not want to scare people out of road trips, but it does highlight the value of the Ford service network when something does go wrong so I wanted to share.

Thanks for the kind words!
 
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Logal727

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Damn, it really scares me that you can go 8k miles and then things just go to hell, I don’t understand why that happens? It really doesn’t help my anxiety!
 


JellyBelly

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After almost six months of owning my GT, I finally took a long distance road trip after around 8000 miles of commuting and local trips. Nothing too exciting of a journey as was just a round trip from Denver to Kansas City. My daughter needed to get some work done on her Trombone in Kansas City (plug for B.A.C Music in KC…great custom brass instruments and restoration) so we thought this would be a good chance to try the MachE on a road trip. I was very excited to post a positive story given the inherent bias to post problems more often than success types of posts. But spoiler alert…the return trip took an unfortunate turn, so you can scroll down to Chapter 2 if you want to get to the drama.

Chapter 1: The Best of Times…Denver to Kansas City


The trip was 600 miles and was mostly a simple straight shot across the plains on I70. The car was a dream to drive…smooth and quiet for ~75MPH on a long highway drive. My daughter had not spent much time in the car and drove for some legs. She loved driving and it was new driver unbiased opinion. As a point of reference, we made this trip a year ago in an Acura MDX. The MachE is by no means a luxury ride, but I was surprised that there was very little difference in drive feeling/fatigue due to quiet and comfortable cabin, great infotainment systems and overall ride/feel vs. what I remembered from our MDX trip (note we used Whisper for the whole trip until I was doing in-town driving, which I think helped on the highway comfort).

Notable highlights for those interested:

Bluecruise: I have learned to compensate for the “right side pull and bias” problem since I got the car back in September. I have seen a lot of posts on this “right side bias” problem, so I am not alone on this observation. Besides the “pull right” thing you have to deal with, it made some of the long highway stretches easier, especially when you are grabbing a snack/drink or stretching. The option to take a break from manual driving is a great option to have. Can’t wait for the next software update to see if something is improved. One last note…we took to calling it “blues cruise” during the trip as one of us called it that by accident on the drive and it stuck (if you ever had experience with kids TV shows, you will get the pun/reference).


Range and Charging: The outside temps were perfect (after sunrise) for happy batteries in the 60's and the car hardly showed any energy use for "external temperature" nor did we need any climate control but for fresh air fan blowing a little (non AC and no E-heat). The 5 stops needed were about right for stretching and breaks with fairly short charge times back to 80% or less (usually 60% would get you to the next EA charger on I70). We used the plug and charge feature to make use of the free hours I had from EA (thanks Ford!) and but for the last stop in Topeka, no issues. In Topeka we had to try 3 different stations to not get any errors, losing ~30 minutes and walking back out of Walmart twice to futz with the charging situation after errors stopped the charging. But other than that, EA worked flawlessly with the plug and charge at every other spot. Never saw another EV while charging at EA stations, which was disappointing. The starting charge rate usually hit 150-160 kW while I stood there and watched the screen before stepping away (used the 350kW stations and I do not have the new charging curve software update). I averaged around 2.3 mi/kWh on the trip.

Compliments to EA for the charger spacing on I70. Between charging stops, we drove for ~90 minutes and around 100 miles between chargers. The “80/80 range” as I took to calling it, which is range I estimated going ~80 MPH from 80% SoC, would have supported around 170-200 miles of range. So if you wanted to make a longer sprint between stations, you could not quite do it, as to skip a station put you at 200-210 miles of distance which won’t work on the MachE at ~80 MPH. I am hoping my next EV would have closer to 300 mile 80/80 range which would allow for longer legs before charging as do sometimes like to stretch that last leg of a trip just to get to the destination for the night.

