Ford Motor Company Introduction ?

[Spensaf]

At this time our team is currently supporting US-based customers. However, here is a link for the various points of contact for our global Ford family members. Thank you for your support and we look forward to hearing from you! https://corporate.ford.com/operations/locations/global-links.html

As UK customers, we are DISGUSTED that we are not being treated as customers with equal status to the US Customers. The communications with Ford UK and yourselves has either been littered with lies or incompetence.

We are not being taken seriously and the excellent staff here in UK are being fed rubbish by yourselves. Here are a couple of blatant lies:-

1) Cars are being produced in batches of models with each batch being built in order of date the order was placed - NOT TRUE
2) We were assured that cars were being loaded onto a vessel called the Gral San Martin. When we checked the shipping schedules, that vessel was heading to Lagos, Nigeria,.

The amount of mis-information we have received is mind-blowing and a large percentage of orders have been cancelled (as you are aware as the "Sold Out First edition" was back on sale last month.

We note that in recent press you have described your customers as Family. All I can think is that you hate your British relatives even though we are your 3rd biggest market.

Ford is damaging its good reputation every day here in the UK and I suggest that you put some care and attention our way because your performance today exam only be ranked at about 2/10.

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[pti]

Hi, @Ford Motor Company,

I need to share my awful new-buyer experience with CCS charging.

May 26: Got the call from the dealer that the car arrived. I arrived a few hours later. After the absurdly slow finance processing, the car was handed over with only 140 miles of range. I headed straight to a nearby Electrify America station at a Target. ”Charge Station Fault,” over and over. A kind Kona EV owner at the next bay helps with a few more tries. No luck, even on the charger she’d just been using. I headed home to start the 120V trickle. (240V being installed this week. The car arrived early.)

May 27: Weekend road trip is coming up and 2.5 miles/hour charge rate won’t have me ready. I head to an EVGo station. This time, CCS works! I walk to a store in the plaza, get through the door, check the progress on the app, and after only three minutes… “Charge Station Fault.” I go back out to restart. Charging starts again. I stay there to make sure it’s working and chat with a Golf owner who is thinking of switching to EV and wanted to hear about the Mach-E. Around eight minutes later… “Charge Station Fault.” I’ve gotten above 81%, though, so I call it a day and return home to trickle charge the rest.

May 28: Great driving experience with some range anxiety and anxiety about a charge cord that hasn’t arrived yet to the destination at which I am staying. I stop at the “Southern Tier NY Welcome Center” just over the PA/NY border to use the CCS charger there, the -ONLY- one so far in the Binghamton area. Uh oh… one is out of order and the other is occupied by an e-Tron. I decide to come back in the morning.

May 29: Thinking “the early bird gets the charge,” I head back to the CCS before 6AM. The non-broken one is open! I pick CCS on the UI, plug in, and “Charge Station Fault.” Try again… “Charge Station Fault.” One more time… “Charge Station Fault.” Turn car on and back off. Try again. “Charge Station Fault.” Oh, and now, for good measure… ”POWERTRAIN MALFUNCTION / REDUCED POWER.” I crawl a few more miles to a Level 2 ChargePoint charger and call to have someone come pick me up. It will need all day.


Around 1989, I swore I would never buy one of your products again after a horrible experience with a 1986 Ford Taurus. The Mach-E reviews made me think you’d gotten your act together in the intervening 32 years, so I bought one. So far, not so good. Three decades later… Ford will be Ford.

You need to do better. This car is -amazing-, but what a garbage new buyer experience this has been. There is no possible way I could recommend this vehicle to anyone over a Tesla, which has the road trip charging sorted out.

Maybe some OTA update or service bulletin addresses this, but, if so, those should have been done before I was given the car. I enjoy technology. I want the performance and eco advantages of an EV. I really want Ford to succeed. This type of experience isn’t going to cut it.

- Patrick

 

[Rocky29670]

Did anyone actually direct message this account? If so, did you get help? Are they legit? I messaged but they started asking for too much personal information (VIN, Full name, address, purchaser information) and red flags flew up for me. I am too worried about identity theft nowadays and didn't think any of that information was necessary to fix my problem.

 

[Mirak]

Did anyone actually direct message this account? If so, did you get help? Are they legit? I messaged but they started asking for too much personal information (VIN, Full name, address, purchaser information) and red flags flew up for me. I am too worried about identity theft nowadays and didn't think any of that information was necessary to fix my problem.

It is legit. But so far it is just frontline customer service. See my update a page back.

 

[Mirak]

Hi, @Ford Motor Company,

I need to share my awful new-buyer experience with CCS charging.

