'Powertrain Malfunction/Reduced Power' followed by 'Service Vehicle Soon' alert displayed

[DBC]

Maybe wait to say Ford isn't owning the issue until they actually have time to investigate it?

If 3 weeks from now Ford comes back with "it's in spec", then I'll be right up front next to you carrying a pitchfork - but until then maybe give them a chance to do the right thing.

I'm 100% confident that Ford will fix it, but, as you point out, you can't fix a problem when you don't know what the problem is.

Everyone wants to be an early adopter until they don't (myself included).

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[SAVAGE]

I’m curious, do you know if your car was part of the stop ship quality repair? This appears to be the second car we have seen with this issue.

Yes, it was.

 

[Kamuelaflyer]

So driving home Thursday night with it being a cool -5 degrees Fahrenheit and the snow beginning to fall, I was sitting at a red light on the top of a hill when the light turned green and I tried to proceed. I attempted to accelerate and the car hesitated and felt like it lost all power and then I received the following alert on the dash 'Powertrain Malfunction/Reduced Power' followed by the 'Service Vehicle Soon' alert. The vehicle wouldn't go more than 1 mph and was jerking horribly. I was finally able to get it out of the intersection onto the side of the road, where I completely turned everything off, waited five minutes and then turned the car back on. Unfortunately the alert was still there. The car seemed to drive mostly fine after that but honestly 'freaked me out' with only 120 miles on the car. I was able to make it home (about 15 miles away) with the alert still on the dash. On Friday morning, I went back out to check on the status of the car and the alert had cleared. I called the dealership and they said to bring it in if it happens again or if I get any other errors. Just wanted to pass this along to see if anyone else has had any "mechanical issues" like this.

By chance have you received notice on your FordPass App that there is an FSA for the car?

And ... when was your car built? The actual production date from the tracker?

 

[machefan]

This is not good to see and Ford obviously has issues to work out. In the meantime it really SUCKS not to trust your new car not to leave you stranded.

BUT - this is a brand new car with a brand new issue you ran into less than a week ago. You said it yourself: "it appears intermittent which can be most difficult to troubleshoot". Certainly they have internal diagnostic logs that prove it happened, so it is unlikely for them to play the "prove it" game.

Maybe wait to say Ford isn't owning the issue until they actually have time to investigate it?

If 3 weeks from now Ford comes back with "it's in spec", then I'll be right up front next to you carrying a pitchfork - but until then maybe give them a chance to do the right thing.

Tim,

Maybe I didn't word it well, I am multitasking all over the place. I keep getting the power train alert but it hasn't stopped me dead in my tracks. This does concern me now more since someone reported as such.

I am merely posting my thoughts and experiences, they are mine and only mine, they are a snapshot in time. At the moment after waiting for such a long time I want joy, as well as comfort that my 60K purchase will not be plagued with issues. This technically is my second issue, first was an ABS sensor issue that turned out to be a loose cable (I am told).

I understand software and hardware and the nature that "new tech" comes with risks. My complaint right now is how they are being handled by Ford. We quickly forget about he stop ship which was communicated to me as a "Quality Check". With that said I shouldn't have to go to the dealer 3 times for Ford to fix an issue which is reported by the car direct to Ford. Dealer told me they have the start the process over before Ford will send an engineer. The bulletin we see posted here does not exactly describe my issue rather another one. My charge port has a constant RED ring which does go away and does come back when the cabled is pulled. Easily duplicated, I now received 3 power train failure notices with one just minutes ago while trying to setup the wireless. For the wireless I can get it to connect to one network but not another (tried the US keyboard with no luck).

So thanks for your kind words and thoughts, I appreciate it as we all learn together.

 

[JoeSmoeFromIDontKnow]

So driving home Thursday night with it being a cool -5 degrees Fahrenheit and the snow beginning to fall, I was sitting at a red light on the top of a hill when the light turned green and I tried to proceed. I attempted to accelerate and the car hesitated and felt like it lost all power and then I received the following alert on the dash 'Powertrain Malfunction/Reduced Power' followed by the 'Service Vehicle Soon' alert. The vehicle wouldn't go more than 1 mph and was jerking horribly. I was finally able to get it out of the intersection onto the side of the road, where I completely turned everything off, waited five minutes and then turned the car back on...