Shout out for the first stop heading out from Denver in Flagler CO at the “I-70 Diner”. One of the two non-Walmart EA stops on the trip. Awesome “Starlite Diner” with the best green chili omelet I have ever had. If you do an early morning road trip leaving Denver, plan breakfast there while you charge!
Ford Mustang Mach-E My first MachE GT Road Trip...It was the best of times...it was the worst of times...but Ford stuck the landing! IMG_1228



Navigation and Software: Normally I am a Waze person for the crowd sourced daily drive info. But used the Sync Nav in the car for the trip and was very pleased. The charging stops it added matched ABRP and no complaints, but again this was a pretty simple trip down the highway which is EA’s sweet spot. In KC the 3D rendering of buildings on the screen was really cool and helped us find our way around nicely. I may start using it more often. I do have an ongoing issues where from the Fordpass app cannot save/push trip planning from my iPhone app to the car (I get “Sorry, Fordpass isn’t responding. Please try again later”). This was minor annoyance and had to setup trip in the car itself. Have not seen a post on this but did not look that hard to see if it is broader issue.


Chapter 2: The Worst of Times…Kansas City to…

We spent a great couple days in KC, saw some great sights, ate great BBQ, etc. KC is a very chill city and we enjoyed our stay downtown near Union Station and the WWI memorial. We started bright and early back to Denver, leaving at 100% SoC as we had stayed in a hotel with L2 chargers.

Just after our first charging stop and bit of breakfast, we were about 200 miles out of KC when the car started throwing every possible error you can imagine on the screen, then the dreaded “pull over car safely now” message as the car started to turtle. Once pulled over, she was dead…could not open frunk, could not move the car, etc. My daughter and I were stuck on the side of the I70 in the middle of Kansas.

I cannot begin to say how disappointing and frustrating it is to have your shiny new MachE turn into a brick during a road trip still 400 miles from home. But I will put that aside for a minute and focus on the rest of the experience.

The Place: We crapped out just short of an exit to Island Junction KS, a small military town on I70. The miracle of this situation is we were TWO MILES from a Ford Dealership with a service center. I had to think if I was driving an EV from a “startup company” like the ones that stats with a “T”, “L” or “R” I have no idea how far my car would have to get towed to get fixed. It was not lost on me this was one of the reasons I went with the MachE in the first place: The service center network.

The Towing: I started with Ford Emergency Roadside and that was a disaster of waiting (sorry Ford, it should not take hours to get you a tow when stranded and the service should send you status updates every 15 minutes). A state trooper stopped by to check on us. As windows would not roll down, I got out of the car and explained this is an EV…etc. etc., can’t move the car, waiting for a tow, etc.. He was super helpful and printed the local tow contact info for me. Calling myself, I had a truck to us within an hour. I found a company/driver who knew how to tow EV’s and sports cars, so $75 out of pocket to get the two miles to Valor Ford. As a well-informed forum member, I did have the full print out of the towing guides at the ready and reviewed carefully with him before he hooked up the car. Ford Roadside said I can get reimbursed…still need to figure that out.

The Service Center: At the service center, they had a MachE certified tech and about half way through day was able to get my car in and try to get her running. I was guessing (as I read this forum) it was a 12V battery issue. While waiting for a tow, I checked the 12V with the tester I keep in the car and the 12V did show as very low. But that did not seem to be the problem. By the end of day, they told me they could not get it to run and needed to contact a Ford rep (their main person was on vacation). So this repair was going to take a while. It has been a week now since this happened, and my car is still at the service center in KS. I am snooping via secure alert so I know they are working on it today it seems. Crossing my fingers it is fixed this week.

The People: I was so appreciative to everyone who helped my daughter and I that fateful day. From the police that stopped by to check on us, to the awesome tow driver, who even though was not an EV fan (I could he tell did not fully appreciate an electric mustang either), made sure it was towed safely and properly.

Everyone at the service center was kind and empathetic. They could not make things go faster, but everyone we spoke to was kind and helpful. I HAD to get home that night as I could not miss work next day. So at the end of that first day, the service manager, their team and I all were trying to find me a rental car as they really did not want to do a loaner for us to drive back to Denver. No rentals in 100 mile radius without a 2-3 day wait (spring break week for a lot of KS). So in the end, the service manager found us a loaner so we could get home. I will still have to drive back 400 miles and retrieve my MachE when it is fixed, but given my car could not be repaired in 1-2 days, this was the best outcome I could hope for given the situation so I could still get myself and my daughter home.

