Would that have been covered under warranty past 36k miles? Itās part of the electrical battery pack warranty right?
Thanks for this comment!! It means a lot in today's world. I do try to keep focused on the positive side of things as it is easy to get pulled down to the dark side. It was indeed a good learning experience for my daughter to go through a road side situation with her old man so she knows what it is like from dealing with police, to tow trucks to the service folks (she has a Maverick on order actually and this situation did not sour her on her Ford purchase either).
I hate to think how much that repair must of cost Ford.
When was your GT built?
July 2021 (took delivery in September...it was one of the first ones)
[ed. for Blues Cruise "right pull bias"]
This is very interesting thought...correlated or causal...this trip was the first time I did DC fast charging but for once in September after I got the car just to try it out for a few minutes of charge to see how the process worked. I also had some odd issues unplugging on the trip into KS where the charger was "locked" into the port when I tried to unplug. One of us may have hit the lock button in the charging light ring but was not sure. It finally came out once I pushed it back in firmly to let it reset, then it released.
Strangely I noted how bad it was coming back into CO in the loaner. In fact we noted it was right after crossed the border and both said hope the infrastructure money recently passed finds its way to some of our roads! We discussed if we noticed how bad the road was on the trip out and we did not remember it jumping out, so I think the car weathered the bad roads well. I will be driving home on Friday through there and will pay attention to how it feels in the GT. In general though find the ride, when in Whisper, tends to keep the ride smooth enough (I know it is not magneride but something is different in GT Whisper to keep the ride a little smoother based on our observational data)
On the horn, we had gotten it restored over the summer but they did not get the hand engraving done and she needed it for her studies urgently. She did not want it shipped so we drove out and got to watch some of the hand engraving. Watching one of a handful of craftsman able to hand-engrave a brass horn is amazing. Not many left.
I sold my MME because of previous issues as these.. bought a Tesla.. 21.000 miles so far no bricking..
I mean I havenāt had any issues and Teslas arenāt immune to this either, we just get it filtered to us through the forum, if it were widespread weād have dealers that had experience working on things instead of deer in headlights all the time.
https://www.vehiclehistory.com/arti...years-offer-better-reliability-and-more-range
Great report. You are incredibly understanding, not sure I would be with a new car with only 8k on it. But good to see Ford reacted quickly. I agree the availability of Ford Service was on of the reasons I went with the MME.After almost six months of owning my GT, I finally took a long distance road trip after around 8000 miles of commuting and local trips. Nothing too exciting of a journey as was just a round trip from Denver to Kansas City. My daughter needed to get some work done on her Trombone in Kansas City (plug for B.A.C Music in KCā¦great custom brass instruments and restoration) so we thought this would be a good chance to try the MachE on a road trip. I was very excited to post a positive story given the inherent bias to post problems more often than success types of posts. But spoiler alertā¦the return trip took an unfortunate turn, so you can scroll down to Chapter 2 if you want to get to the drama.
Chapter 1: The Best of Timesā¦Denver to Kansas City
The trip was 600 miles and was mostly a simple straight shot across the plains on I70. The car was a dream to driveā¦smooth and quiet for ~75MPH on a long highway drive. My daughter had not spent much time in the car and drove for some legs. She loved driving and it was new driver unbiased opinion. As a point of reference, we made this trip a year ago in an Acura MDX. The MachE is by no means a luxury ride, but I was surprised that there was very little difference in drive feeling/fatigue due to quiet and comfortable cabin, great infotainment systems and overall ride/feel vs. what I remembered from our MDX trip (note we used Whisper for the whole trip until I was doing in-town driving, which I think helped on the highway comfort).
