Vehicle Network Communication Error

[Clicker]

Vehicle Network Communication Error is what displayed on the otherwise black screen as my MME totally shut down and left us stranded in the middle of the street. Wouldn't restart or even go out of park. No power, windows down with rain on the horizon. Not a real comfortable situation and Ford Roadside Service truly no help. Amazing what you to go through even to get a voice on the phone not to mention getting help to you. By plain luck we were just a block and a half from home and a neighbor who is a mechanic stopped to sidebar happened. He has some knowledge of e EV cars and suspected the 12 volt battery had something to do with the problem. Long story short after about an hour of phone time with Ford he decided to disconnect the battery wait a few minutes and reconnect. Unbelievably the car reset and all functions returned. Bad part is when it happened there was no warning the car just shut down and coaster to a stop. Imagine if this happened on an interstate or in any kind of traffic. It could have been a disaster. Talk about eroding confidence in this vehicle! Now I will call the dealer to see what we can do to resolve this. How long before this happens again? Is Ford aware of it? Is it a simple fix? Has this happened to anyone else here on the forum since I don't remember reading about this any other time. What a revolting situation!

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[Mach-Lee]

Vehicle Network Communication Error is what displayed on the otherwise black screen as my MME totally shut down and left us stranded in the middle of the street. Wouldn't restart or even go out of park. No power, windows down with rain on the horizon. Not a real comfortable situation and Ford Roadside Service truly no help. Amazing what you to go through even to get a voice on the phone not to mention getting help to you. By plain luck we were just a block and a half from home and a neighbor who is a mechanic stopped to sidebar happened. He has some knowledge of e EV cars and suspected the 12 volt battery had something to do with the problem. Long story short after about an hour of phone time with Ford he decided to disconnect the battery wait a few minutes and reconnect. Unbelievably the car reset and all functions returned. Bad part is when it happened there was no warning the car just shut down and coaster to a stop. Imagine if this happened on an interstate or in any kind of traffic. It could have been a disaster. Talk about eroding confidence in this vehicle! Now I will call the dealer to see what we can do to resolve this. How long before this happens again? Is Ford aware of it? Is it a simple fix? Has this happened to anyone else here on the forum since I don't remember reading about this any other time. What a revolting situation!

I have not heard of that error before, you're the first with it. That could indicate the CAN bus wires are shorted somewhere, which will make the car go haywire. Is it possible you have a rodent chewing wires? Or any other kind of recent damage? Intermittent CAN bus shorts can be difficult to diagnose, they take time and patience. I would look at the codes carefully, see if I can figure out where the fault might be, and then visually inspect the wiring harnesses. The 12V disconnect probably just reset all the faulted modules. No idea when it could happen again, could be tomorrow or next month. It could also be related to water getting in a connection and corroding it, had you recently driven through water or something?

 

[Clicker]

Unfortunately it did it again two miles from the Ford dealer I was taking it to today. On a six land busy thoroughfare this time. Since I knew what to do I took off the ground wife waited 30 secs and it came up to life enough to get me to the dealership. It had a couple of pages of fault codes according to the service writer.
No critters in my garage and certainly have not driven through any flooded streets.
Really a shame since I have now lost all confidence in the vehicle.

 

[kltye]

I had a similar thing happen in my 2013 Fusion several years ago. Not sure what the reason was, but my gateway module had to be replaced. Once replaced, it never failed again.

Lots of complicated electronics fail all the time. I think it's a bit premature to go down the route of "lost all confidence in the vehicle" at this point.

 

[Jimrpa]

So, when it happened both times, you happened to have a 12 v source available to pop the frunk so you could get to the battery? And the second time it happened, on the busy 6 lane freeway, you had a DTC code reader available so you could provide the service tech a couple of pages of codes?

 

[Clicker]

No the codes were found and printed at the dealership.​

Still had 12 volt power both times to raise the frunk. I learned not to shut the car down like I did the first time when I could not close the windows or get it out of park.​

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