To be continued...
That is the story so far. I still have not received a detailed explanation of the issue with the car, other than Ford told them they had to replace a couple of wiring harness connectors. I will add an epilogue to this post once the car is fixed, get the story on what broke and I make the return trip. Sorry for the long story but wanted to share for those who like the details. Wish me luck and the repair and shedding my new found EV road-trip anxiety!
Sad to hear about your terrible experience - glad that the Ford service folks were helpful and hoping your car gets fixed soon. This type of experience is one worry I do have with EVs although can happen with any car if in the middle of not much.
 

Peaceowl

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Maybe the short 100 mile charges don’t allow enough for a 12v full charge? (Just a wild guess to why it didn’t happen in the first 8000 miles ). hope all goes well. Thank you for taking the time for your story.
 

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Great write up and keep us posted. I have to knock on wood that I have had 31,000 miles and several road trips without mishap. The Ford service network is really a plus though.
 

adamtbest

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I have a select AWD iced blue on order. I haven't even taken ownership yet. I've read many horror stories. Hopefully there are more good road trip stories too.
 

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After almost six months of owning my GT, I finally took a long distance road trip after around 8000 miles of commuting and local trips. Nothing too exciting of a journey as was just a round trip from Denver to Kansas City. My daughter needed to get some work done on her Trombone in Kansas City (plug for B.A.C Music in KC…great custom brass instruments and restoration) so we thought this would be a good chance to try the MachE on a road trip. I was very excited to post a positive story given the inherent bias to post problems more often than success types of posts. But spoiler alert…the return trip took an unfortunate turn, so you can scroll down to Chapter 2 if you want to get to the drama.

Chapter 1: The Best of Times…Denver to Kansas City


The trip was 600 miles and was mostly a simple straight shot across the plains on I70. The car was a dream to drive…smooth and quiet for ~75MPH on a long highway drive. My daughter had not spent much time in the car and drove for some legs. She loved driving and it was new driver unbiased opinion. As a point of reference, we made this trip a year ago in an Acura MDX. The MachE is by no means a luxury ride, but I was surprised that there was very little difference in drive feeling/fatigue due to quiet and comfortable cabin, great infotainment systems and overall ride/feel vs. what I remembered from our MDX trip (note we used Whisper for the whole trip until I was doing in-town driving, which I think helped on the highway comfort).

Notable highlights for those interested:

Bluecruise: I have learned to compensate for the “right side pull and bias” problem since I got the car back in September. I have seen a lot of posts on this “right side bias” problem, so I am not alone on this observation. Besides the “pull right” thing you have to deal with, it made some of the long highway stretches easier, especially when you are grabbing a snack/drink or stretching. The option to take a break from manual driving is a great option to have. Can’t wait for the next software update to see if something is improved. One last note…we took to calling it “blues cruise” during the trip as one of us called it that by accident on the drive and it stuck (if you ever had experience with kids TV shows, you will get the pun/reference).


Range and Charging: The outside temps were perfect (after sunrise) for happy batteries in the 60's and the car hardly showed any energy use for "external temperature" nor did we need any climate control but for fresh air fan blowing a little (non AC and no E-heat). The 5 stops needed were about right for stretching and breaks with fairly short charge times back to 80% or less (usually 60% would get you to the next EA charger on I70). We used the plug and charge feature to make use of the free hours I had from EA (thanks Ford!) and but for the last stop in Topeka, no issues. In Topeka we had to try 3 different stations to not get any errors, losing ~30 minutes and walking back out of Walmart twice to futz with the charging situation after errors stopped the charging. But other than that, EA worked flawlessly with the plug and charge at every other spot. Never saw another EV while charging at EA stations, which was disappointing. The starting charge rate usually hit 150-160 kW while I stood there and watched the screen before stepping away (used the 350kW stations and I do not have the new charging curve software update). I averaged around 2.3 mi/kWh on the trip.

