I Just Joined The "Stop Safely Now" Club Too

heisnuts

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*Big update on the next page - post #19...

Just like the title says, it looks like I too have joined the stop safely now club. The short version of the story is after a two hour drive at highway speeds I returned home with 37% battery charge (68 miles range showing) and plugged into the Ford supplied charger plugged into a NEMA 14-50 240V outlet. After receiving a notification on the Ford Pass App that there was a charging error I unplugged and tried again with same results. At this point the charging light ring on the car was red and not the normal blue color. When I unplugged again and tried to start the car I had the stop safely now message come up on the display and the car would not start forcing a tow to my local dealer. This is a 2021 MME Premium AWD with the ER battery with a build date of 12/21/2021. We took delivery on 2/6/22 and don’t even have the plates yet from the DMV.

On the weekends I love taking the MME out on our back country roads for the beautiful scenery and wide open roads with no traffic and 55 mph speed limits. I have done this loop many times now which is one of the main reasons the car already has 6,700 miles on it in only 3 months of ownership. Saturday morning I started out with 85% SOC and outside temps right about 50F. I took one of my normal loops out in the country that takes over two hours and everything went fine with no error messages or lights at all.

I returned home with a 37% SOC so I figured I would plug into my charger in the garage that I have been using since day one. It is the Ford supplied charger plugged into a NEMA 14-50 240v outlet. This went fine and I knew that since it was out of my preferred charging times I would need to go into the Ford Pass App to tell the car to start charging outside of its normal times. I wanted to give it a minute before I did this so I walked into the house where I was going to use the App to start the charge. Before I could get inside the house to open the App I received a notification from the app that there is a charging error and that I should unplug the car from the charger and try again.

So I unplugged the charger from the car, waited about a minute and then plugged the car back in. That is when I noticed that the light ring next to the charge outlet on the car was showing all red lights. I then tried to reset the charger by shutting off the breaker switch for a minute and restarting, but unfortunately ended up with the same result. I went inside the car to try and start it and that is when the stop safely now message and full accessory power active message appeared and the car would not start.

Ford Mustang Mach-E I Just Joined The "Stop Safely Now" Club Too sto


I let the car sit for about 90 minutes and nothing changed so I knew it was going to need to be towed over to our local dealer. I used the Ford Pass App to initiate the tow, which was pretty nice since it already had all of the car info for roadside and there was a box where I could add the fact that this was a full EV and that there are specific tow procedures that will need to be followed for this tow. That generated a call to me from roadside assistance where I explained the situation and they said no problem we will send a tow and they should be there in about 90 to 120 minutes.

After about 90 minutes the status tracker showed the tow was on its way to the dealer, but I was still at home with the MME and no tow truck in sight. So I called roadside to explain and she put me on hold and called the tow company. She came back on the line and said the tow company just told her they are already in route to the dealer with the car. I asked her if she could set up a conference call with the tow company since the tow company either just flat out lied or or they have some other car on their hook that is not related to this call.

The first attempt get the tow company on the line went to voice mail, which then said the voice mail is full and goodbye. The next attempt we were able to get the tow company on the line only to now be told that the driver is delayed and it might be another hour or two before they could be here. The roadside rep said I just spoke to you and you said you were already in route with the car. The tow company then just repeated that there is a delay and hung up the phone.

So not feeling good about that tow company I asked if they could find another company to tow the car and she agreed and apologized for what just happened. However, after another company was assigned and another 90 minutes had gone by the second tow company cancelled the tow request even before getting to my location. I could tell the roadside rep was really at a loss of what to say at this point since now we have had two failures. At this point I told the rep I know a really good local tow company here in town and I told her if she could assign the job to them I knew we would be able to solve this problem. She took their number and called me back to say she had to get it approved because they were a little more expensive than the other tows, but in this case she was able to get it approved and Speeds Towing was on the way.

Speeds Towing showed up right on time and even though I explained about the special towing points, I could tell the driver already had a good idea as he was looking under the car for the approved hook points. Fortunately, our driveway slopes down to the street so he came up with a plan to roll it down the driveway and onto the street where he had already positioned his truck just past our house for the hook up. Thanks to this forum I was already very well trained on how to engage tow mode so I was able to get the car into neutral using tow mode and we were able to roll the car out to his truck easily. I will note that the car is pretty easy to steer and the brakes worked ok even though we could not fully start the car.

Once out at the truck the driver confirmed the tow hook positions again and then went back to his tool box to get a set of smaller hooks that fit perfectly in the tow points in our MME. Once the car was on the bed of the truck he used tire straps to secure it to the bed, which he says they use for all of their tows so they don’t have to hook to anything under the car and cause any damage. I was really impressed.

