Stop Safely Now Warning

[phototrek]

Happened to me twice. Once getting off the freeway on a 2-lane offramp going about 75mph. The sound of the alert really confused me and made me wonder what the car was actually trying to tell me. I pulled over on the shoulder, and by the time I took out the manual and found the mention in the booklet, the car would start again. That was at about 5k miles.

A month or so later, wife called me that the car died on her like this at a red light. I could hear the honking in the background. Fortunately, it came back to life quickly. No error codes.

Car is now due for its 10k maintenance, will see if they find anything - but I have low hopes.

 

[firewired]

For me I am growing more concerned that this is a widespread potential safety issue that isn't being apparently aggressively pursued. Catastrophic things can happen with a car dying and becoming inoperable during driving. Thank god no one has reported any injuries. In my case the car died at an extremely busy intersection during rush hour, and with the kids in he car I really felt like I had a high risk of being rear-ended. After several minutes I was able to get the car to restart. After two days at the dealer they find that there were no codes thrown, and that "I am good to go," and should bring it back if it happens again. I called Ford customer service EV Division and they had no other suggestions. Something happened, something happened to all who have reported here. There are not that many Focus EVs and there are a lot of separate incidents with people reporting the same issue. It is just scary that this is not apparently being more aggressively pursued when someone brings in a vehicle that has an incident, and each one seems to be treated as an isolated incident rather than a systemic problem. With so many reporting the same malfunction there has to be a systemic glitch that hopefully if "focused" on they could come up with I an easy fix. I really love my EV Focus, I have had the wait an see attitude, but I am beginning to think the only way to get this seriously looked, and make sure it is a priority is report my incident. Otherwise there are not that many Focus EVs and it might be quite some time before there is motivation to find out what the systemic issue is effecting so many of us. I don't want to look back with regret after me or someone else gets injured when the car dies and I didn't do my part and report it as a possible issue.

I am going to file a NHTSA report on their website, and would ask those that also had "events" happen to consider doing likewise. Their website link is: https://www-odi.nhtsa.dot.gov/VehicleComplaint/index.xhtml

 

[jmueller065]

For me I am growing more concerned that this is a widespread potential safety issue that isn't being apparently aggressively pursued.

My opinion: I think your fears are a bit excessive: (I'll add this too: don't be offended at my opinion, it is just that an opinion)
- The FFE has the best crash test results of ANY Focus--better than the normal ICE Focus, and the ST. Thus if you are rear-ended the likelihood of you and your passengers walking away is pretty high. (You do have a big battery between your passengers and the colliding car to the rear to take the brunt of the collision!)
- Your logic is somewhat based on a real production car (like the ICE Focus--Ford built over 1 Million of them last year worldwide!). The FFE is technically NOT a production car considering there is only ~1000 out in the wild right now (they slow the line down and engineers walk each car through the process; they only build 4 or 5 per SHIFT--that does NOT sound like a production car to me).
- The FFE is something completely new to Ford and they are still learning the ropes (granted they have hybrids and have gained experience building them but electric only is a new animal to them).
- Its possible that the problems you (and other FFE's) have had that generated no codes have no codes to assign to them (e.g. no codes exist for that problem!). Lets think about this for a minute: A car has a list of codes of things that can go wrong. This means someone had to come up with the list of things that can go wrong--in many cases before any of those things have gone wrong (failure analysis). It is possible that there are specific cases that weren't thought of and thus no codes available...

In addition I don't think the FFE is a compliance car--like above: Its their first and they are taking the time to get the bugs out. Considering that the manufacturers have to get the mpg up to that magic 54 mpg in a few years everyone will be building lots of BEV's!

again, just my $0.02

P.S. I'm finding that 4 of 5 cars per shift maddening! I'm still waiting for my FFE to be built--this is week 10 with no new info available!

 

[firewired]

For me I am growing more concerned that this is a widespread potential safety issue that isn't being apparently aggressively pursued.

My opinion: I think your fears are a bit excessive: (I'll add this too: don't be offended at my opinion, it is just that an opinion)
- The FFE is something completely new to Ford and they are still learning the ropes (granted they have hybrids and have gained experience building them but electric only is a new animal to them).
- Its possible that the problems you (and other FFE's) have had that generated no codes have no codes to assign to them (e.g. no codes exist for that problem!). Lets think about this for a minute: A car has a list of codes of things that can go wrong. This means someone had to come up with the list of things that can go wrong--in many cases before any of those things have gone wrong (failure analysis). It is possible that there are specific cases that weren't thought of and thus no codes available...

