Infant stuck inside the car - dead 12V battery

[RickMachE]

Actually, you don’t have to “remove the whole frunk plastic cover”. There is a “beauty cover” on the right side (with indicators that the jump point is beneath it) that must be removed. This cover just snaps in place and can be removed without tools.

To remove the side panel, you have to also remove the center panel, so 2/3rds of the panels.

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[MoonRiver]

Just going dead shortens a battery’s lifespan. If it spends 24 hours “Dead” it is likely not going to last more than a few days.
I suspect that batteries in EVs fail early because they spend a considerable fraction of their lifespan only charged to 50%.
Batteries in ICE vehicles are generally always charged to 70-90%. And they are designed for that.

Compare with gas car, EV 12v battery is under charged. Gas cars once started the battery gets charged no matter what its SOC is, but EV? Not till it drops down to half empty. You can’t expect a person complete a marathon with only half of energy.
They need to bring up the charging starting point, to feed the hard working battery more.

 

[Jimrpa]

May be resolved for you but I and many others have not received the samsung updates that fixes it. So it's not resolved yet.

Is it a Samsung problem?

 

[Tomatoboy]

My extensive ownership experience has shown ICEV engine start batteries last easily between 5 to 7 years if the charging system in good operating condition. I have had several batteries last 10 years. 3 year lifespan for an automotive battery is an outlier on the Bell Curve.

You’ll get no argument from me about the various issues you raised with the MME’s 12V system. And 20 years ago I’d have agreed with the quoted part two. However, after having *several* new batteries die early at or before the 3 year mark in the last decade, I no longer wait for them to show signs or test bad, I just preemptively replace them in our daily drivers. Just not worth the hassle.

 

[Tomatoboy]

Compare with gas car, EV 12v battery is under charged. Gas cars once started the battery gets charged no matter what its SOC is, but EV? Not till it drops down to half empty. You can’t expect a person complete a marathon with only half of energy.
They need to bring up the charging starting point, to feed the hard working battery more.

Annoyingly, the BMS in the gas F-150 does kind of the same thing. It will happily hold the AGM 12V at 80% instead of filling it. It’s caused issues with OTA updates. Ford’s BMS strategy seems to be to slightly undercharge the AGM 12V batteries.

 

[Sikkun]

Compare with gas car, EV 12v battery is under charged. Gas cars once started the battery gets charged no matter what its SOC is, but EV? Not till it drops down to half empty. You can’t expect a person complete a marathon with only half of energy.
They need to bring up the charging starting point, to feed the hard working battery more.

Mach E supplies charging to the 12v while it’s started, not just when below 50% SOC.

I have a Bluetooth battery monitor installed and you can easily see every time you drive the vehicle because the voltage jumps up while driving.

 

[SoriceConsulting]

I'm no software or battery expert, but can't Ford just adjust the charging parameters to always keep the 12V at a minimum charge of, say, 80%, and have the HVB charge the 12V even when the car is off?

 

[rcechinel]

I'm no software or battery expert, but can't Ford just adjust the charging parameters to always keep the 12V at a minimum charge of, say, 80%, and have the HVB charge the 12V even when the car is off?

I'm sure there was a reason for this decision. It's all a balance of pros x cons, functionality x risk.
I'm sure Ford has a lot more data if they want to review these parameters, which they should, in my opinion.

Something similar they did for the recommendation of daily charging of the HVB: when the car was launched, they recommended no more than 80%. After collecting enough data, they changed that to 90%.
Similar with the HVB buffer. The car started with 88 kwh usable, then they increased to 91 kwh.

 

[Tomatoboy]

They can indeed change the SOC target in the 12V BMS. There’s even existing parameters accessible in Forscan to change it on at least some Fords, as F-150 owners have been adjusting theirs up to increase the chances an OTA successfully runs. Like Rcechinel, I’m sure Ford made a calculated decision as to why they picked 80% on the 12V system, but experience seems to be dictating a moderately higher target is merited.

The car *can* charge the LVB while off, but because that requires closing the HVB contacts and having ~400V live in the car, Ford made a safety decision to *mostly* restrict that to when the car is charging the HVB and so has the contacts closed anyway. The LVB isn’t that big, so mostly charging it when the car was on a reasonable assumption, its just that the LVB failure scenarios could have been better planned for with better info to the driver in vehicle, etc.

 

[Snakebitten]

Is it a Samsung problem?

Samsung update broke it.
Samsung update fixed it.

But folks will still consider it Ford's doing.

 

[rcechinel]

Samsung update broke it.
Samsung update fixed it.

But folks will still consider it Ford's doing.

