'17 FFE Dead 12Volt battery

Hi all. My first post here and I'm afraid it's not a good one. I've had my '17 Cobalt Blue for < 3 weeks and put on 550 km's (yes I'm in Canada). All had been going quite well until I went to start the car today. All I could hear was a constant ticking sound and nothing would light up on the cluster or entertainment centre. I checked the my ford mobile application and was prompted with an error saying the 12Volt battery was low. I also noted I could no longer lock or unlock the doors or even open the trunk.
Long story short, I needed a tow to come boost me. I drove it about 3 miles to the dealer and was underwhelmed with their response. They had a quick look at it and tried to get me to just keep trying it as is and bring it back if it happens again.
After a short wig out on my part the service rep agreed to try and diagnose the problem.

In case you're wondering, I didn't leave it in drive or keep any accessories turned on.

A short search led me to quite a few threads of this sort of thing happening with older models but I haven't seen any 2017 reports yet. Anyone know if there's a known issue with the 2017 as well?

This does resurrect some of the earlier issues.
I hope you get it sorted out.
My 2013 still on original battery.
I will start measuring my 2017 battery as its my wife's and if it strands her somewhere she just may refuse to drive it again.

ChrisP
Vancouver, BC

Was it plugged in to an EVSE?

No it wasn't plugged in at all. I had 70% left on my main battery so no need. The dealer still has it and will check if there's anything drawing from the battery that shouldn't be. Sucks to have this at less than 3 weeks...
I'll update the findings from the dealer.

Must be contagious my car sent me a text this afternoon that the 12V was low. It's annoying that the text is always too late. No lights or anything would come on when the door was opened with a couple minutes of getting the text. The battery measured 7V. I jump started it and went on my way to dinner. As soon as I pulled out of the driveway the traction control would kick in every time I slightly turned the wheel. I headed straight to the dealer on my way I got this error on the dash and the traction control turned itself off.
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I was happy it turned it's self off because it would pull the steering wheel to one side or the other. Being in traffic I would have been pissed if it caused me to turn into another car. The dealer thinks my battery is dead and they were going to take care of the door latch recall too. I'm just wondering if the abs/traction control module is going bad and that's what killed my 12V battery? My car was charged last Saturday and driven a few mile Sunday and has been sitting unused all week until today. They gave me a free rental and I should find out tomorrow how soon I'm getting the car back.

I recommend using a cheap 12v battery maintainer device as well as keeping a good 12v battery charger in your garage for emergencies.
I have those, plus also a portable 12v battery jumper device (uses a Lithium Ion battery) but haven't needed to use it since the only time I've experienced a few of those unexplained 12v battery discharges have been when the car was sitting in my garage. I do keep a small 12v voltmeter device plugged into the car's 12v accessory port so I can try to see if the voltage has dropped before it gets so low the car won't turn on.

NightHawk said:

I recommend using a cheap 12v battery maintainer device as well as keeping a good 12v battery charger in your garage for emergencies.
I have those, plus also a portable 12v battery jumper device (uses a Lithium Ion battery) but haven't needed to use it since the only time I've experienced a few of those unexplained 12v battery discharges have been when the car was sitting in my garage. I do keep a small 12v voltmeter device plugged into the car's 12v accessory port so I can try to see if the voltage has dropped before it gets so low the car won't turn on.

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I have those and recommend them too. Unfortunately my 12v battery has either been fully charged or flat dead at 6-7 volts, nothing in between. So thevolt meter does little good since it's already apparently dead when you open the door and the lights don't come on. When you get the text that your battery is low it's already dead.

I got an update from the dealer that "a module is drawing down the 12v" They're still doing diagnostics I assume to figure out which module. or maybe why. I'm gonna take a wild guess that its the ABS module going south. I vaguely recall reading someone else having a similar problem but I can't seem to find that thread now. Sorry OP I didn't mean to threadjack here.

I was actually thinking of keeping a battery booster pack in the car but I'm in a bit of an internal struggle over that. I like to own new things like this new ffe. I like new things because typically they're reliable. I've accepted that I pay more money than a lot of people do who don't mind driving an older vehicle.
All that said, when I buy new things I expect them to work as such. Maybe I'm making too big of a deal over one dead battery but I get the feeling this is going to keep happening.
I got the ffe back from the dealer yesterday. They tried recharging the battery twice. The first time one of the cells had an issue. The second time they tried, it worked. They monitored it for a day and the battery kept it's charge.
The dealer told me if it happens again they'll start replacing things, starting with the battery.

chewpick I feel your pain. However the FFE is STILL a first generation product. It's actually more or less a factory conversion to electric of a gas car. Very little technology wise has changed except the battery since the FFE came to market in 2012. Like all new first generation products there will be bugs to work out. If that's not something you can live with then buying the FFE was probably a mistake. The 12V system on the FFE seems to be a weak link. Ford has done some to help the situation. I have to assume there is only so much they can do without major design changes to ensure the reliability of the 12V system. Hopefully Ford's next EV will make the FFE look like an obsolete golf cart. Tesla has said that with the model Y they will eliminate the antiquated 12V battery system. I believe others will follow suit. I'm not sure how that will work as I can't see them having high voltage running to all the cars electrical components. Who knows the next 5-10 years will be interesting as EV technology matures and becomes mainstream.

