Stop Safely Now (HVBJB): Mach-E Owners Biggest Fear - Facts and Info Thread

[Logal727]

I don't think it is niche. 38 people on the forum with an issue this year and counting. Thats a ton of cars with an issue that makes them non drivable........but we'll see. Ford definitely knows the cause of the issue already and I believe they have a fix already but we'll see if my car gets it.

All of those fancy AC units with VFD suck. They fail so often even newer designs that last longer still fail in an unreasonably short amount of time.

Yeah, lack of info isn’t helping, even though we know that reason why it’s been so quiet

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[Mach-Lee]

My car thursday finally gave me the Stop Safely now message. I was charging the car on L1 charging at 70 SOC when I got the message to my phone that there was a charge problem. Turn car on to see the stop safely now message. I connected an ODB2 reader to see P1A10 code and "Battery voltage too high" on BECM, Battery voltage was only at 360V or thereabouts. The odd thing to me was the Module not found error for the DCDC controller.

That code means the output voltage of the pack was too high when it expected there to be none. When the contactors open the output voltage should be zero, if there is still a voltage showing then the high voltage code is set and it's assumed that the contactor is stuck closed since the power did not shut off.

 

[VegStang]

From all that I have read this car was developed in 2 years start to finish (maybe 2 more years before we received them) if you don't count the time spent on the compliance car they shelved.

The interesting part about all of this is how was this not discovered as a potential issue prior to release of the car? This car was in development for what, 5-6 years before the public got their hands on it?

 

[DevSecOps]

This happened to me while driving today. I have a job 1 apparently built in late June the 2.7.2 update was applied just a few days ago but I of course don't know if it's related. I normally drive it on whisper mode but today I for some reason switched it to unbridled. Earlier in the day I started noticing some lines in the main screen like I used to get last fall but they quickly went away without having to reboot it. I had an earlier drive today 27 miles and then another 27 miles on the way back. Within the last 5 miles on the way back I received the stop safely now message. It started coming to a crawl I took the first turn but it would not let me move again after stopping on the side of the road. I was unable to turn it off or on. Eventually the 12v battery died as I waited for a tow truck for about an hour even though all I had on were hazard lights and monitor of course. As the 12v started dying different messages appeared I'm assuming all unrelated to the actual problem, see the video taken before it died completely the first time. When the tow truck guy got there he thought he had to replace a tire, apparently the service person told them that so they would come out because no one wants to tow these things (his words). We had to use the 12v connector to pop the hood then we had to charge the 12v to get it on and put it into emergency tow neutral mode. When we got it to the dealer we had to charge it again to get back into the car as the doors were closed. And then again to put it back into neutral to roll it into a parking spot. Charge would only last about 8min since the portable 12v jumper he had didn't have much of a charge. I have no idea what's going on but just wanted to give props to this forum again as it has had the most information including the tow truck guy, the paper manual, the ford service person I spoke with. Hopefully they can figure it out when I call the dealer on Monday.

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Sorry this happened to you. When you get the diagnostic codes let us know what they say the issue is. It could just be that you have a bad 12v. Let's hope that's the case as there was a rash of bad ones in some of the cars last year. I've also seen similar issues with electrical shorts. So until we get the DTCs it's hard to tell what caused it. If the contactor in the HVBJB was stuck closed the car wouldn't have turned on. Since it happened while driving it's not as likely to be the HVBJB.

 

[RMoore]

Brilliant post! Really, thx for the whole post. And this very telling fact. I think when you ventured to guess the odds of the failure are less than 1% that many people panicking here took that to mean exactly 1%. If the car dies, tow it and get it fixed. Like any other car. It is just a car in the end. If this were happening to 1% of all MME's, there'd be a NHTSA review and a recall in a heartbeat I'd guess. 1 in 100? No way. Less than 1%. Way less. (1 in 1,000, 1 in 10,000?) This is the "complaint" forum, not the average user forum. The opposite of a random sample. Happily driving my first edition '21 built 12/21 at about 30k miles so far. Occasionally quite a few weekend long trips with only DC fast charging. 120 mile daily commute. Regular 75mph on the freeway.

As I’ve said before I think it has to be more frequent than 1/1000. There have been about 40,000 MMEs sold and there have been about 40 cases on this forum alone. I have to think there are plenty more cases out there that we don’t know about. In addition, if these were completely random and independent events and having this happen a second time was independent of the first, then it would be very improbable to see 3 people here experience this failure twice if the odds for a single failure were much lower than 1/100.

 

[DevSecOps]

As I’ve said before I think it has to be more frequent than 1/1000. There have been about 40,000 MMEs sold and there have been about 40 cases on this forum alone. I have to think there are plenty more cases out there that we don’t know about. In addition, if these were completely random and independent events and having this happen a second time was independent of the first, then it would be very improbable to see 3 people here experience this failure twice if the odds for a single failure were much lower than 1/100.