I don't think people meant that. When something this important breaks, Ford, as an interested party, should try to remediate. My S23 still connects to my wife's Siena minivan via bluetooth. If Ford had an agile dev team, they would do this, instead of waiting for a giant company like Google to fix it.
Interconnections and integrations are a bitch in the software world (that's what my company does for a living) and they break all the time. Normally, the most successful ones are those who take action quickly when things break, not the ones waiting on someone else to fix it, because they didn't create the problem. Ford is a company that focus on itself first, customers second.

Anyways, just my opinion, as I live in this software world.

 

[Tomatoboy]

“Maybe a jump needs to be made to pure 400V or 800V electronic architecture and draw directly off of the HVB.”

Dangerous idea. We use low voltage systems for passenger facing technology for a reason, skin is reasonably resistant to electricity below 50V.

Also, electronics generally run at fair low voltages internally, almost exclusively below 5V since the late 70s. Some devices now use less than a volt. Technology has moved to lower and lower voltages for electronics, you'd still end up converting the voltage down for electronic components, which runs into needing a dc-to-dc converter just like we have, and which for safety reasons can’t be left energized off the HVB 24/7.

Further, you don’t want 400/800V running all over, it makes working in the vehicles and rescuing people from them much more dangerous.

There *is* some merit to increasing accessory voltage above 12V but still below 50V, as it allows smaller conductors. Many boats use 24V, for example, and Tesla uses a 48V architecture for the Cybertruck. However, switching from industry standard 12V results in basic exchangeable components as simple as switches and motors for windows to mirrors needing to be redesigned, as Tesla learned with CT costs ballooning.

TL;dr you do not want 400/800V running anywhere but between the necessary components for safety reasons, and most vehicle components couldn’t run directly off it anyway. Ford and other EV manufacturers kill the HVB connection to the rest of the vehicle whenever it isn’t strictly needed by opening the contacts for a reason.

 

[Sikkun]

I don't think people meant that. When something this important breaks, Ford, as an interested party, should try to remediate. My S23 still connects to my wife's Siena minivan via bluetooth. If Ford had an agile dev team, they would do this, instead of waiting for a giant company like Google to fix it.
Interconnections and integrations are a bitch in the software world (that's what my company does for a living) and they break all the time. Normally, the most successful ones are those who take action quickly when things break, not the ones waiting on someone else to fix it, because they didn't create the problem. Ford is a company that focus on itself first, customers second.

Anyways, just my opinion, as I live in this software world.

You realize your post still summarizes to Ford should be the better company and quickly fix Samsungs problem.

 

[Jimrpa]

I don't think people meant that. When something this important breaks, Ford, as an interested party, should try to remediate. My S23 still connects to my wife's Siena minivan via bluetooth. If Ford had an agile dev team, they would do this, instead of waiting for a giant company like Google to fix it.
Interconnections and integrations are a bitch in the software world (that's what my company does for a living) and they break all the time. Normally, the most successful ones are those who take action quickly when things break, not the ones waiting on someone else to fix it, because they didn't create the problem. Ford is a company that focus on itself first, customers second.

Anyways, just my opinion, as I live in this software world.

I would disagree. Consider, if gas makers began adding an additive that turned out to be damaging to ICE engines, should the auto makers recall every car with an ICE engine and update the engine so that the additive doesn’t damage it? Or, if your utility begins generating power at 50 Hz due to an error in an update, should all the manufacturers of appliances you use be required to modify the motors in those appliances so that they can operate on either 50 or 60 Hz?

Yeah, I used to work in software too, and you can bet that if Microsoft did something that “broke” EPIC, we (and every other health care provider using EPIC) had sev 1 tickets and calls opened to Microsoft until they fixed their mess. Ugh. So glad I’m not in that universe anymore ???

 

[rcechinel]

I would disagree. Consider, if gas makers began adding an additive that turned out to be damaging to ICE engines, should the auto makers recall every car with an ICE engine and update the engine so that the additive doesn’t damage it? Or, if your utility begins generating power at 50 Hz due to an error in an update, should all the manufacturers of appliances you use be required to modify the motors in those appliances so that they can operate on either 50 or 60 Hz?

Yeah, I used to work in software too, and you can bet that if Microsoft did something that “broke” EPIC, we (and every other health care provider using EPIC) had sev 1 tickets and calls opened to Microsoft until they fixed their mess. Ugh. So glad I’m not in that universe anymore ???

Funny you say that, I deal with EPIC every day. ?I've been in too many of those 3 or 4-way escalation calls because Microsoft pushed an update that broke many partner things. But you can bet that, if it was a big enough deal, EPIC engineers were desperately trying to remediate the issue themselves, if at all possible.
I think we are saying similar things, though. The examples you brought up are unsolvable by the collaterally affected company, however. Without going deep in the woods on this Bluetooth issue, it seems Ford just said "not my problem" and moved on. I know that they are right and, since I don't expect much from them, I'm not really upset. But isn't that a sad realization for Ford? Your customers don't really count on, or trust you to solve their problems.

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