Oh and if you carry a 12V lithium jump pack like I do. DO NOT keep it in the back or if you do make sure you can access thru the rear seats. You CANNOT open the hatch with a dead battery (another design flaw with the FFE).

Also if your 12V does keep going dead. That does mean something is wrong. Unfortunately whether it's the technicians training or the design of the system it may be difficult to pinpoint the problem and correct the bad part. Keep taking it back until they find the problem. Document everything and if necessary invoke your states lemon laws. I would expect the diagnostic capabilities in EV to improve as the technology matures.

triangles said:

You CANNOT open the hatch with a dead battery (another design flaw with the FFE).

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Actually I think that is a design flaw with all of the current Focus line as you can't open any of the hatchbacks with a dead battery--its just more prevalent on the FFE because of the 12V issues it has.

This is starting to seem a little ridiculous that after 5 model years of the FFE the same problem is plaguing the '17s as it did the '12s. I had to replace my 12v battery a few weeks ago. Although I think it was just a crap battery. It was barely a year old, but the battery had no labeling on it whatsoever outside of the warning sticker on the top and the date code.

triangles said:

Very little technology wise has changed except the battery since the FFE came to market in 2012. Like all new first generation products there will be bugs to work out. If that's not something you can live with then buying the FFE was probably a mistake.

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I'm sorry, triangles, but I have to disagree with this. A problem which affects some people but not others, has differing causes and still occurs after attempts by the manufacturer to fix it is not a simple bug. It is a manufacturing defect and a sign of poor quality control. Even in the first year of release, this is not a problem that should just be expected or overlooked. After five model years, we _should_ be surprised to be experiencing this, regardless of whether the underlying platform essentially remains unchanged.

This level of quality was the reason I gave up on American cars a few decades ago. I had thought they had turned a corner, but if there is still a notion that these kinds of problems should be expected, I'm thinking that perhaps I was wrong.

ghiebert said:

I'm sorry, triangles, but I have to disagree with this. A problem which affects some people but not others, has differing causes and still occurs after attempts by the manufacturer to fix it is not a simple bug. It is a manufacturing defect and a sign of poor quality control. Even in the first year of release, this is not a problem that should just be expected or overlooked. After five model years, we _should_ be surprised to be experiencing this, regardless of whether the underlying platform essentially remains unchanged.

This level of quality was the reason I gave up on American cars a few decades ago. I had thought they had turned a corner, but if there is still a notion that these kinds of problems should be expected, I'm thinking that perhaps I was wrong.

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Sure if you were buying a production car. Even after 5 years (first FFE was 2012) the FFE is still a prototype and kind of hand built--they still only build 2 or 3 a shift, I'd bet they still have engineers walk the line when they build them etc.

Its a house of cards that Ford assembles and sells to us "beta testers". I think your perspective is simply wrong: You are expecting the high quality of a big 3 car where nothing goes wrong in thousands of cars built...that just isn't the FFE.

jmueller065 said:

Actually I think that is a design flaw with all of the current Focus line as you can't open any of the hatchbacks with a dead battery--its just more prevalent on the FFE because of the 12V issues it has.

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I remember one of the early things I practiced to do on my FFE was how to access the area under the hatchback from the interior by folding the back seats down, in case of such an emergency.
Also I keep my backup 12v LiOn jump starter unit under a back seat.

Omen87 said:

This is starting to seem a little ridiculous that after 5 model years of the FFE the same problem is plaguing the '17s as it did the '12s. I had to replace my 12v battery a few weeks ago. Although I think it was just a crap battery. It was barely a year old, but the battery had no labeling on it whatsoever outside of the warning sticker on the top and the date code.

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This mysterious 12v battery discharge issue was more common 2-3 years ago, which is when it happened fairly frequently on my 2014 FFE if I left it plugged into the EVSE charging station overnight unless I used value charge.
Then Ford came out with a firmware update (part of a service fix) that seemed to stop the problem on my FFE for the past almost 2 years, so I figured it was fixed finally.
However recently about a month ago, the 12v battery on my FFE mysteriously discharged overnight out of the blue - it wasn't plugged into the EVSE and I had driven it the day before so the 12v battery was charged pretty well before that night. I had to fully charge the 12v battery with my external Sears 12v battery charger and haven't had the issue since then. But clearly it can still happen - just not as bad as a couple years ago before the firmware update and probably for a different reason.

I suspect intermittently something that runs off the 12v power doesn't shut down when its supposed to and without warning. The FFE can clearly monitor the 12v voltage and probably the current draw too - why can't it sense that something must not have turned off after a reasonable time the car is in "OFF" mode, and resort to an emergency charging of the 12v battery from the internal HV battery before the 12v battery discharges so far that it won't turn on the car? Or at least report the condition before the 12v battery is too low in a log that service personnel could use to help diagnosis the problem?