This is absolutely devastating! The more and more I hear reports like this, the more I see that Ford has not completed thorough testing. I remember hearing early on from folks warning us that the Mach-E will likely have issues and that early adopters will be the guinea pigs to help Ford iron them out. Well, this issue hit me to a point that I don't think I could tolerate it. When I'm at a red light about to turn left, I need 100% trust that the vehicle will go when the accelerator is pushed. I'm seriously debating backing out of my order now.

 

[machefan]

This is absolutely devastating! The more and more I hear reports like this, the more I see that Ford has not completed thorough testing. I remember hearing early on from folks warning us that the Mach-E will likely have issues and that early adopters will be the guinea pigs to help Ford iron them out. Well, this issue hit me to a point that I don't think I could tolerate it. When I'm at a red light about to turn left, I need 100% trust that the vehicle will go when the accelerator is pushed. I'm seriously debating backing out of my order now.

I would still purchase as I am sure Ford will fix my issues. So far only a handful if even that are in this group. Maybe I never made it to the speedway, who knows.

Personally I still love it...

Stick with it, you won't be sorry really.

 

[DBC]

My charge port has a constant RED ring which does go away and does come back when the cabled is pulled. Easily duplicated, I now received 3 power train failure notices with one just minutes ago while trying to setup the wireless. For the wireless I can get it to connect to one network but not another (tried the US keyboard with no luck).

I have the same message and get the same constant red ring when unplugging the charge cord.

In the interests of sleuthing, here is what I know I did before getting the Service Vehicle Soon message: I successfully set up FordPass. I then tried to set up the home network connection. This failed several times. Then I tried to set up departure times. That didn't work either but to test whether it was working I plugged and unplugged the Clipper Creek charger twice for less than two minutes each time. The next day I tried to program the garage door opener. It didn't work and during this process I noticed the message.

Later that afternoon the error message disappeared. Figuring it had just cycled and cleared, I again tried to connect to the home network after rebooting it. This didn't work but the Service Vehicle Soon message reappeared.

I wondered if a charge cycle might clear the error code and plugged in this morning and charged to 100%. When I unplugged the ring went red.

I've been thinking that charging is more a casualty than a cause, and the cause is some random error code from the errors when trying to do something else like connect to the home network or the garage door opener.

 

[machefan]

I have the same message and get the same constant red ring when unplugging the charge cord.

In the interests of sleuthing, here is what I know I did before getting the Service Vehicle Soon message: I successfully set up FordPass. I then tried to set up the home network connection. This failed several times. Then I tried to set up departure times. That didn't work either but to test whether it was working I plugged and unplugged the Clipper Creek charger twice for less than two minutes each time. The next day I tried to program the garage door opener. It didn't work and during this process I noticed the message.

Later that afternoon the error message disappeared. Figuring it had just cycled and cleared, I again tried to connect to the home network after rebooting it. This didn't work but the Service Vehicle Soon message reappeared.

I wondered if a charge cycle might clear the error code and plugged in this morning and charged to 100%. When I unplugged the ring went red.

I've been thinking that charging is more a casualty than a cause, and the cause is some random error code from the errors when trying to do something else like connect to the home network or the garage door opener.

I had these errors before setting up wireless, I have two networks at home as one is a backup LTE should the primary go south. I am able to get to the backup network which is a cradle point but not my UniFi home AP's. Says can't connect etc.

Glad I am not alone with this issue which means it's not something that only my car is experiencing. While it sucks for us, having company helps our issue become more understood. I still gripe that my smart car needs the dealer to get involved for discovery. I get that I might have to go the dealer to apply a fix but the discovery should be uploaded realtime. I am told that errors are sent to Ford, but still the dealer has to go through the same process. First get the car in, plug a reader into it, call the Ford hotline, run through some tests and see if they can resolve it. First pass of this process was just to reset everything, however the car appears to reset the message on its own and it comes back. Dealer said they tested charing for 10 minutes and didn't get an error. I can duplicate this at home each time and I tried with three different chargers that I have. They should have seen the error reappear but it didn't for them or they cleared it and sent me on my way. The powertrain message coming up three times is most worry now since a member got briefly stuck.