I appreciate your opinion, but strongly (and respectfully) disagree. I think this is without a doubt a saftey issue. I know that I am safety conscious, I am an Emergency Physician and see othe results of accidents daily. I like you was very happy to see the great NHTSA crash test results. Though, I think that the best way to survive a crash is to not be in one in the first place. There is no way to avoid a crash when your car becomes dead on the road, or even worse as some have reported while driving. All you are then is helpless, and luck is the only thing keeping you from a crash.

I agree with you and think that you make my point. The Focus EV is a low production vehicle, that is new to the market. I would say that may make all the intermittent reports of system errors by Focus EV owners more easily drowned out by issues with higher volume vehicles. I can tell you from my experience there was minimal interest payed to the issue after they could not find an error code, even after I called Ford directly myself. I think that the fact that many of us are reporting the same error, we should all speak up to make sure the error is investigated and resolved. It is better to be taken care of early before something bad happens to someone.

With that in mind I would respectfully ask those that have experienced the error to consider taking the few minutes it takes to make a report. I am not trying to drum up hysteria, I just hope hat people would put down only what happened to them, so that we can know exactly how many Forcus EV owners this is effecting and can all do our part to make sure there is the impetus to spend the time and effort to get it resolved early rather than later. The link is: https://www-odi.nhtsa.dot.gov/VehicleComplaint/index.xhtml

 

[jmueller065]

I am an Emergency Physician and see othe results of accidents daily.

Ah yes you'd have a rather unique perspective that most of us wouldn't!

I also don't think I made my point very clear either: My point was that I bet its being looked at (even if you got the brush off from both the dealer and the EV line at Ford). Looking at my spreadsheet I made about failures (see the "Stop Safely Now Stats" thread here): 10 or more failures in the FFE is a 1% (or more likely higher) failure rate*--you can guarantee they are looking at it! And they won't crank up production from 4 or 5 per shift until they can get that failure rate to a much much lower value.

The real question is: If they find a fix for these issues will there be a recall or just a TSB (a "silent recall" as its been known as).

* = The failure rate is probably higher than 1%--probably like 5% or more given that not everyone posts their problems here (although I'd guess everyone would post on myfordmobile.com since it is kind of part of the car).

 

[WattsUp]

I'm not saying don't file problems with Ford yourself, but considering the thing has a cellular data connection and can report its battery charge whenever we like, remotely start, turn on the heater, cook breakfast, etc.... I wonder how much telemetry Ford is already collecting automatically?

Ford may already know exactly who/what/when/where and how each of these events has occurred. Privacy issues aside, I would be sort of disappointed if they didn't. I want them to be monitoring everything these cars do and learning exactly how they behave "in the wild".

 

[dmen]

I thought I saw a post a few months ago that had phone/email contact info for Ford's electric division, but I can't seem to find it now. Does anyone have that handy?
My car has been at the shop since Monday morning, and I don't feel like they are giving it a full effort. They started out well- confirmed an error code, tried in vain to replicate the warning with 2 drives, spoke with HQ electric team, and followed instructions to check "harness connections", but didn't find anything loose. Since nothing was loose, they were going to stop there and give it back to me. I told them that if the problem occurred twice for me in 2 days, and the underlying issue was not identified, I am positive it will happen again. They then offered to have a tech drive it home last night, 50 miles each way, and see if it happens to him. Not sure why but that never happened, and it looks like my car's just sat on their lot all day. Getting updates is like pulling teeth. I have given them the diagnoses listed by others here, but they don't seem to think those are relevant in my case. I suppose if no progress is made I'll pick it up and stay off the highway for a few weeks. Assuming I get another SSN, I'll take it to another electric-authorized dealer/servicer. Would love to hear any recs for a good Ford service center in the Chicago area!

 

[jeffand]

The problem is these cars are so new and few are on the road. So when an issue pops up it its not in the trouble shooting procedure the tech is at a loss on what to due next. I heard of Ford installing a data logger in the car to record the vehicles opperating conditions. Its like a black box on an aircraft. Intermittant problems are the hardest to track down.