Compliments to EA for the charger spacing on I70. Between charging stops, we drove for ~90 minutes and around 100 miles between chargers. The “80/80 range” as I took to calling it, which is range I estimated going ~80 MPH from 80% SoC, would have supported around 170-200 miles of range. So if you wanted to make a longer sprint between stations, you could not quite do it, as to skip a station put you at 200-210 miles of distance which won’t work on the MachE at ~80 MPH. I am hoping my next EV would have closer to 300 mile 80/80 range which would allow for longer legs before charging as do sometimes like to stretch that last leg of a trip just to get to the destination for the night.

Shout out for the first stop heading out from Denver in Flagler CO at the “I-70 Diner”. One of the two non-Walmart EA stops on the trip. Awesome “Starlite Diner” with the best green chili omelet I have ever had. If you do an early morning road trip leaving Denver, plan breakfast there while you charge!
Ford Mustang Mach-E My first MachE GT Road Trip...It was the best of times...it was the worst of times...but Ford stuck the landing! IMG_1228



Navigation and Software: Normally I am a Waze person for the crowd sourced daily drive info. But used the Sync Nav in the car for the trip and was very pleased. The charging stops it added matched ABRP and no complaints, but again this was a pretty simple trip down the highway which is EA’s sweet spot. In KC the 3D rendering of buildings on the screen was really cool and helped us find our way around nicely. I may start using it more often. I do have an ongoing issues where from the Fordpass app cannot save/push trip planning from my iPhone app to the car (I get “Sorry, Fordpass isn’t responding. Please try again later”). This was minor annoyance and had to setup trip in the car itself. Have not seen a post on this but did not look that hard to see if it is broader issue.


Chapter 2: The Worst of Times…Kansas City to…

We spent a great couple days in KC, saw some great sights, ate great BBQ, etc. KC is a very chill city and we enjoyed our stay downtown near Union Station and the WWI memorial. We started bright and early back to Denver, leaving at 100% SoC as we had stayed in a hotel with L2 chargers.

Just after our first charging stop and bit of breakfast, we were about 200 miles out of KC when the car started throwing every possible error you can imagine on the screen, then the dreaded “pull over car safely now” message as the car started to turtle. Once pulled over, she was dead…could not open frunk, could not move the car, etc. My daughter and I were stuck on the side of the I70 in the middle of Kansas.

I cannot begin to say how disappointing and frustrating it is to have your shiny new MachE turn into a brick during a road trip still 400 miles from home. But I will put that aside for a minute and focus on the rest of the experience.

The Place: We crapped out just short of an exit to Island Junction KS, a small military town on I70. The miracle of this situation is we were TWO MILES from a Ford Dealership with a service center. I had to think if I was driving an EV from a “startup company” like the ones that stats with a “T”, “L” or “R” I have no idea how far my car would have to get towed to get fixed. It was not lost on me this was one of the reasons I went with the MachE in the first place: The service center network.

The Towing: I started with Ford Emergency Roadside and that was a disaster of waiting (sorry Ford, it should not take hours to get you a tow when stranded and the service should send you status updates every 15 minutes). A state trooper stopped by to check on us. As windows would not roll down, I got out of the car and explained this is an EV…etc. etc., can’t move the car, waiting for a tow, etc.. He was super helpful and printed the local tow contact info for me. Calling myself, I had a truck to us within an hour. I found a company/driver who knew how to tow EV’s and sports cars, so $75 out of pocket to get the two miles to Valor Ford. As a well-informed forum member, I did have the full print out of the towing guides at the ready and reviewed carefully with him before he hooked up the car. Ford Roadside said I can get reimbursed…still need to figure that out.

The Service Center: At the service center, they had a MachE certified tech and about half way through day was able to get my car in and try to get her running. I was guessing (as I read this forum) it was a 12V battery issue. While waiting for a tow, I checked the 12V with the tester I keep in the car and the 12V did show as very low. But that did not seem to be the problem. By the end of day, they told me they could not get it to run and needed to contact a Ford rep (their main person was on vacation). So this repair was going to take a while. It has been a week now since this happened, and my car is still at the service center in KS. I am snooping via secure alert so I know they are working on it today it seems. Crossing my fingers it is fixed this week.

The People: I was so appreciative to everyone who helped my daughter and I that fateful day. From the police that stopped by to check on us, to the awesome tow driver, who even though was not an EV fan (I could he tell did not fully appreciate an electric mustang either), made sure it was towed safely and properly.