NightHawk said:

Omen87 said:

This is starting to seem a little ridiculous that after 5 model years of the FFE the same problem is plaguing the '17s as it did the '12s. I had to replace my 12v battery a few weeks ago. Although I think it was just a crap battery. It was barely a year old, but the battery had no labeling on it whatsoever outside of the warning sticker on the top and the date code.

Click to expand...

This mysterious 12v battery discharge issue was more common 2-3 years ago, which is when it happened fairly frequently on my 2014 FFE if I left it plugged into the EVSE charging station overnight unless I used value charge.
Then Ford came out with a firmware update (part of a service fix) that seemed to stop the problem on my FFE for the past almost 2 years, so I figured it was fixed finally.
However recently about a month ago, the 12v battery on my FFE mysteriously discharged overnight out of the blue - it wasn't plugged into the EVSE and I had driven it the day before so the 12v battery was charged pretty well before that night. I had to fully charge the 12v battery with my external Sears 12v battery charger and haven't had the issue since then. But clearly it can still happen - just not as bad as a couple years ago before the firmware update and probably for a different reason.

I suspect intermittently something that runs off the 12v power doesn't shut down when its supposed to and without warning. The FFE can clearly monitor the 12v voltage and probably the current draw too - why can't it sense that something must not have turned off after a reasonable time the car is in "OFF" mode, and resort to an emergency charging of the 12v battery from the internal HV battery before the 12v battery discharges so far that it won't turn on the car? Or at least report the condition before the 12v battery is too low in a log that service personnel could use to help diagnosis the problem?

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Before I replaced my battery, I never once got the warning notification or text message that the 12v battery was low. I double checked to make sure that those notifications were turned on in MyFord Mobile and they were. MFM just seems to be fairly unreliable.

jmueller065 said:

Sure if you were buying a production car. Even after 5 years (first FFE was 2012) the FFE is still a prototype and kind of hand built--they still only build 2 or 3 a shift, I'd bet they still have engineers walk the line when they build them etc.

Its a house of cards that Ford assembles and sells to us "beta testers". I think your perspective is simply wrong: You are expecting the high quality of a big 3 car where nothing goes wrong in thousands of cars built...that just isn't the FFE.

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I guess it was just a semantic difference, then. What you describe exactly captures what I call a "manufacturing defect" and "poor quality assurance". A bug, to me, is a problem arising from a design flaw that affects every model identically.

I similarly would not call anything a prototype or beta, which is being offered to customers as a commercial product. Volume of production is irrelevant to me, as long as it is greater than zero.

ghiebert said:

I similarly would not call anything a prototype or beta, which is being offered to customers as a commercial product. Volume of production is irrelevant to me, as long as it is greater than zero.

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I have to agree. Any vehicle sold by an OEM to a customer as a normal car, should come with those same expectations. There was no mention of a Beta, prototype, etc. at purchase. Nor was there any waiver stating it wouldn't be a reliable car.

But unfortunately, with such a unique, low volume vehicle, it certainly won't have the resources or data behind it, like most vehicles.

Tesla seems to get away with the Beta mentality a bit for, for some reason. Probably because of it being an underdog startup, and the customers being early adopters.

NightHawk said:

jmueller065 said:

I remember one of the early things I practiced to do on my FFE was how to access the area under the hatchback from the interior by folding the back seats down, in case of such an emergency.
Also I keep my backup 12v LiOn jump starter unit under a back seat.

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I keep my LiOn jump starter in my glove box. It fits in the slot where the manual is supposed to go.

It was very sad to read that a 2017 had a dead 12V battery. I remember the problems so well with the 2012. And the firmware update did fix the problem in general. I would have thought by now Ford would have this under control. Something stupid probably slipped into the code and there will be a recall to fix it.

On the 12V battery - Ford isn't the only one with the problem. All early Teslas had exactly the same issue. Tesla replaced a ton of 12V batteries. And now, none are replaced. Although, I think nobody expects those batteries to last that magic 5 years they do in an ICE. And the advantage at Tesla, they probably found a batch of bad batteries and some software issue. It was easy to fix the software problem - just push another update to everybody. Not so easy for all the other car companies, including Ford.

Unless we are engineers with all the data, it is impossible to understand why electric cars have so much trouble with 12V batteries. All anybody outside of that business can do is guess. There are probably a lot of different reasons.

My guess - the cars all rely on 12V ICE car parts, the radio, lights, switches, wipers, seat heaters... everything. There is something different about the way an ICE charges a 12V battery (as in there is probably a ton of wasted electricity generated that keeps the battery at virtually 100% all the time). And an electric car does a slow burn drain on the battery constantly. The battery charger software is probably too smart and doesn't keep piling electricity on the battery - so it drops a lot farther than in an ICE, or the battery cycles between drain and charge a lot more frequently. And that is just hard on lead acid batteries. And the real solution is to just use the high voltage battery for everything (there has to be some technical reason they don't do that).

There is something wrong with the way a BEV manages that 12V battery. I don't think this is just a Ford problem - it is a much larger issue.