Recall #25S65 - 12V battery discharge may cause door lock-out (Vehicle Entrapment Allegations). Stop Sales issued by Ford

[stoopid]

The extra 12 minutes is keeping the DC-DC converter active from the HV battery. You will not be using the 12V battery power during this time, which may be dead and would not solve the recall problem.

Oooh, okay it's using the main battery pack's converter, NOT the 12V battery. Yes that makes sense. Glad I asked.

Are there any cons to this strategy? I'm suspicious by nature, so I have to think that even if there was some long term effect Ford would happily accept it especially if we (the consumer) somehow felt the consequence, not them.

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[Jimrpa]

I wonder how they came up with 12 minutes? It seems like an oddly specific number? Not 10, not 15, but 12?

 

[jsus]

Oooh, okay it's using the main battery pack's converter, NOT the 12V battery. Yes that makes sense. Glad I asked.

Right.

The DC-DC converter you see referenced takes the place of an alternator in a traditional internal combustion engine-powered car. It converts the high voltage electricity in the HVB to low voltage 12VDC to power everything that a typical ICE car uses electricity for. That's all the computers, lights, door locks, etc, as well as charging the 12V battery.

When Ford says that, after the software update for the recall, the DC-DC converter will remain active for 12 minutes after key-off, what they mean is this. After you turn the vehicle off, it will continue to use the HVB to, like an alternator, provide 12V electricity. As a result, if your 12V battery is dead, you'll still have 12 minutes after you turn the vehicle off in order to unlock (or lock) your doors. That gives you time to open the doors and get everyone/everything out.

After those 12 minutes, all locked doors will stay locked. All unlocked doors will stay unlocked.

This isn't a drain on the 12V battery. The vast majority of the time, your 12V battery will still be in good shape, and it'll continue to charge for those 12 minutes. Worst case, your 12V battery is dead, but you can still lock/unlock your doors after you turn the car off.

But the way it works today is that as soon as you turn off the car, the 12V battery is on its own. If it's good, your door locks work. If not, and your doors are locked, they're gonna stay that way.

 

[jsus]

I wonder how they came up with 12 minutes? It seems like an oddly specific number? Not 10, not 15, but 12?

It's almost like they though, you know, 10 minutes seems like plenty of time to exit the vehicle. Let's just give everyone a 20% buffer on that, to err on the safe side.

Now, the 12 mph for the auto locks, that's just a rough conversion of 20 km/h as the car operates behind the scenes in metric...

 

[Sikkun]

So you open the door (using the manual release), you get out, you close the door. You go to open the rear door to retrieve someone/something, but it won't open. It's locked. Weird, you say, so you try to reopen the driver door. You cannot reopen it, turns out it's locked as well. And so are the others. You're effectively locked out of the car.

If you had to use the manual release (aka pull back twice to open) you would have realized something was wrong at that point.

Needs fixed obviously, but not a scenario I need to worry about currently at least.

 

[E90alex]

I agree with you, but as I said on a previous post: "...my main points were about what window to break in an emergency if someone is unable to get out. I would break the rear hatch glass as it has both the most amount of air flow and easiest egress, least amount of chance of glass hitting the person on the inside and that one should not break the front door window of a 2021 or early 2022 GT with laminated glass."

The rear door glass would be the easiest IMO since you can then just reach in and open the door from the inside latch. No need to crawl through the trunk glass opening and through the whole car to get in. It would also likely be much less expensive and easier to replace than the rear hatch glass.

 

[phil]

I knew I should have typed “feline.”??

It probably wouldn't have helped. Would have just ended up saying "felon".

 

[phil]

Now they have a costly stop sale...

I suppose this is motivation to revise the software quickly. It will be interesting to see how long it takes.

I bet it will be very fast, now that Ford's own money is at stake.