You're entitled to your opinions of course, but let me point out the following...

This forum is not just for the USA. It's a global board with sections dedicated to other continents.
In the USA Ford has sold, at least: 48585 units
In Canada Ford has sold, at least: 5400 units
In Mexico Ford has sold, at least: 2 units
In the EU Ford has sold, at least: 31185 units
Asian units sold: ??

Known units sold: 85172

Ford expects to produce 200,000 units by years end, in total. So, we are probably missing some in there.

This board has 10,980 members, which would account for about 1/8 of the total units sold in the EU and NA alone.

If we have 40 reports of issues we would have to multiply that by 7.75 to get the same ratio to total units sold. Therefore, if we take this completely unscientific approach we would have a total of 310 units with failures across NA and EU.

That means that your chance in getting a failure is 310/85172 or 0.36%. To put this into perspective, the Chevy Bolt Battery issue, which made news for months on end, had 0.01% chance of happening (19 total cases).

Based on the very low message count from a lot of people who have experienced this I would assume that they probably landed here by searching "Stop safely now" in Google, which brought them to this forum over the last 6 months. That alone, would lead me to guess that the actual number is even less than 310.

As I've said many times, Ford is working on fixing this and they have even put out a revised part to deal with it. Stay patient and wait for further information and stop stressing on the things you can't control. If it was actually higher than 1%, as you suggest, then it would be thousands of cars with this issue and you and I both know if there were thousands of bricked MMEs it would be all over the news, anti-MME sites etc.

 

[RMoore]

You're entitled to your opinions of course, but let me point out the following...

This forum is not just for the USA. It's a global board with sections dedicated to other continents.
In the USA Ford has sold, at least: 48585 units
In Canada Ford has sold, at least: 5400 units
In Mexico Ford has sold, at least: 2 units
In the EU Ford has sold, at least: 31185 units
Asian units sold: ??

Known units sold: 85172

Ford expects to produce 200,000 units by years end, in total. So, we are probably missing some in there.

This board has 10,980 members, which would account for about 1/8 of the total units sold in the EU and NA alone.

If we have 40 reports of issues we would have to multiply that by 7.75 to get the same ratio to total units sold. Therefore, if we take this completely unscientific approach we would have a total of 310 units with failures across NA and EU.

That means that your chance in getting a failure is 310/85172 or 0.36%. To put this into perspective, the Chevy Bolt Battery issue, which made news for months on end, had 0.01% chance of happening (19 total cases).

Based on the very low message count from a lot of people who have experienced this I would assume that they probably landed here by searching "Stop safely now" in Google, which brought them to this forum over the last 6 months. That alone, would lead me to guess that the actual number is even less than 310.

As I've said many times, Ford is working on fixing this and they have even put out a revised part to deal with it. Stay patient and wait for further information and stop stressing on the things you can't control. If it was actually higher than 1%, as you suggest, then it would be thousands of cars with this issue and you and I both know if there were thousands of bricked MMEs it would be all over the news, anti-MME sites etc.

Thanks for providing a more accurate count of MMEs sold. I wasn’t trying to say that the chances were greater than 1/100 but as a rough estimate it has to be at least 40/85000 (1/2125) since we know of at least that many cases out of the total number of cars out there. But I would think that not everyone with this issue has posted here on this forum so the actual chances must be higher. How much higher is anyone’s guess. But fully agree that this is being taken seriously at Ford and that in a highly regulated industry like this one they will be very careful with what they say publicly (and I suspect are very careful with their internal communications all of which would be discoverable in court if there were lawsuits).

 

[Logal727]

You're entitled to your opinions of course, but let me point out the following...

This forum is not just for the USA. It's a global board with sections dedicated to other continents.
In the USA Ford has sold, at least: 48585 units
In Canada Ford has sold, at least: 5400 units
In Mexico Ford has sold, at least: 2 units
In the EU Ford has sold, at least: 31185 units
Asian units sold: ??

Known units sold: 85172

Ford expects to produce 200,000 units by years end, in total. So, we are probably missing some in there.

This board has 10,980 members, which would account for about 1/8 of the total units sold in the EU and NA alone.

If we have 40 reports of issues we would have to multiply that by 7.75 to get the same ratio to total units sold. Therefore, if we take this completely unscientific approach we would have a total of 310 units with failures across NA and EU.

That means that your chance in getting a failure is 310/85172 or 0.36%. To put this into perspective, the Chevy Bolt Battery issue, which made news for months on end, had 0.01% chance of happening (19 total cases).