Everyone at the service center was kind and empathetic. They could not make things go faster, but everyone we spoke to was kind and helpful. I HAD to get home that night as I could not miss work next day. So at the end of that first day, the service manager, their team and I all were trying to find me a rental car as they really did not want to do a loaner for us to drive back to Denver. No rentals in 100 mile radius without a 2-3 day wait (spring break week for a lot of KS). So in the end, the service manager found us a loaner so we could get home. I will still have to drive back 400 miles and retrieve my MachE when it is fixed, but given my car could not be repaired in 1-2 days, this was the best outcome I could hope for given the situation so I could still get myself and my daughter home.

To be continued...
That is the story so far. I still have not received a detailed explanation of the issue with the car, other than Ford told them they had to replace a couple of wiring harness connectors. I will add an epilogue to this post once the car is fixed, get the story on what broke and I make the return trip. Sorry for the long story but wanted to share for those who like the details. Wish me luck and the repair and shedding my new found EV road-trip anxiety!
So sorry to hear this.. as a side note: I had an issue using SecureAlert where it was constantly pinging me to the point that I think it burned up the TCU/Modem. That was 4 months ago. Replaced the TCU and all is fine since then but I have no intention of turning that feature on again. Instead I have thrown an Apple air tag in the mobile charging bag in the trunk. Seems to work fine as long as someone is near it with an iOS device.
 

Rabidsquirrel22

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Sorry to hear about the bad experience on the return trip. Mine also threw the “stop safely now” message and had to be towed. It ended up being a faulty BECM module inside the battery pack. I’ll be following the thread, curious to see if yours is the same. It seems like that’s becoming a concerningly common issue on this forum.
 
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Mach_Enrique

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Today's Update (will add to the OP at the top too)...

The service manager called to give me the bad news: They are going to need to replace my entire HV battery. To make matters worse the car won't respond to the process to deplete the battery pack so they can remove it and install a new one. So someone has to fly in to help with the process it seems. Guessing this will push the repair from 1 week out to 2-3 weeks. Rough warranty issue...really starting to miss my MachE after having to drive an ICE again...reminds me daily why I went with an EV (especially when I had to stop at Costco for gas today).
 

Rabidsquirrel22

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Today's Update (will add to the OP at the top too)...

The service manager called to give me the bad news: They are going to need to replace my entire HV battery. To make matters worse the car won't respond to the process to deplete the battery pack so they can remove it and install a new one. So someone has to fly in to help with the process it seems. Guessing this will push the repair from 1 week out to 2-3 weeks. Rough warranty issue...really starting to miss my MachE after having to drive an ICE again...reminds me daily why I went with an EV (especially when I had to stop at Costco for gas today).
Wow the whole pack! Did they give you any other details on what was wrong with it?

Something else I'd recommend is reaching out to the Ford Motor Company account on this forum via direct message. Once you provide all the info they need, they will set you up with a customer experience rep. Mine has been incredibly valuable in getting updates and helping expedite the replacement parts, which were back-ordered and took over a month to get to the dealer. I would imagine it's going to be a long wait for an entire pack. They're also getting me a month's payment compensated since the car spent 38 days at the dealer by the time all was said and done.
 
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Mach_Enrique

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Today's Update!! Good news!!!

Today I heard my car is fixed!! Turns out is was just the Battery Controller (BEC module as @Rabidsquirrel22 hypothesized above). Changing that out still is a lot of work as you have to discharge and drop the battery to change the module so I am told. This also requires removing a bunch of panels. So now they just need to do some testing and get it signed off. I should be back in my MME next week!!

Special thanks to @Ford Motor Company for their help and support along with the team at Valor Automotive in KS. Things will go wrong with cars, even EV's and they will break down, and that is when the service really matters. Ford gets high marks on service across the board from this customer!
 

Logal727

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I have a select AWD iced blue on order. I haven't even taken ownership yet. I've read many horror stories. Hopefully there are more good road trip stories too.
FWIW forums are basically for horror stories and vehicle issues, it’s not a very balanced view.
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