Ford Mustang Mach-E I Just Joined The "Stop Safely Now" Club Too tow


Even though it was after hours the driver knew exactly where our local dealer likes the night drops that will not start to be positioned on their lot and he was able to perfectly stage the car for them for Monday when they get my night drop envelope. I am just hoping now that the dealer is able to get my MME diagnosed and repaired in a reasonable amount of time. I will update the thread as I know more in the days to come.
 
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heisnuts

heisnuts

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So sorry that this happened. :(

If this turns out to be the HVBJB, would you please fill out the survey in this thread?

https://www.macheforum.com/site/thr...ry-junction-box-issues-stop-safely-now.17433/
Yeah, even though I suspect the HVBJB, I do not want to jump to conclusions that may be wrong. I want to give the dealer the time to get it in and find out what is going on. I just hope they can get it in reasonably soon as I hear sometimes they can get quite busy.
 

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Very sorry to hear about your bricked MME. I hope it gets repaired in a timely manner.
 

SpaceEVDriver

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Yeah, even though I suspect the HVBJB, I do not want to jump to conclusions that may be wrong. I want to give the dealer the time to get it in and find out what is going on. I just hope they can get it in reasonably soon as I hear sometimes they can get quite busy.
Now I feel like I was being insensitive making that the first response to your post. My apologies.

I hope it turns out to be something fixed quickly and easily.
 


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heisnuts

heisnuts

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Now I feel like I was being insensitive making that the first response to your post. My apologies.

I hope it turns out to be something fixed quickly and easily.
I didn't take it as insensitive. I have a feeling you are right and I might have a HVBJB in my future. I am just trying to stay calm about it and not be one of those people who go telling the dealer what is wrong with the car and how they should be doing their job. I am sure their job is hard enough these days.

I just gave the Ford rep a heads up of the case and I am hoping that between them and the dealer they will have it figured out in a reasonable time frame and have me back on the road soon. At least that is my hope for now.
 

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Is it just a handful or two of these Stop Safely Now errors or is this really becoming prevalent?
 

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Is it just a handful or two of these Stop Safely Now errors or is this really becoming prevalent?
We will not know, only Ford. Most people are not on this forum, and we are seeing it happen daily here. Problem is we can theorize to feel good about "only x number" have it and that is super small percentage, but that is not going to be accurate.

Bottom line is it can happen to any trim and year and is a safety concern, that Ford has known about for months since it has been happening. Not sure why there has been no communication yet. Disappointing since the management says they are all in on EVs.
 

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Just like the title says, it looks like I too have joined the stop safely now club. The short version of the story is after a two hour drive at highway speeds I returned home with 37% battery charge (68 miles range showing) and plugged into the Ford supplied charger plugged into a NEMA 14-50 240V outlet. After receiving a notification on the Ford Pass App that there was a charging error I unplugged and tried again with same results. At this point the charging light ring on the car was red and not the normal blue color. When I unplugged again and tried to start the car I had the stop safely now message come up on the display and the car would not start forcing a tow to my local dealer. This is a 2021 MME Premium AWD with the ER battery with a build date of 12/21/2021. We took delivery on 2/6/22 and don’t even have the plates yet from the DMV.

On the weekends I love taking the MME out on our back country roads for the beautiful scenery and wide open roads with no traffic and 55 mph speed limits. I have done this loop many times now which is one of the main reasons the car already has 6,700 miles on it in only 3 months of ownership. Saturday morning I started out with 85% SOC and outside temps right about 50F. I took one of my normal loops out in the country that takes over two hours and everything went fine with no error messages or lights at all.

I returned home with a 37% SOC so I figured I would plug into my charger in the garage that I have been using since day one. It is the Ford supplied charger plugged into a NEMA 14-50 240v outlet. This went fine and I knew that since it was out of my preferred charging times I would need to go into the Ford Pass App to tell the car to start charging outside of its normal times. I wanted to give it a minute before I did this so I walked into the house where I was going to use the App to start the charge. Before I could get inside the house to open the App I received a notification from the app that there is a charging error and that I should unplug the car from the charger and try again.

So I unplugged the charger from the car, waited about a minute and then plugged the car back in. That is when I noticed that the light ring next to the charge outlet on the car was showing all red lights. I then tried to reset the charger by shutting off the breaker switch for a minute and restarting, but unfortunately ended up with the same result. I went inside the car to try and start it and that is when the stop safely now message and full accessory power active message appeared and the car would not start.

Ford Mustang Mach-E I Just Joined The "Stop Safely Now" Club Too tow


I let the car sit for about 90 minutes and nothing changed so I knew it was going to need to be towed over to our local dealer. I used the Ford Pass App to initiate the tow, which was pretty nice since it already had all of the car info for roadside and there was a box where I could add the fact that this was a full EV and that there are specific tow procedures that will need to be followed for this tow. That generated a call to me from roadside assistance where I explained the situation and they said no problem we will send a tow and they should be there in about 90 to 120 minutes.

