So….. 100 miles from home…. How screwed am I?

[DevSecOps]

Stranded on the side of a road. Cars stopping dead in the middle of driving with barely enough control to get to the side of the road

This is pure hyperbole. I have looked at TONS of HVBJB failures and never once have I seen a vehicle in motion lose motive power for HVBJB failure. It's always been a 12v short or other mechanical issue, but not the HVBJB. HVBJB failure presents itself when you go to start the car. So, yeah, I get triggered every time people spew that nonsense because it's an argument meant to scare people and push an agenda based on false narratives. There's a good reason that there's 2 class action lawsuits over this recall, but you're welcome to believe whatever you want.

Sponsored

 

[HuntingPudel]

<SNIP>
thankfully I was able to make it home and my local food dealer team is friggin awesome. They have taken really good care of me over the last 10 years and I got a loaner vehicle this morning and they are on top of it. I am opening a case with ford BEV team as well to see if I can get them to get the parts to my dealer faster.

Oooo! A food dealer! I’m a very food-driven canine. Do they give you doughnuts with your loaner?

 

[luckie]

Agreed - its better for more people to limp to the dealer than few people to be stranded on the freeway. Also, this compared to a full recall to replace every car's HVJB allows ford to procure the parts, train the dealers , identify the ones which need it most. Maybe a year from now, if 2000 out of the 50K recalled cars have their HVJBs changed, then they can launch a full recall

Couple thoughts:

Perhaps next step?: I guess we really would next like to hear Ford announce that all effected cars now will have an extended warranty for HVBJB failure to replace it and associated parts/labor whenever that happens in the future.

Side effects of this disaster?: One might hope that more infrastructure will come sooner for distributing OTAs to a greater number of vehicles (since that saves Ford from paying dealerships) AND perhaps more dealerships will get equipment, e.g. lift with battery sled, and training knowledge/skills to work on the electric vehicles and their batteries sooner.

I can see from Ford's perspective they would prefer to just replace the HVBJB on cars when they fail. It spreads out the timeline and prioritizes cars that need it most. It also keeps this from being a public relations disaster and saves a ton of money. Latest info suggests for GM to replace all the batteries in the 100,000+ Bolts will take 4-5 more years (but the public thinks that is already over) so 40,000 Mach-Es might take 2-3 years? If soon(?) it could become possible to get an immediate prompt/professional HVBJB replacement at most dealerships and fully covered by warranty that would be reassuring. I imagine Ford hopes many of the potentially effected HVBJB parts do not fail, ever, and were within specs due to the variation part to part, and/or variation of owner's who drive like grandma and never DCFC charge?

 

[atomdeathstroke]

Oooo! A food dealer! I’m a very food-driven canine. Do they give you doughnuts with your loaner?

Shit.... now i'm hungry.

 

[KevinS]

Oooo! A food dealer! I’m a very food-driven canine. Do they give you doughnuts with your loaner?

It's tacos! Jeez, the joke was just sitting there, right @scoopman?

 

[Mathington]

Sorry to hear about your failure, I'm glad you were able to safely make it to the dealership! Just curious, do you have the standard range battery or the extended range?

 

[HuntingPudel]

It's tacos! Jeez, the joke was just sitting there, right @scoopman?

Doughnuts are what I have bribed @scoopman and @DevSecOps with in the past to use their FDRS accounts.

 

[moparguy]

That is just FordPass. Barely a usable piece of software on a good day.
If you don't have any error messages in the car then I would drive it home.

A member or undercover Ford Engineer?

 

[SuperRob]

Not only that, but the argument that more cares are being handicapped than were failing is likely an argument that more cars were about to fail than we've seen previously, not that most cars are just going to be partially failed forever and never hit the melted HVJB state.

More cars getting higher in overall mileage over time, all continuing to damage the HVBJB ... Why are people surprised we're getting more reports of this now? Time on road is a clear factor here.

 

[Blue highway]

How many premiums have the hardware issues so far?

Pull the 12 V battery ground cable off for 10 seconds and get on with life. If the errors come back call your nearest dealer.

Quite a lot (as a percentage of the failures) have had the HVBJB problem actually.

 

[agoldman]

More cars getting higher in overall mileage over time, all continuing to damage the HVBJB ... Why are people surprised we're getting more reports of this now? Time on road is a clear factor here.

Just a lot of people all of a sudden having it soon after being recall patched.

 

[Blue highway]

So get the update and proceed to failure? Geeze. Now I'm not sure I want the update anymore... I really wonder how long it would have been in the normal failure rate without the patch.. The patch seems way more sensitive than the real world failures pre-patch would indicate..

I don't understand your reasoning.

• Without the software, when the box fails it's catastrophic... you are stuck with a car that can't move and have to deal with the issue as a surprise.
• With the software, you are notified before the failure is catastrophic and you can take the car in to get it fixed.
  
  

 

[Mach1E]

But there are plenty of threads here about people stranded 1000 miles from home in the middle of nowhere. Stranded on the side of a road. Cars stopping dead in the middle of driving with barely enough control to get to the side of the road. Sure, your odds are good that you'll be stranded somewhere safe, but given the choice between handicapping the car at partial failure or risking a dangerous safety situation - there just isn't a choice for Ford.

Not only that, but the argument that more cares are being handicapped than were failing is likely an argument that more cars were about to fail than we've seen previously, not that most cars are just going to be partially failed forever and never hit the melted HVJB state.

Again, I don’t know which is worse.

5x as many affected, but not as bad. Or 1/5 but way worse.

It’s the Trolly problem all over again!


Observe:

 

[alexgorod]

Again, I don’t know which is worse.

5x as many affected, but not as bad. Or 1/5 but way worse.

These 5x will fail at some point, and probably pretty soon, anyway.

No brainer for me at all.

 

[Mach1E]

These 5x will fail at some point, and probably pretty soon, anyway.

No brainer for me at all.

Maybe maybe not.

All I know is pre-recall in a year, the failure rate was super low.

Post recall, in just a month, the failure rate is super high.

Not sure how the monitoring software in the recall is actually trying to predict a mechanical failure before it happens.

But if you know how to predict when metal will weld and fail in the future using software (and no crystal ball) I’m all ears!

My guess is it’s measuring temperature spikes. But we have no idea how many “false alarms” there are.

When the mechanical failure happens (welds open or shut) it’s a 1x thing. The recall software could just be overly cautious. No real way to know if you would have really failed eventually.

Sponsored