May 26: Got the call from the dealer that the car arrived. I arrived a few hours later. After the absurdly slow finance processing, the car was handed over with only 140 miles of range. I headed straight to a nearby Electrify America station at a Target. ”Charge Station Fault,” over and over. A kind Kona EV owner at the next bay helps with a few more tries. No luck, even on the charger she’d just been using. I headed home to start the 120V trickle. (240V being installed this week. The car arrived early.)

May 27: Weekend road trip is coming up and 2.5 miles/hour charge rate won’t have me ready. I head to an EVGo station. This time, CCS works! I walk to a store in the plaza, get through the door, check the progress on the app, and after only three minutes… “Charge Station Fault.” I go back out to restart. Charging starts again. I stay there to make sure it’s working and chat with a Golf owner who is thinking of switching to EV and wanted to hear about the Mach-E. Around eight minutes later… “Charge Station Fault.” I’ve gotten above 81%, though, so I call it a day and return home to trickle charge the rest.

May 28: Great driving experience with some range anxiety and anxiety about a charge cord that hasn’t arrived yet to the destination at which I am staying. I stop at the “Southern Tier NY Welcome Center” just over the PA/NY border to use the CCS charger there, the -ONLY- one so far in the Binghamton area. Uh oh… one is out of order and the other is occupied by an e-Tron. I decide to come back in the morning.

May 29: Thinking “the early bird gets the charge,” I head back to the CCS before 6AM. The non-broken one is open! I pick CCS on the UI, plug in, and “Charge Station Fault.” Try again… “Charge Station Fault.” One more time… “Charge Station Fault.” Turn car on and back off. Try again. “Charge Station Fault.” Oh, and now, for good measure… ”POWERTRAIN MALFUNCTION / REDUCED POWER.” I crawl a few more miles to a Level 2 ChargePoint charger and call to have someone come pick me up. It will need all day.


Around 1989, I swore I would never buy one of your products again after a horrible experience with a 1986 Ford Taurus. The Mach-E reviews made me think you’d gotten your act together in the intervening 32 years, so I bought one. So far, not so good. Three decades later… Ford will be Ford.

You need to do better. This car is -amazing-, but what a garbage new buyer experience this has been. There is no possible way I could recommend this vehicle to anyone over a Tesla, which has the road trip charging sorted out.

Maybe some OTA update or service bulletin addresses this, but, if so, those should have been done before I was given the car. I enjoy technology. I want the performance and eco advantages of an EV. I really want Ford to succeed. This type of experience isn’t going to cut it.

- Patrick

Schedule an appointment with the service center and get every update they’ve got. That may help with your charging issues. It took me over a month to get DCFC public charging mostly working.

 

[FPLiptak]

Where can i email someone offline about a Navigation matter? The NAV system tells me I live on a dirt road--has never been true since we moved there more than 15 years ago.

I have the same issue. The maps on my brand new Mach-E are at least 2 years old. I believe you are using Garmin (correct me if I am wrong) and I update the maps on my nuvi 2797 and the streets in my area (SE Saint George, UT) have a lot more streets than the Ford navigation system.

 

[ARK]

Welcome to forum, easy access to official ford Information is helpful. So using the machE as a daily commuter, somewhere less than 15mile round trip. Is it recommended to charge to 100% daily or should I keep the charge to 95% as I have been doing?

I agree with @machefan, you don’t want to charge it regularly to 100% if you don’t need the range, and if your daily commute is only 15 miles, 80% is a better number.

For lithium ion batteries (which the Mach-E has, just like your cell phone), you want to avoid the extremes of very charged or very discharged. Mach-E has a little bit of a hidden/invisible buffer built in which is why Ford says up to 90%, but think of that as a max, not an ideal, like how food labels tell you the maximum sodium/sugar/saturated fat you should have each day, it’s not the ideal amount, more of a ‘do not exceed’ number.

Assuming there was no battery buffer, lithium ion batteries are happiest with a mid-range charge, particularly when you avoid the 0%-20% and 80%-100% range.

 

[pti]

Schedule an appointment with the service center and get every update they’ve got. That may help with your charging issues. It took me over a month to get DCFC public charging mostly working.

Good idea. I need to have it inspected since I bought it in a different state, so I will ask them to do updates, too. (You’d think they’d do those before delivery, but I suspect they did not.)

Do you recall anything they did in particular that addressed your DCFC issue?

 

[Jimrpa]

Got a response today to my issue list sent by DM. After some back and forth to confirm my vin, personal details, “did you report these things to the dealership?” (Yeah most of em), and “what did they say?” (They said they’re waiting on Ford - these are mostly software bugs), I was told they are “creating a case” and escalating that case to a “Customer Experience Specialist on the escalated SUV support team.”

