2016 FFE - 12V Battery died

[J_PATT]

I have a 2016 FFE with about 3000 miles on it and I took a trip to San Diego earlier this week and left it in the garage hooked up to the 120v Ford charger. Well when I went to leave for work after being gone for only 3 days, the damn thing was dead, no power to turn on the screens or illuminate the ring. So off to the dealer it went.. hoping to find out what happened.

 

[NightHawk]

I had some cases last year where when my FFE was left hooked up to the 120v charger the 12v battery could be drained.
Fortunately I have a good external 12v battery charger in my garage as well as an emergency 12v battery jump charger unit I keep in the car. All I had to do was charge up the 12v battery and then the car lighted back up and started fine.
After that I didn't leave the FFE's charger plugged in longer than needed to charge up the car and I got a 12v plug in accessory to monitor the 12v battery voltage.

A few months ago however, I took my FFE to the local Ford dealer for one of the recall procedures and as part of that they updated the car's firmware to the latest version and that seems to have included it being better at keeping the 12v battery charged and not drained when sitting for days without turning it on. Since that, I haven't had any more 12v battery drain issues and the battery voltage stays at a nominal 12.3V even after nearly a week without driving it.

 

[Jamez]

What troubles me is that most of what I read about the 12V discharge is in the sub 2014 models... his is the 2016.

I bought a plug-in 12v cigarette meter, I'll put it in the car now.
Thanks for letting us know!

 

[J_PATT]

I got it back from the dealership yesterday afternoon and they told me that there was a TSB to reprogram the PCM and the TCU. I guess we will see if that fixes it. He did mention the transmission recall but since the parts are not available told me we would schedule something later this year.

 

[javi_ucsd]

2014 FFE, purchased Nov 2014. 14,650 miles.
12 V battery issue

I charged the car Monday morning (yesterday). Monday evening, it didn't start. Screen said battery problem, check manual, then screen went blank. Nothing turned on anymore in the car. I checked the 12V battery voltage and it was 6.5 V. I jumped it and was able to start the car. Tuesday morning (today), 12V battery was dead again. Jumped it again and drove to dealer. They put in a new battery and a new wiring harness (maybe that was the problem that drained the battery?) that had a recall notice on. I am going to pick it up later today. They said all is good. We shall see. Not sure on what version firmware the car has. I can check later.

 

[davideos]

The wiring harness recall was for the high voltage battery. Your dealer also likely installed a software update to fix a problem with the 12V battery getting drained...so that will prevent future issues other than the 12V battery going bad.

The weekend before I took my car in for the recall work, I got an alert at noon from MFM that my 12V battery was low. I went to use the car 5 hours later and the car did some goofy things when I tried to start it. I measured the battery at 9.5V. I put it on the charger and it recovered and have had no further issue. The 12V battery should last another year if no serious damage was done. I have 3 Ford vehicles and it seems Ford batteries only last 3 years before they die (my observation) ...regardless of the number of months they are rated at. Anyway, something in the car must have kept running after parking the car the day before. One time I had the radio stay on and had to pull the fuse to get it to shut off. There must have but something different this time because the nothing was apparently on.

One other time I drained the 12V battery because I forgot to put it into park. In this case, even though I shut the car off, the dash and other systems in the car were left on. That time, it was definitely my fault.

Anyway, you got a new battery out of it...so you should be good for another 3 years.

 

[triangles]

I have 3 Ford vehicles and it seems Ford batteries only last 3 years before they die (my observation) ...regardless of the number of months they are rated at.

My observation has been just the opposite my first car an 81 ford, the battery lasted 10 years. I replaced the battery in my 2000 ford when it was 9 years just because it was old. That battery lived on in my VW and went with the VW when I sold it.

 

[davideos]

My 1999 explorer battery lasted the longest, just after 3.5 years.
My 2010 Flex battery died at 2 years. Dealer replaced it and it lasted 2.5 years. At that point, although I could have received another at no cost, I ditched it and got a costco battery.
My 2012 Focus electric battery died at 2 years. Replaced under warranty. It now has 2 years on it and I hope it will last another year.

10 years is really good for a battery...almost unheard of. Anyway, I purposely wrote, "my observation" because everyone's use is different. If you make a lot of short trips, that will stress your battery more because it may not have time to replenish itself after starting your car. Being in a state of diminished charge is bad for the battery as it has an opportunity to sulfate. You might fair better if you drive longer distances between starts of your car. (Doesn't really explain the short life of the FFE 12V battery as observed by some on this site).

Anyway, my trips are a mix of short and long...mostly short, so I'm going to be harder on a battery in general; however, with that said, I've had better luck with costco (my observation).

 

[NightHawk]

You can get much improved 12v battery life on cars and trucks if you use a cheap 12v battery maintainer device in the garage. Especially if the car/truck isn't driven daily.

 

[triangles]

I guess I have good luck with batteries here in northern Ohio. Not to jinx myself but the battery I replaced in my 2000 after 9 years is now 8 years old. I never expected to have that car this long. I ran my 12V dead in the FFE once due to a fault in my EVSE. After that I've never had a problem. I think the 12V problems with the FFE have been due to ford allowing pumps and other stuff to run solely off the 12V without turning on the DC-DC converter to keep the 12V from running dead. I haven't confirmed but I believe Ford finally fixed that with the latest software upate.

 

[J_PATT]

I usually drive the car daily except when I travel. Since they reprogrammed it, I haven't had a single issue. Except the crazy lack of range when it is 25 degrees out.

 

[evcar340]

I too have just found my 2012 FFE batteries dead (after two months of not driving), I store it for the winter inside. In years past the main car charger was put on every few weeks to charge up main batteries. My question is now that I will have to charge the 12V battery, can the main car charger be left on at the same time?

 

[triangles]

evcar340 There is absolutely no reason to leave the EVSE plugged in during storage. The lithium pack will only lose a few percent capacity if stored for an entire year. Who knows if it applies to the FFE (100% indicated charge is actually about 90% SOC.) but for some lithium batteries storing them at full capacity is actually harmful. The modem and various other electronics however present a constant but small draw on the 12V battery. If you are storing it over the winter all you need is a 12V float/trickle charger to keep the 12V from dying or simply unhook the 12V battery.

To answer your question you probably do not want both a 12V charger and the EVSE plugged in at the same time. I highly doubt the car would be harmed but the 12V charger might be. The DC-DC converter is capable of high current at up to about 14.5V. This could potentially harm a 12V charger depending on what it does when it sees the battery go from 12.6V to 14.5V. Most dumb trickle chargers put out a little over 13V constantly. I'm not sure if the extra voltage supplied by the DC-DC converter would instantly fry your trickle charger but I can't imagine it would very good for it.

 

[Texas FFE]

I parked my 2013 FFE with a low charge on a cold night and forgot to plug it in. The next day the 12V battery was dead. I don't think I left anything on to drain the 12V battery. There was still 14% charge on the high voltage battery when I got the 12V battery woke up. I haven't drained the 12V battery before or since but I usually plug the car in when I get home. So it looks like the parasitic power drains will drain the 12V battery if the high voltage battery is low and your not on an L2 charger.

 

[triangles]

Texas, Have you had all the recalls / firmware updates applied. There was a software fix in early 2015 IIRC that solved the dead 12V problem as you described. If the fix was applied to your 2013 FFE already it's possible the 12V was already degraded from being drained too many times before the fix was applied and the cold just finished it off.