Notable highlights for those interested:
Bluecruise: I have learned to compensate for the āright side pull and biasā problem since I got the car back in September. I have seen a lot of posts on this āright side biasā problem, so I am not alone on this observation. Besides the āpull rightā thing you have to deal with, it made some of the long highway stretches easier, especially when you are grabbing a snack/drink or stretching. The option to take a break from manual driving is a great option to have. Canāt wait for the next software update to see if something is improved. One last noteā¦we took to calling it āblues cruiseā during the trip as one of us called it that by accident on the drive and it stuck (if you ever had experience with kids TV shows, you will get the pun/reference).
Range and Charging: The outside temps were perfect (after sunrise) for happy batteries in the 60's and the car hardly showed any energy use for "external temperature" nor did we need any climate control but for fresh air fan blowing a little (non AC and no E-heat). The 5 stops needed were about right for stretching and breaks with fairly short charge times back to 80% or less (usually 60% would get you to the next EA charger on I70). We used the plug and charge feature to make use of the free hours I had from EA (thanks Ford!) and but for the last stop in Topeka, no issues. In Topeka we had to try 3 different stations to not get any errors, losing ~30 minutes and walking back out of Walmart twice to futz with the charging situation after errors stopped the charging. But other than that, EA worked flawlessly with the plug and charge at every other spot. Never saw another EV while charging at EA stations, which was disappointing. The starting charge rate usually hit 150-160 kW while I stood there and watched the screen before stepping away (used the 350kW stations and I do not have the new charging curve software update). I averaged around 2.3 mi/kWh on the trip.
Compliments to EA for the charger spacing on I70. Between charging stops, we drove for ~90 minutes and around 100 miles between chargers. The ā80/80 rangeā as I took to calling it, which is range I estimated going ~80 MPH from 80% SoC, would have supported around 170-200 miles of range. So if you wanted to make a longer sprint between stations, you could not quite do it, as to skip a station put you at 200-210 miles of distance which wonāt work on the MachE at ~80 MPH. I am hoping my next EV would have closer to 300 mile 80/80 range which would allow for longer legs before charging as do sometimes like to stretch that last leg of a trip just to get to the destination for the night.
Shout out for the first stop heading out from Denver in Flagler CO at the āI-70 Dinerā. One of the two non-Walmart EA stops on the trip. Awesome āStarlite Dinerā with the best green chili omelet I have ever had. If you do an early morning road trip leaving Denver, plan breakfast there while you charge!
Navigation and Software: Normally I am a Waze person for the crowd sourced daily drive info. But used the Sync Nav in the car for the trip and was very pleased. The charging stops it added matched ABRP and no complaints, but again this was a pretty simple trip down the highway which is EAās sweet spot. In KC the 3D rendering of buildings on the screen was really cool and helped us find our way around nicely. I may start using it more often. I do have an ongoing issue where from the Fordpass app cannot save/push trip planning from my iPhone app to the car (I get āSorry, Fordpass isnāt responding. Please try again laterā). This was minor annoyance and had to setup trip in the car itself. Have not seen a post on this but did not look that hard to see if it is broader issue.
Chapter 2: The Worst of Timesā¦Kansas City toā¦
We spent a great couple days in KC, saw some great sights, ate great BBQ, etc. KC is a very chill city and we enjoyed our stay downtown near Union Station and the WWI memorial. We started bright and early back to Denver, leaving at 100% SoC as we had stayed in a hotel with L2 chargers.
Just after our first charging stop and bit of breakfast, we were about 200 miles out of KC when the car started throwing every possible error you can imagine on the screen, then the dreaded āpull over car safely nowā message as the car started to turtle. Once pulled over, she was deadā¦could not open frunk, could not move the car, etc. My daughter and I were stuck on the side of the I70 in the middle of Kansas.
I cannot begin to say how disappointing and frustrating it is to have your shiny new MachE turn into a brick during a road trip still 400 miles from home. But I will put that aside for a minute and focus on the rest of the experience.