 

[dmen]

Just an update on my case, wherein I had 2 SSN messages causing loss of power apparently triggered by coming to a stop. Service center had my car for 7 days. The car gave a code which basically meant a sensor detected excessive resistance somewhere in the high voltage system and triggered the warning/shutdown. But it didn't say where the resistance originated. Apparently the car would have to be in the disabled state to be able to determine where the problem was located, and it had been running ok when I had it towed. They never definitively found the cause, but they (service team and engineers via email) think a loose or ill-fitting sensor connection was not noticed by the tech but nonetheless re-set properly when he checked them. Anyway, they checked every connection, drove the car for about 100 miles without getting the error, then checked all the connections again. And they applied some kind of enhancer fluid to the connections.
I have to say I'm a bit tense every time I come to an offramp or red light, but getting more relaxed with each passing trip without incident.
The fact that my car was otherwise driving perfectly when I got the warning helps reassure me. It seems like other folks who had more serious issues with hv battery, PCM malfunction, etc, had other symptoms like humming, change in responsiveness, changing battery SOC. etc. Time will tell.

 

[phototrek]

And it happened again (10,500 miles). I was entering a parking lot, going through the mandatory drain bump, at a pretty good speed while gently on the brakes. Boom. Last time was going very fast on the freeway while slowing down (over a bump), this time much slower speed but also on brake and a big bump. There has to be some correlation...

 

[jmueller065]

For everyone that has had this problem I'm curious about the "vintage" of your FFE.

It appears that there are a lot of 2012 FFE's with SSN's and a couple of 2013.

For those of you with 2013 FFE's that have had one or more SSN messages: could you check your window sticker and see what "job" your FFE is? (It looks like Ford has made a running change as my FFE that will be built in May is a Job #2).

My thought is that with the vehicle reporting data back to Ford I'd hope that they would incorporate more and more fixes in the assembly process for many of these common problems. Thus a Job #1 2013 FFE should have fewer problems than the 2012's and a Job #2 2013 FFE should have even fewer problems than the #1 2013. Note that this improvement is in Ford's best interest selling vehicles so I"m not just sitting here in dreamland hoping that my car will be solid...! LOL

 

[zech80]

To jmueller065
You the people's reaction to this is excessive. Try pushing your brand new car off a highway across two lanes of traffic while cars whip by. Thank god it was me and not my wife who normally drives the car. She coulda been killed. Ford needs to figure out what's wrong with these cars before someone gets killed. It's happened to mine 3 times and I have less than 2500 miles on it. I'm pretty pissed about this because now my wife won't drive the car because she's afraid!

 

[kmaluo]

Anyone try getting a refund or lease cancellation from Ford over this?

 

[Vach]

When it's the most recent report of this on these forums?

 

[jpc1818]

Happened to me again, twice over this past weekend.
Emailed ford, and the first day they can take it and provide a loaner is in a week.
I am getting pretty pissed off about Fords meager attempts to fix this problem.
The dealer told me last time that they have "no idea" whats wrong for the first 4 days.
Obviously, they did not fix it.
I understand problems arise, especially with new technology, but really?

If they cannot get this problem addressed, the lemon law will apply for many of us.

 

[firewired]

Happened to me again, twice over this past weekend.

How many miles do you have now?

 

[Vach]

Happened to me again, twice over this past weekend.
Emailed ford, and the first day they can take it and provide a loaner is in a week.
I am getting pretty pissed off about Fords meager attempts to fix this problem.
The dealer told me last time that they have "no idea" whats wrong for the first 4 days.
Obviously, they did not fix it.
I understand problems arise, especially with new technology, but really?

This is getting a little ridiculous. I'm having problems with my decision to purchase at this point. A car this experiment shouldn't spontaneously stop working this frequently. Blah to Ford...

 

[firewired]

very glad I did just the two year lease.

 

[jpc1818]

Happened to me again, twice over this past weekend.

How many miles do you have now?

Im at 4k miles right now.
I have an appointment to take the car back to the dealer this week.
Lets see if i can get some resolution!

 

[Chuck]

Ugh. I just leased my 2013 FFE a couple weeks ago. Haven't had this issue so far, but I'm worried now.

I worked in the car biz for a few years in a previous career. What I would recommend to those of you having issues is to familiarize yourself with your states' lemon laws. Document everything. Get your vehicle into the dealer every time you have this issue.

In my state, if your new car has been in the shop greater than four times for the same issue, or been in the shop for more than 20 business days in a year, the manufacturer has to buy your car back or give you a new one.