Based on the very low message count from a lot of people who have experienced this I would assume that they probably landed here by searching "Stop safely now" in Google, which brought them to this forum over the last 6 months. That alone, would lead me to guess that the actual number is even less than 310.

As I've said many times, Ford is working on fixing this and they have even put out a revised part to deal with it. Stay patient and wait for further information and stop stressing on the things you can't control. If it was actually higher than 1%, as you suggest, then it would be thousands of cars with this issue and you and I both know if there were thousands of bricked MMEs it would be all over the news, anti-MME sites etc.

The SEO thing is so overlooked. There’s a reason this site has so many ads on it.

 

[NYWolfpack]

Happened to me as well. Had to get it towed from my driveway. It's been at the dealership since May 6th. '21 Premium, ER, AWD. Took Delivery of it in February 2022 and it had roughly 3,400 miles on it.

Took them 1 week to even get a qualified person to look at it. Ordered a new 12V battery which took 2 weeks to arrive. They replaced that and then had more errors tracing back to the high voltage battery. More parts are needed there as well which are also on backorder. The service manager at the dealership doesn't even really seem to understand what's going on with it.

Ford CS has been incredibly unhelpful (bouncing me to different service members, transferring me to dead-end lines, unclear communication on reimbursement for monthly payments). It's a shame because I love the vehicle (First EV, first Ford), but this whole experience has left a pretty bad impression on me.

Also happened to my co-worker (2021 GT Performance edition, ~4,000 miles) but he was able to get his back in ~1 week. Not sure if it was a different component that failed but he did take it to a different dealership.

 

[scoopman]

Happened to me as well. Had to get it towed from my driveway. It's been at the dealership since May 6th. '21 Premium, ER, AWD. Took Delivery of it in February 2022 and it had roughly 3,400 miles on it.

Took them 1 week to even get a qualified person to look at it. Ordered a new 12V battery which took 2 weeks to arrive. They replaced that and then had more errors tracing back to the high voltage battery. More parts are needed there as well which are also on backorder. The service manager at the dealership doesn't even really seem to understand what's going on with it.

Ford CS has been incredibly unhelpful (bouncing me to different service members, transferring me to dead-end lines, unclear communication on reimbursement for monthly payments). It's a shame because I love the vehicle (First EV, first Ford), but this whole experience has left a pretty bad impression on me.

Also happened to my co-worker (2021 GT Performance edition, ~4,000 miles) but he was able to get his back in ~1 week. Not sure if it was a different component that failed but he did take it to a different dealership.

Plus they also winched it incorrectly from your photo, hope they didn’t damage anything.

 

[NYWolfpack]

Plus they also winched it incorrectly from your photo, hope they didn’t damage anything.

I know! Dealership says nothing was damaged. Did some research (thanks to the folks on this forum) on tow points so if/when it happens again I'll be better informed.

 

[scoopman]

I know! Dealership says nothing was damaged. Did some research (thanks to the folks on this forum) on tow points so if/when it happens again I'll be better informed.

you sure about that? where did that chain in your photo go to under the car? doesn’t sound like you have the most confidence-inspiring ford dealer working on your car.

 

[NewGuy]

This board has 10,980 members, which would account for about 1/8 of the total units sold in the EU and NA alone.

I don’t know that it greatly impacts the incidence, but there no way this board represents 10,980 vehicles. Based on how active the ordering and shipping pages are, I’d guess that most members don’t even have a Mach E (yet?), and that’s just active members. Someone recently resurrected a thread from before the vehicle was released and a lot of those users haven’t logged in since 2019.

That said, I really appreciate you putting this thread together and trying to make sense of it all.

 

[rcechinel]

I don’t know that it greatly impacts the incidence, but there no way this board represents 10,980 vehicles. Based on how active the ordering and shipping pages are, I’d guess that most members don’t even have a Mach E (yet?), and that’s just active members. Someone recently resurrected a thread from before the vehicle was released and a lot of those users haven’t logged in since 2019.

That said, I really appreciate you putting this thread together and trying to make sense of it all.

Great point. A huge amount of members doesn't have the cars yet.

 

[DevSecOps]

I don’t know that it greatly impacts the incidence, but there no way this board represents 10,980 vehicles. Based on how active the ordering and shipping pages are, I’d guess that most members don’t even have a Mach E (yet?), and that’s just active members. Someone recently resurrected a thread from before the vehicle was released and a lot of those users haven’t logged in since 2019.

That said, I really appreciate you putting this thread together and trying to make sense of it all.

I said - "completely unscientific".

Of course there's variables that I can't account for. But for the sake of argument let's say only 1/2 of this board is representative of owners (5490). That changes the incident rate using the same calculation in my previous post to 0.7%.

The number could go either way. Just like Yelp, people usually go on the internet to complain vs say nice things, which would swing it back the other way.

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