 

[DragonmasterLou]

I'm not going to blame Ford on this, as they aren't the only ones with this limitation, but I do wonder why car companies seem to have stopped offering good ol' manual keyhole backups for opening locked doors. I mean, sure, I do love the proximity unlock offered by wireless fobs and PAAK, but having the ability to pop an "emergency key" out of the fob if the fob's or car's battery was dead would be a nice feature. (I honestly had to do this with a Dodge Charger I rented a few months back...).

 

[Ford_orr]

Right.

The DC-DC converter you see referenced takes the place of an alternator in a traditional internal combustion engine-powered car. It converts the high voltage electricity in the HVB to low voltage 12VDC to power everything that a typical ICE car uses electricity for. That's all the computers, lights, door locks, etc, as well as charging the 12V battery.

When Ford says that, after the software update for the recall, the DC-DC converter will remain active for 12 minutes after key-off, what they mean is this. After you turn the vehicle off, it will continue to use the HVB to, like an alternator, provide 12V electricity. As a result, if your 12V battery is dead, you'll still have 12 minutes after you turn the vehicle off in order to unlock (or lock) your doors. That gives you time to open the doors and get everyone/everything out.

After those 12 minutes, all locked doors will stay locked. All unlocked doors will stay unlocked.

This isn't a drain on the 12V battery. The vast majority of the time, your 12V battery will still be in good shape, and it'll continue to charge for those 12 minutes. Worst case, your 12V battery is dead, but you can still lock/unlock your doors after you turn the car off.

But the way it works today is that as soon as you turn off the car, the 12V battery is on its own. If it's good, your door locks work. If not, and your doors are locked, they're gonna stay that way.

Ok, so under this scenario, if you get out of the car (it's just me) and lock it and go into Home Depot and come back (after spending 1/2 hour shopping), you'll be back to square one where you STILL can't get into the car? This Ford fix is just for the 12 minutes where it's assumed you'd have enough time to get any other occupants out of the car? But after those 12 minutes are up, good luck to you again?

 

[knemchak]

How will a software change solve this?
Doors won't lock on low 12v battery?
Car won't operate on low 12v battery?
Main battery will operate the door locks?

 

[jsus]

Ok, so under this scenario, if you get out of the car (it's just me) and lock it and go into Home Depot and come back (after spending 1/2 hour shopping), you'll be back to square one where you STILL can't get into the car? This Ford fix is just for the 12 minutes where it's assumed you'd have enough time to get any other occupants out of the car? But after those 12 minutes are up, good luck to you again?

Yup. This recall addresses the inability to help other occupants out of the vehicle if they are unable to do so themselves (think getting a child out of a hot car). If you return to a locked car with a dead 12V battery, you'll need to jump it before you can unlock the doors, same as now.

Unless, of course, your trip to The Home Depot somehow gets you back to the car within 12 minutes of turning it off.

 

[Snakebitten]

It would be nice if there was some discrete keyhole access somewhere that unlocked one of the doors analog style.
But having said that, the door design in both visual and functionality are some of the things I love about the Mach-E

As for the statistical probability of me ever needing to "break-in" to my Mach-E? Very low. Really unlikely. Especially since I am keenly aware of how important it is to be diligent regarding the 12V battery health.

 

[Ford_orr]

Yup. This recall addresses the inability to help other occupants out of the vehicle if they are unable to do so themselves (think getting a child out of a hot car). If you return to a locked car with a dead 12V battery, you'll need to jump it before you can unlock the doors, same as now.

Unless, of course, your trip to The Home Depot somehow gets you back to the car within 12 minutes of turning it off.

Ok, got it. It's not a complete fix, just a you-have-12-minutes-to-get-everybody-out-of-the-vehicle fix. After that it's business as usual. Pretty lame, but I guess it addresses an immediate life-saving situation. That's why I've been advocating for an independent power source embedded in the driver-side door. Would solve problem in all scenarios. But I guess this is better than nothing. Thanks for clarifying

 

[phil]

How will a software change solve this?

https://www.macheforum.com/site/thr...icle-entrapment-allegations.46773/post-977470

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