 

[EyeOnMachE]

Hopefully in a few weeks Ford will have sorted things out.

A quick side note/question. This may be doc'd some where (been away from the forums for a while) but for me this begs the question has Ford indicated the frequency they "intend" to deliver OTA updates? In other words, a set frequency of, say, quarterly, or will it be whenever they decide an update should be pushed out or perhaps a combination of both? Thanks.

 

[agoldman]

Sounds like computer glitches. Similar ones like that has happened on my PHEV's and then cleared. You kinda get used to rebooting like an old 90's windows PC. It's the first thing service will do. Master reset of some sort.

 

[DBC]

Glad I am not alone with this issue which means it's not something that only my car is experiencing. While it sucks for us, having company helps our issue become more understood.
...
The powertrain message coming up three times is most worry now since a member got briefly stuck.

Yes you definitely don't want to be alone. Herd is the way to go! LOL

I'm not convinced that our issue is the same as his. His seems powertrain related. Ours not so much. It may be -- and I'm thinking it is -- that many different issues throw an error code that triggers the "Service Vehicle Soon" message. In this case the message alone won't tell you much.

My plan is to make an appointment, at which I'm sure they'll just clear the code. After that I'll avoid trying to connect the MME to anything but will plug in. If this triggers an error then it might narrow down the possible causes to charging. One wild idea might be that my Clipper Creek charger doesn't support 120v and this creates an issue ending the handshake. You'd hope this wouldn't be the case since the charger is standard and it's so easy to check.

Sounds like computer glitches. Similar ones like that has happened on my PHEV's and then cleared. You kinda get used to rebooting like an old 90's windows PC. It's the first thing service will do. Master reset of some sort.

I'm not actually concerned about the car but having to undertake a dealer visit to "reboot" is hardly appealing.

 

[EyeOnMachE]

Sounds like computer glitches. Similar ones like that has happened on my PHEV's and then cleared. You kinda get used to rebooting like an old 90's windows PC. It's the first thing service will do. Master reset of some sort.

If you ever want to watch a mainframe software engineer's head explode, just have a tech support person tell them to just reboot their PC/laptop/smartphone/smart-car/whatever device. This is what the MF SE hears: We don't know what the problem is and I'm not interested or have the time to investigate the problem to find the root cause - have a nice day.

(Warning: Standing up on soapbox)
If mainframe oriented IT companies told their clients any time a problem occurs to just IPL (aka reboot) their mainframe, they all would have went out of business as this was and still is unacceptable by the clients. So why should it be acceptable for individual customers?

Do yourself and everyone else, including Ford (they just don't know it), a favor and resist the suggestion to reboot the system as a primary or even secondary response from support. In only extreme cases (e.g. car is bricked and/or you're stranded) rebooting might make sense to try right out of the gate. Rebooting a system should be only after all other options have been exhausted to find the problem. Otherwise, as others have alluded to in so many words, if the problem goes away after rebooting, was the problem really fixed? How long before it happens again? Force them to investigate the problem whenever possible.
(Stepping down from soapbox)

 

[RonTCat]

Anecdotally it does seem like a cold weather issue.

Although that guess would be wholly incorrect.

 

[GoosePond08]

Awaiting for the first "lemon" to drop...

 

[DaveRuns]

This is absolutely devastating! The more and more I hear reports like this, the more I see that Ford has not completed thorough testing. I remember hearing early on from folks warning us that the Mach-E will likely have issues and that early adopters will be the guinea pigs to help Ford iron them out. Well, this issue hit me to a point that I don't think I could tolerate it. When I'm at a red light about to turn left, I need 100% trust that the vehicle will go when the accelerator is pushed. I'm seriously debating backing out of my order now.

I feel much better about pulling the plug on MME order and going with the Model Y. Reading all of these issues is very concerning, and I hope they are easily fixed.

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