gduprey
Well-Known Member
- First Name
- Gerry
- Joined
- Feb 17, 2021
- Threads
- 9
- Messages
- 48
- Reaction score
- 27
- Location
- Rehoboth Beach, DE
- Vehicles
- Mach-E X4
- Thread starter
- #1
Something I'm trying to investigate and thought I'd share in case this lines up with anyone else experience.
We received a X4 on Saturday and have about 200 miles on it. Everything seems good. Did a few level 2 charges to the default 100% and all was fine.
Yesterday, we were out cleaning the car and ran into a problem where the lift gate would open normally, but whenever you tried to close it, it would just beep a few times and do nothing. We tried all sorts of things to get it to close, and other than manually pulling it closed, nothing worked and no warnings/errors on any display. Opened reliably every single time, but wouldn't budge when asked to close. I started thinking maybe a safety sensor was malfunctioning and saying something was in the way. It seemed logical as the car had no problems at all opening.
I read here about various problems people are having with the 12V battery being low and how things start misbehaving when that happens. I did a test and our 12V battery was fine (13-14V).
But something in the back of my head merged with the various oddities reported here and I remembered that at some point the day before, I had lowered the max charge level to 85%. It struck me that if for some reason, the car thought the 12V battery was at 85%, it might start acting odd or refusing to do things. Granted, the 12V battery was not (it was as close to 100% nominal as a 12V battery can be), but the main battery was (actually was down to about 80% at the time).
So today I first confirmed the lift gate still would not close on it's own. I then set the charge level back to 100% and plugged the car in. After it hit 100%, low and behold, the lift gate now reliably opens AND CLOSES. I rechecked the 12V battery and it was still in the same 13-14V range - no change there.
I'm a software guy and while I have no way to confirm it, it "feels" like somewhere a "DC OK" type check is reading the current battery level from the main battery instead of the 12V battery. Just picking the wrong register to read.
Or not.
I accept there could easily be other conditions (yesterday was warmer, today was much colder and wetter). But the idea of some subsystem picking the wrong battery to check and limiting operation because of it seems like the sort of thing relatively young software might encountered.
I'd be curious if anyone else with low-battery-voltage weirdness had their charge levels set to something less than 100% (or just were at lower charge levels)?
Gerry
We received a X4 on Saturday and have about 200 miles on it. Everything seems good. Did a few level 2 charges to the default 100% and all was fine.
Yesterday, we were out cleaning the car and ran into a problem where the lift gate would open normally, but whenever you tried to close it, it would just beep a few times and do nothing. We tried all sorts of things to get it to close, and other than manually pulling it closed, nothing worked and no warnings/errors on any display. Opened reliably every single time, but wouldn't budge when asked to close. I started thinking maybe a safety sensor was malfunctioning and saying something was in the way. It seemed logical as the car had no problems at all opening.
I read here about various problems people are having with the 12V battery being low and how things start misbehaving when that happens. I did a test and our 12V battery was fine (13-14V).
But something in the back of my head merged with the various oddities reported here and I remembered that at some point the day before, I had lowered the max charge level to 85%. It struck me that if for some reason, the car thought the 12V battery was at 85%, it might start acting odd or refusing to do things. Granted, the 12V battery was not (it was as close to 100% nominal as a 12V battery can be), but the main battery was (actually was down to about 80% at the time).
So today I first confirmed the lift gate still would not close on it's own. I then set the charge level back to 100% and plugged the car in. After it hit 100%, low and behold, the lift gate now reliably opens AND CLOSES. I rechecked the 12V battery and it was still in the same 13-14V range - no change there.
I'm a software guy and while I have no way to confirm it, it "feels" like somewhere a "DC OK" type check is reading the current battery level from the main battery instead of the 12V battery. Just picking the wrong register to read.
Or not.
I accept there could easily be other conditions (yesterday was warmer, today was much colder and wetter). But the idea of some subsystem picking the wrong battery to check and limiting operation because of it seems like the sort of thing relatively young software might encountered.
I'd be curious if anyone else with low-battery-voltage weirdness had their charge levels set to something less than 100% (or just were at lower charge levels)?
Gerry
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