Replacing HVBJB on your own dime

[MachSpeed]

Yep. $599 for the GT HVJB $544 for the Prem.
Install price ~ $1200
But you'd have to have a battery lift to attempt to DIY to save that $1200

We were past the 36k mile warranty on our second HVBJB failure, but thankfully it is covered under the 100k mile / 8 year drivetrain warranty.

When the part came out we were told that the new part is "more robust." We now know that it's not quite robust enough, but at the time I believe that we all thought the part was beefier. We'll let @markboris tell us what his thought process was. ?‍?

Sounds like its time for a class action lawsuit.

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[tuminatr]

Sounds like its time for a class action lawsuit.

The only problem I see with that is I don't think ford has a solution. We are likely to get a dieselgate type solution, the example I am thinking would go like this "your GTPE is now limited to 250hp or we will buy it back"

 

[RickMachE]

Sounds like its time for a class action lawsuit.

Several already filed...

Most have no grounds, no harm has been done to them.

 

[dethbunny]

You may be right regarding "no harm has been done" so far, but I (not a lawyer) also think as people start having them fail out-of-warranty, standing gets re-evaluated. "I had a part fail and Ford fixed it" is a very different story than "I had a pat fail and Ford claimed to have fixed it, but the problem came back and now I'm paying for it."

 

[AKgrampy]

You may be right regarding "no harm has been done" so far, but I (not a lawyer) also think as people start having them fail out-of-warranty, standing gets re-evaluated. "I had a part fail and Ford fixed it" is a very different story than "I had a pat fail and Ford claimed to have fixed it, but the problem came back and now I'm paying for it."

Let net start by saying I believe Ford has done a bad job regarding the HVBJB. However, by your logic if my transmission on my ICE fails after 100,000 miles it is time for a class action law suit. If my HVBJB lasts that long I will be happy and so will whoever buys my car when I trade it in on a new one in around two or three years!

 

[Shayne]

I’m not saying I would but the argument to do it would rely on the new part having a much lower chance of failing. It’s really a cost benefit analysis that ultimately depends on one’s tolerance for risk. For those who make longer trips and can’t afford to have this happen while far from home I think it makes sense.

Who is to say what you are buying will be a fix or bullet proof? Even have a lower chance of failing. I have not seen that press release to date in fact nothing. I do see Ford and my Dealer have more tolerance than me when it comes to this issue.

The only problem I see with that is I don't think ford has a solution. We are likely to get a dieselgate type solution, the example I am thinking would go like this "your GTPE is now limited to 250hp or we will buy it back"

As long as it is only the 5 second GT's I am good with that.

Let net start by saying I believe Ford has done a bad job regarding the HVBJB. However, by your logic if my transmission on my ICE fails after 100,000 miles it is time for a class action law suit. If my HVBJB lasts that long I will be happy and so will whoever buys my car when I trade it in on a new one in around two or three years!

The buyer has a different driving style and blows it up in a week.

 

[Howard]

OP: I bought my 2022 Select AWD MME in July 2022. It was built in April 2022. I paid out of pocket in August 2022 to have my Ford dealership install the new HVBJB. Cost was just under $2,000. Part took about 2 days for dealership to receive; I made an appointment to get it installed 4 weeks later; I have a good relationship with GM and Service Manager at the dealership and told them to schedule the install around their schedule. They offered to do it immediately but I told them since it had not failed yet that I would take their next open appointment for their EV tech. I dropped the car off the evening prior to the appointment and picked it up 2 days later; it was ready the next evening but I couldn't get up there to pick it up. I also have a 2023 Premium RWD ER MME that we took delivery of in December 2022. If you have any questions, please let me know.

 

[markboris]

When the part came out we were told that the new part is "more robust." We now know that it's not quite robust enough, but at the time I believe that we all thought the part was beefier. We'll let @markboris tell us what his thought process was. ?‍?

Hey Steve, here was my thought process.....

I drive to Sacramento airport at least twice a month for travels and I didn't want to be inconvenienced or worse, stranded. It's a 2 hour drive covering around 112 miles. The last thing I want is to miss my flight. Because of this and I knew I could have it done for a minimal cost, I did it on my dime.

My GTPE was built September '21 and I purchased it in November '21. There were 20K miles on the car when I had the HVBJB replaced in April of this year. I figured the updated board would/should be more robust and wanted to replace it when convenient for me.

I purchased the board from one of the online parts dealers I usually buy from (https://www.oemfordpartsfast.com/) and at that time it was $585 for a new board. Having the board replaced was unlike what most would encounter since Jason, the parts and service director of Serramonte Ford is a close personal friend of mine. I brought the car in on the day I wanted to have it replaced and it was done a little over 4 hours later. He charged me only what he had to pay the tech to do the job plus some coolant and misc. parts. I'lll just say the total for me having it replaced including the board I purchased myself was under $1100.