The Place: We crapped out just short of an exit to Junction City KS, a small military town on I70. The miracle of this situation is we were TWO MILES from a Ford Dealership with a service center. I had to think if I was driving an EV from a āstartup companyā like the ones that stats with a āTā, āLā or āRā I have no idea how far my car would have to get towed to get fixed. It was not lost on me this was one of the reasons I went with the MachE in the first place: The service center network.
The Towing: I started with Ford Emergency Roadside and that was a disaster of waiting (sorry Ford, it should not take hours to get you a tow when stranded and the service should send you status updates every 15 minutes). A state trooper stopped by to check on us. As windows would not roll down, I got out of the car and explained this is an EVā¦etc. etc., canāt move the car, waiting for a tow, etc.. He was super helpful and printed the local tow contact info for me. Calling myself, I had a truck to us within an hour. I found a company/driver who knew how to tow EVās and sports cars, so $75 out of pocket to get the two miles to Valor Ford. As a well-informed forum member, I did have the full print out of the towing guides at the ready and reviewed carefully with him before he hooked up the car. Ford Roadside said I can get reimbursedā¦still need to figure that out.
The Service Center: At the service center, they had a MachE certified tech and about half way through day was able to get my car in and try to get her running. I was guessing (as I read this forum) it was a 12V battery issue. While waiting for a tow, I checked the 12V with the tester I keep in the car and the 12V did show as very low. But that did not seem to be the problem. By the end of day, they told me they could not get it to run and needed to contact a Ford rep (their main person was on vacation). So this repair was going to take a while. It has been a week now since this happened, and my car is still at the service center in KS. I am snooping via secure alert so I know they are working on it today it seems. Crossing my fingers it is fixed this week.
The People: I was so appreciative to everyone who helped my daughter and I that fateful day. From the police that stopped by to check on us, to the awesome tow driver, who even though was not an EV fan (I could he tell did not fully appreciate an electric mustang either), made sure it was towed safely and properly.
Everyone at the service center was kind and empathetic. They could not make things go faster, but everyone we spoke to was kind and helpful. I HAD to get home that night as I could not miss work next day. So at the end of that first day, the service manager, their team and I all were trying to find me a rental car as they really did not want to do a loaner for us to drive back to Denver. No rentals in 100 mile radius without a 2-3 day wait (spring break week for a lot of KS). So in the end, the service manager found us a loaner so we could get home. I will still have to drive back 400 miles and retrieve my MachE when it is fixed, but given my car could not be repaired in 1-2 days, this was the best outcome I could hope for given the situation so I could still get myself and my daughter home.
To be continued...
That is the story so far. I still have not received a detailed explanation of the issue with the car, other than Ford told them they had to replace a couple of wiring harness connectors. I will add an epilogue to this post once the car is fixed, get the story on what broke and I make the return trip. Sorry for the long story but wanted to share for those who like the details. Wish me luck and the repair and shedding my new found EV road-trip anxiety!
March 24th Update to original post:
The service manager called to give me the bad news: They are going to need to replace my entire HV battery. To make matters worse the car won't respond to the process to deplete the battery pack so they can remove it and install a new one. So someone has to fly in to help with the process it seems. Guessing this will push the repair from 1 week out to 2-3 weeks. Still thankful I died 2 miles from a Ford service center certified to work on the MachE (they have all the "stuff" needed to remove/change batteries, etc.). Rough warranty issue though...really starting to miss my MachE after having to drive an ICE again...reminds me daily why I went with an EV.
March 25th Update to this post:
Turns out is was just the Battery Controller (BEC module as @Rabidsquirrel22 hypothesized below). Changing that out still is a lot of work as you have to discharge and drop the battery to change the module so I am told. This also requires removing a bunch of panels. Sounds like the local team, Ford and a supplier worked hard together to today. So now they just need to do some testing and get it signed off. I should be back in my MME next week!!
Special thanks to @Ford Motor Company for their help and support along with the team at Valor Automotive in KS. Things will go wrong with cars, even EV's and they will break down, and that is when the service really matters. Ford gets high marks on service across the board from this customer!
