Apparently you have to do research before you take the Mach-E to a car wash for the first time

[nvabill]

Oregon it’s illegal to pump your own gas. Attendant has to do it. Been that way the 36 years I’ve lived/driven here
There is a bill in OR house to change it

Interesting , like NJ.

Sponsored

 

[CT3]

So I took the wife's Mach-E to the car wash and quickly found out that Neutral on the Mach-E is not like neutral on an ICE powertrain. When the rollers tried to pull the car forward the car refused to move. The car wash guy was yelling at me to put it in Neutral and I was yelling back that it WAS in neutral. Somewhere along the way the dash screen told me to press "L" to put it into a 30 minute "tow mode", which allowed the car to roll. On the way out, with another car behind me getting closer and closer, I couldn't put the vehicle back into "D". I had to tap the brakes first before it would let me shift. Who knew that something I had done hundreds of times before in an ICE car would require such "tricks" to accomplish.

EDIT:
To summarize what I have learned is that this is all related to the Auto-Hold feature, which basically is like an automatic parking brake that is applied when the car comes to a stop, and is released when you tap the accelerator. Turn off Auto-Hold, or press the "L" button on the shifter when you place the vehicle into Neutral to allow it to roll. Auto-Hold was enabled for my profile, but not my wife's, I'm not sure which is the default. Now that I have played with it, I prefer Auto-Hold to be disabled as the car now acts more like an ICE vehicle transmission when the vehicle is idling. It will slowly roll forward when in Drive and you take your foot off the brake, same as it does in Reverse even if Auto-Hold is enabled. I don't understand why they implemented it so inconsistently, but they did.

 

[CT3]

I lost my car wash payment and now I know thanks

 

[Skelton]

Reminds me of the first time I had a car with "rain sensing" wipers. Ol'boy had gotten dusty, and I took it to the fancy car wash with all the bells and whistles. As the wash really gets going the wipers start aggressively wiping before the rotating brush catches it and throws the wiper into another zip code. The rest of the wash the wiper keeps firing across making the most horrid scratching sound you could imagine.

It was Mike's Carwash, and the manager was super friendly. He paid for a replacement blade without me even asking, because he surely didn't need to cover for my ignorance.

Another time I'll tell you the story of how I learned when auto-hold would ignore my request to not hold. What I have learned is to rehearse getting ready for a car wash like it's a job interview.

Not that it matters with this Mach-E. If my wife found out I took it through anything other than a gentle rain she'd have my head.

 

[Bobcat17]

So, I use one pedal drive and auto hold. Drive mode unbridled. Here’s what I do when I go to the car wash:

• Rummage around for the fob before I leave the house
• Drive to the car wash with the fob in the tray
• When I get to the queue at the car wash, confirm the wipers are NOT in auto
• When I get to the entrance of the tunnel, unlock the doors, turn the shifter to P, hop out of the car, and hand my car wash cars to the guy to scan. He scans the card and my car
• The guy hops in my car and pulls it into the tunnel after they do the first interior vacuum
• Car comes out of the tunnel, guy gets into the car and drives it to the drying area where they dry it off
• Another guy takes it to another area where they remove the mats and clean them, clean the interior and windows, and clean the tires
• They then drive the car to the pickup area

In all this time, there’s never been an issue with neutral ?‍

You have a lot of faith having car wash guys jumping in and out of your car. I pay $2.50 and do it myself.

 

[Bobcat17]

?

I have never taken a vehicle I owned to a car wash, except a self wash bay, in 45 years of driving.

You must live in Arizona or somewhere that doesn’t have a real winter season.

 

[Bobcat17]

It's not 5 other steps, it's 1. After you put it in Neutral, press the L button. No research is necessary, because when you shift it to Neutral, a message pops up in the instrument cluster that literally tells you to press the L button to keep it in Neutral.

Btw- what does L stand for?

 

[generaltso]

Btw- what does L stand for?

Low

 

[Jimrpa]

You have a lot of faith having car wash guys jumping in and out of your car. I pay $2.50 and do it myself.

As I said - they’re good. I’ve been using them for years. They get a good number of six figure cars going through.

 

[67 Stang Convertible]

This is the 1st car I've owned that I have not used the car wash. The guy that did the ceramic coating said it was "better" to hand wash. So I'm hand washing; even in the Atlanta winter (30's). My kids think I'm nuts. However, there is something therapeutic in the process. Just my 2 cents.

 

[cjljr41]

Now as far as taping brakes to put in gear, that one I've been dealing with for years on multiply brands, it too is stupid and just bad engineering.

I think I read somewhere it's to prevent a child from shifting a vehicle out of park.

 

[Oregon owner]

This happened to me on Day 2 of ownership. I had a line of people behind me so I finally gave up and drove through the car wash (waste of $10) and came home with suds on the car. It was a terrible start to ownership. Ford should deliver with the feature turned off. I called service and the salesperson and they had no idea what I was talking about. A lot of the issues I've had with the MME are with the lack of training of Ford employees/hard to decipher manual. A paper manual would be every nice. I just came across one instruction on the screen that said to "open the vehicle drawer" when they mean "touch the car icon on the screen." It's really terribly written.

 

[OON7]

Are you sure? I'm 99% sure it still actively auto wipes. I found myself hypermiling last night and used neutral quite a bit and it was raining.

Side story, remember to set your Ford nav to not add charging stops to your route. The wife/I isn't too experienced with Ford Nav and found out 15 mins later it routed us on a long detour to reach an unnecessary charging stop (per our initial ABRP plan). So we decided and cancel the detour and we lost 30 mins total to get back on our normal route.

Those lost mins cost us quite a bit of kWhs due to moderate elevation gains, thus had to apply every hypermiling technique we could think of (use neutral, etc.) and actively avoided freeways when we can to make it home. A bit stressful and interesting, but made it home with 8% left.

Could be speed related too. I'm not sure, but I a ran through the car wash again today and the wipers did not engage.

 

[SyNRG]

MOM MEATLOAF!

? ?

 

[Magnamover]

No such problems with 1PD - neutral is neutral, the car is rolling, then switching to drive and pressing the accelerator moves the car.
The only unusual thing that I did once after the car wash was switching to 2PD to use the brakes and remove any leftover water from them.

Had this same issue happen 2 days ago and thought it was a fault. Sounds like it did what it was supposed to so my car remains flawless.

Sponsored