This all sounds like standard frontline CSR gobbledegook. I suspect the response I’m going to get from the “escalated SUV support team” is “we’re looking into it” and “look for a Q_ OTA update!” (It was Q2 - I wonder if the messaging has moved to Q3 yet). The same messaging I always receive from the CSRs: polite but powerless and devoid of any detail.

I highly doubt any of the issues will be confirmed, or that I’ll get any sort of specific timeline to a fix. I doubt they’ll even know about (or mention) the recent screen buzz SSM where Ford flips the bird to its customers. I’ve reported that problem to my dealership multiple times but nobody has called to tell me about the SSM - I get all my updates on this forum.

But hope springs eternal. Maybe I’ll be wrong! Maybe Ford will say “we are aware of this issue and we are working on a fix.” That would be a nice start to transparent, informative customer service.

Re: the screen buzz: will someone please tell me where all the Lincoln owners are, some of whom have paid more than $100,000 for their cars and SUVs, are? For that matter, where are all the Ford GT owners who paid about $250,000 for their cars? Why is it that only the owners of the relatively cheap Mustang Mach E are complaining?

 

[machefan]

Good idea. I need to have it inspected since I bought it in a different state, so I will ask them to do updates, too. (You’d think they’d do those before delivery, but I suspect they did not.)

Do you recall anything they did in particular that addressed your DCFC issue?

Tons of module updates, one of them is DCFC. We get zero notes on changes or fixes just that it was updated. We have to assume it was addressed etc.

 

[Mirak]

Tons of module updates, one of them is DCFC. We get zero notes on changes or fixes just that it was updated. We have to assume it was addressed etc.

Correct. I can’t say what particular update helped, or even if any of them did. But my DCFC does work better now and I’ve received at least 10 updates. I heard one of them might relate to charging. This is speculation, but I’d definitely start with the updates.

 

[MyTH]

Welcome to the fold of EV drivers! Learning the ways of the DC Fast Charger is an adventure -- an opportunity to meet nice folks and create memories.

Tesla Superchargers are relatively boring, like gas stations. They have plenty of stalls and are quickly repaired when necessary. You plug in your Tesla vehicle, and they just work.

For non-Tesla EV drivers, Electrify America is much the same; they just work. If you're lucky enough to be driving a Mach-E, and you've set up your account correctly with a credit card, then Plug and Charge will even save you the trouble of activating the station by app, credit card, or phone call to customer service.

In the Binghamton, NY area, Electrify America is in the process of installing and activating a set of charging stations at a Mirabito convenience store, in partnership with EVolveNY. There's a row of 4 such chargers already operational in nearby Oneonta, NY, right next to the Tesla Superchargers. I used those Oneonta chargers twice in the past week, and they worked very well, with peak charge rates above 150 kW. (If you aren't already using the PlugShare app to find chargers, I recommend it.)

There seems to be some compatibility issue between the Mach-E and certain other DC Fast Chargers. I keep having trouble at EVgo locations. Those (and that Southern Tier Welcome Center you mentioned) usually work fine to charge my Chevy Bolt EV, but with my Ford Mach-E, the very same stations will either refuse to charge entirely (with a flashing orange indication on the MME and that error message in the Ford app) or cut out with a "Charge Station Fault" after only a few minutes.

 

[Peugfan]

My Premium Mach E built Jan 28 has worked fine with NO issues for 2 months. Yes, PAAK works great, and my one plug and charge at EA worked with no issues. It's a little complicated getting all the settings set up, but that is not the cars fault. If I could wish for one thing it would be more detailed documentation on the menu choices on the big screen and the Ford Pass app.

 

[pti]

…
For non-Tesla EV drivers, Electrify America is much the same; they just work.
…
In the Binghamton, NY area, Electrify America is in the process of installing and activating a set of charging stations at a Mirabito convenience store, in partnership with EVolveNY. …

I got back to Philly today and had DCFC success with a short morning charge at a 50kW EVGo -and- success with an afternoon charge at a 150kW Electrify America charger that worked using Plug & Charge and gave me about 4 miles per minute. I am wondering if I got some OTA goodness over the past few days, because today was a completely different experience than before.

Regarding Binghamton, there are four EA chargers going in at a Love’s Travel Stop right off of I-81/I-86/NY-17. I saw them. The transformers and charge stations looked to be installed, but the area is still fenced off. I suspect that next trip, they’ll be ready and I’ll be able to do some quick catch-up charging before backtracking a few miles to my destination… if my newfound DCFC luck holds.

 

[50 Deep]

Glad to have you guys here. I remember we had some Ford folks on the GT350 forum for a little while when they first came out. Hopefully you all stay for a bit.

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