Instead of returning the board to the parts dealer to get my core charge back, I sent it to Lee for him to take measurements and compare it to a new board. It seems a few of the updated boards have also been replaced but I am still happy I had mine done knowing the board is hopefully better than the one I had originally.

 

[tfitzgex]

It requires more than that. The pack also has to be resealed and the cooling system needs to be recharged. We've seen dealerships forget or improperly do both which led to additional issues.

Amen, They failed to fill my coolant properly and fried a motor cooling pump. Likely will cause long term damage to the motors.

 

[RWG]

As a former, now retired Product and Warranty Manager, it seemed illogical to do a recall the way Ford did, unless there are other issues we don't understand. Relays/contactors that overheat and stick open or closed are normally just not robust enough to handle the current/power load. The logical solution would be to just install heavier, more robust, components. However, I wonder if there is enough room to do so. I have never seen the relay/contactor configuration up close but I wonder why the hesitation, unless Ford is trying to minimize costs by sticking with the current relay/contactor component configuration instead of replacing all of it. One of the design conundrums could be that the relay/contactor is not the problem but the part it plugs into is. i.e. perhaps heat is building up in other components connected to the device and that causes the component to overheat and fail. If the components the relay/contactor is connected to overheat, that heat could transfer to the component and could cause it to fail. Hard to say, I don't know, but it is plausible. After all, if a tire goes flat because of a nail, it is not the tire design at fault, the problem was caused by a nail.

Replacing a couple of relays/contactors is relatively easy and cheap but replacing relays/contactors AND a bunch of other related components may not be. If 2 replaced relays/contacotrs costs $2000 the recall cost is approximately $2000 x 50,000 or $100m, but if you have to change a bunch of other stuff and it costs $4000 each, then the recall costs double to $200m.

If you have a warranty failure rate of 25%, over the length of the battery/component warranty, the cost is $25m. 25% would be an extraordinary failure rate but one can see the financial motivations if my financial scenario is anywhere close to being accurate.

Consider this, I am sure Ford has demographic data that gives them a reliable forecast as to how many Mach E's in the fleet achieve the 100,000 mile mark and no more warranty exposure. If 25% of the fleet will require a warranty repair, that is maybe a lot cheaper than a recall. Estimated @
$25m vs $100m. Of course, there is the argument about a damaged reputation but I would submit the consuming public has demonstrated a high tolerance for bad quality and design errors. Ford is in the middle of a record recall year for pickups, but the public just keeps on buying as if nothing has happened. (Except the Lightning) Look at Fords position, at the moment; they built a product, it had some technical issues that caused the NTSB to target the product and they issued a safety recall. Ford developed a software solution that was accepted by the NTSB. I would suggest that if the HVBJB failure was just an operational issue and not a security risk, the NTSB would not be involved and Ford would do nothing. ( Long term they would strive to fix the problem to manage warranty costs and maintain their perceived quality image/brand equity.)

I would prefer my Mach E to be recalled, but not until the recall is a real permanent solution. At the moment, I feel as though Ford has not been forthcoming as to the real facts/root cause and perhaps they don't really know yet. The Software patch was a nice quick fix, that probably numerically reduced failure exposure and satisfied the bureaucrats at the NTSB, but did not address root cause. It was a "short term bandaid". However, I am very sure there are significant changes in the "development pipeline" to resolve this issue, and others. In the car business it takes 3 to 5 years for significant design changes to be made, tested, implemented, because of internal complications and costs. The only way to accelerate the normal design timetable is for the short term costs to out weigh the long term development cost cycle or for legal intervention, NTSB and/or law suits.

If I was the internal exec at Ford, in charge of recalls and warranty, I would be pushing back at the idea of a recall with the same components & failure rates as the original equipment. Why? Because I get measured/rated by my performance against my budget and that budget is usually a percentage of sales, somewhere from .05% to 6%. It was my experience, that if design engineering made a mistake, that caused recalls, it created a lot of internal commotion to assign financial responsibility/blame and not destroy careers or year end bonuses along the way.

The internal corporate world can be very stressful/ruthless at times, I have the mental scars to prove it.

For us, the consumers, we will just have to wait until the dust settles between Ford & the NTSB and hopefully the real root cause is determined/revealed. If the NTSB rules for a total hardware recall, without validation of root cause, it would potentially be a waste of time and money, that mistake was already made when they accepted the software fix.

PS: This is a reprint of a previous post. There are some content changes, expanded thoughts, from my original. Specifically the use of the term relays vs contactors. There were many that focused on the terms relay vs contactor and not the real subject matter intent. So I corrected that and expanded some other concepts.