After about 90 minutes the status tracker showed the tow was on its way to the dealer, but I was still at home with the MME and no tow truck in sight. So I called roadside to explain and she put me on hold and called the tow company. She came back on the line and said the tow company just told her they are already in route to the dealer with the car. I asked her if she could set up a conference call with the tow company since the tow company either just flat out lied or or they have some other car on their hook that is not related to this call.

The first attempt get the tow company on the line went to voice mail, which then said the voice mail is full and goodbye. The next attempt we were able to get the tow company on the line only to now be told that the driver is delayed and it might be another hour or two before they could be here. The roadside rep said I just spoke to you and you said you were already in route with the car. The tow company then just repeated that there is a delay and hung up the phone.

So not feeling good about that tow company I asked if they could find another company to tow the car and she agreed and apologized for what just happened. However, after another company was assigned and another 90 minutes had gone by the second tow company cancelled the tow request even before getting to my location. I could tell the roadside rep was really at a loss of what to say at this point since now we have had two failures. At this point I told the rep I know a really good local tow company here in town and I told her if she could assign the job to them I knew we would be able to solve this problem. She took their number and called me back to say she had to get it approved because they were a little more expensive than the other tows, but in this case she was able to get it approved and Speeds Towing was on the way.

Speeds Towing showed up right on time and even though I explained about the special towing points, I could tell the driver already had a good idea as he was looking under the car for the approved hook points. Fortunately, our driveway slopes down to the street so he came up with a plan to roll it down the driveway and onto the street where he had already positioned his truck just past our house for the hook up. Thanks to this forum I was already very well trained on how to engage tow mode so I was able to get the car into neutral using tow mode and we were able to roll the car out to his truck easily. I will note that the car is pretty easy to steer and the brakes worked ok even though we could not fully start the car.

Once out at the truck the driver confirmed the tow hook positions again and then went back to his tool box to get a set of smaller hooks that fit perfectly in the tow points in our MME. Once the car was on the bed of the truck he used tire straps to secure it to the bed, which he says they use for all of their tows so they don’t have to hook to anything under the car and cause any damage. I was really impressed.

Ford Mustang Mach-E I Just Joined The "Stop Safely Now" Club Too tow


Even though it was after hours the driver knew exactly where our local dealer likes the night drops that will not start to be positioned on their lot and he was able to perfectly stage the car for them for Monday when they get my night drop envelope. I am just hoping now that the dealer is able to get my MME diagnosed and repaired in a reasonable amount of time. I will update the thread as I know more in the days to come.

Please report the issue to nhtsa.gov. As others mentioned, this is not an isolated incident and has been happening since day one. It may be either hardwood or software but in either case, it warrants a recall. Similar issue back in the Electric Focus so clearly it's nothing new. Sad it is still happening even on current deliveries. You were lucky to be at home instead of stranded in a remote location.
 
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heisnuts

heisnuts

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Please report the issue to nhtsa.gov. As others mentioned, this is not an isolated incident and has been happening since day one. It may be either hardwood or software but in either case, it warrants a recall. Similar issue back in the Electric Focus so clearly it's nothing new. Sad it is still happening even on current deliveries. You were lucky to be at home instead of stranded in a remote location.
As of now, we don't know what caused the message and no start since it just happened over the weekend. Although there is a good chance it might be the HVBJB, I want to give the dealer a chance to look at the car first and see what they say. I am sure this type of concern is already on the top of Ford's list to get to the root cause and find a solution.

Like you said, I was very fortunate that this happened at home and on one of my days off (since it was the weekend) so I could deal with it. I will also say this forum has been a huge help since with it I already knew about the towing requirements, how to get the car into tow mode so we could get the car into neutral, and even support from Ford. The Ford rep here has already responded to me and I must say between their help and the local dealers help I feel I am in really good hands right now. Like I said in the original post, I will keep you all updated as we progress.
 

Blue highway

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As of now, we don't know what caused the message and no start since it just happened over the weekend. Although there is a good chance it might be the HVBJB, I want to give the dealer a chance to look at the car first and see what they say. I am sure this type of concern is already on the top of Ford's list to get to the root cause and find a solution.

Like you said, I was very fortunate that this happened at home and on one of my days off (since it was the weekend) so I could deal with it. I will also say this forum has been a huge help since with it I already knew about the towing requirements, how to get the car into tow mode so we could get the car into neutral, and even support from Ford. The Ford rep here has already responded to me and I must say between their help and the local dealers help I feel I am in really good hands right now. Like I said in the original post, I will keep you all updated as we progress.
I see you are also in Oregon. What dealer is working on the car?
 
 




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