 

[BMT1071]

As a former, now retired Product and Warranty Manager, it seemed illogical to do a recall the way Ford did, unless there are other issues we don't understand. Relays/contactors that overheat and stick open or closed are normally just not robust enough to handle the current/power load. The logical solution would be to just install heavier, more robust, components. However, I wonder if there is enough room to do so. I have never seen the relay/contactor configuration up close but I wonder why the hesitation, unless Ford is trying to minimize costs by sticking with the current relay/contactor component configuration instead of replacing all of it. One of the design conundrums could be that the relay/contactor is not the problem but the part it plugs into is. i.e. perhaps heat is building up in other components connected to the device and that causes the component to overheat and fail. If the components the relay/contactor is connected to overheat, that heat could transfer to the component and could cause it to fail. Hard to say, I don't know, but it is plausible. After all, if a tire goes flat because of a nail, it is not the tire design at fault, the problem was caused by a nail.

Replacing a couple of relays/contactors is relatively easy and cheap but replacing relays/contactors AND a bunch of other related components may not be. If 2 replaced relays/contacotrs costs $2000 the recall cost is approximately $2000 x 50,000 or $100m, but if you have to change a bunch of other stuff and it costs $4000 each, then the recall costs double to $200m.

If you have a warranty failure rate of 25%, over the length of the battery/component warranty, the cost is $25m. 25% would be an extraordinary failure rate but one can see the financial motivations if my financial scenario is anywhere close to being accurate.

Consider this, I am sure Ford has demographic data that gives them a reliable forecast as to how many Mach E's in the fleet achieve the 100,000 mile mark and no more warranty exposure. If 25% of the fleet will require a warranty repair, that is maybe a lot cheaper than a recall. Estimated @
$25m vs $100m. Of course, there is the argument about a damaged reputation but I would submit the consuming public has demonstrated a high tolerance for bad quality and design errors. Ford is in the middle of a record recall year for pickups, but the public just keeps on buying as if nothing has happened. (Except the Lightning) Look at Fords position, at the moment; they built a product, it had some technical issues that caused the NTSB to target the product and they issued a safety recall. Ford developed a software solution that was accepted by the NTSB. I would suggest that if the HVBJB failure was just an operational issue and not a security risk, the NTSB would not be involved and Ford would do nothing. ( Long term they would strive to fix the problem to manage warranty costs and maintain their perceived quality image/brand equity.)

I would prefer my Mach E to be recalled, but not until the recall is a real permanent solution. At the moment, I feel as though Ford has not been forthcoming as to the real facts/root cause and perhaps they don't really know yet. The Software patch was a nice quick fix, that probably numerically reduced failure exposure and satisfied the bureaucrats at the NTSB, but did not address root cause. It was a "short term bandaid". However, I am very sure there are significant changes in the "development pipeline" to resolve this issue, and others. In the car business it takes 3 to 5 years for significant design changes to be made, tested, implemented, because of internal complications and costs. The only way to accelerate the normal design timetable is for the short term costs to out weigh the long term development cost cycle or for legal intervention, NTSB and/or law suits.

If I was the internal exec at Ford, in charge of recalls and warranty, I would be pushing back at the idea of a recall with the same components & failure rates as the original equipment. Why? Because I get measured/rated by my performance against my budget and that budget is usually a percentage of sales, somewhere from .05% to 6%. It was my experience, that if design engineering made a mistake, that caused recalls, it created a lot of internal commotion to assign financial responsibility/blame and not destroy careers or year end bonuses along the way.

The internal corporate world can be very stressful/ruthless at times, I have the mental scars to prove it.

For us, the consumers, we will just have to wait until the dust settles between Ford & the NTSB and hopefully the real root cause is determined/revealed. If the NTSB rules for a total hardware recall, without validation of root cause, it would potentially be a waste of time and money, that mistake was already made when they accepted the software fix.

PS: This is a reprint of a previous post. There are some content changes, expanded thoughts, from my original. Specifically the use of the term relays vs contactors. There were many that focused on the terms relay vs contactor and not the real subject matter intent. So I corrected that and expanded some other concepts.

This is a repost and you still confused the NTSB and NHTSA?!?!? ??

 

[Shayne]

This is a repost and you still confused the NTSB and NHTSA?!?!? ??

He could edit it and do a search and replace if really needed. I noted that as well as it is a repeat but does not really change what is being said. The question he is asking is why has Ford not nipped this problem in the butt and stopped the bleeding? Any ideas? Is it that it can not be fixed at this stage or does it just cost too much to fix?

 

[RWG]

Oops! My mistake on NTSB vs NHTSA. I did a little research and both agencies are similar but have different responsibilities and to my surprise, it appears they are occasionally at odds with each other. I am embarrassed to admit I previously did not pay attention to the agency differences. . . my apologies.

Regarding this repost, there are many changes to the 2nd version for clarity and to correct some apparent confusion I caused.

Explanation I found regarding the two agencies:
The NTSB and NHTSA have slightly differing roles and specialties. The NHTSA establishes safety regulations for cars and light trucks that are brought to market. The NTSB is more focused on investigating the causes of accidents.

 

[BilLongua]

Why would you do this?

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