Stop Safely Now

[mdashali]

I got my SSN day before yesterday morning within 2 miles from my home. I tried power cycling and it went away only to come back as soon as I start picking up speed. Interestingly it let me slowly roll without any problem for quite some distance but the moment I try to pick normal speed it come back on and regenerative brake kicks in and stalls the car. I got the car towed to the dealer and he had it for 2 days and today I was told they need to order a harness that will take 2-3 weeks. Coincidentally, all this happened the after I got my car in for the six months service. Not sure what they do for the service other than visual checks of fluid levels and rotate tires.

Anyways, I filed a complaint with NHTSA website and found that there was recall for 2012-24 FFE. But Ford website said that my car VIN doesn't fall in that recall campaign. How are you guys dealing with Ford? They are giving me a rental car but it is not the same. I can't use the carpool in Bay Area, CA and I am loosing about an 1 hour everyday in additional commute time.

I have seen some posts about SSN and software update. Can we have everybody report in their experience if this is already not captured? I will start with mine.

MY: 2014 (March)
Mileage: 9700
No. of occurrence: 3 times repeatedly
Time of day: Morning fully charged
Distance driven: ~2 miles
Fix: With dealer for a new harness as of 8/10
Notes: 6 months service done a day before

 

[NightHawk]

Have you had the dealer's service techs perform the TSB-13-9-19 on it?
TSB 13-9-19 – MODULE REPROGRAMMING FOR VARIOUS DTCS
FORD: 2012-2014 Focus
ISSUE: Some 2012-2014 Focus Electric vehicles may exhibit one or more of the following concerns, red triangle warning lamp and Stop Safely Now displayed in message center, illuminated wrench lamp with multiple diagnostic trouble codes (DTCs), illuminated ABS warning lamp with DTC C0044,12-volt battery experiencing a low state of charge when not connected to 120/240 volt Electric Vehicle Service Equipment (EVSE) for 2 or more days

 

[EVA]

From what I've read here, the fact that the dealer is ordering a harness is not related to the recall or reprogramming. There were two (?) other people that talked about the SSN being a wire harness connector problem. Their problems had nothing to do with software - they were purely mechanical / electrical. Yours sounds similar.

 

[davideos]

It seems that now, the SSNs are an actual physical problem. I just got my car back after 40 days in the shop. Rental fees for the time was $1200 charged to Ford. It cost me about $140 in gas. In my case, the batteries were in need of service. From what I can tell, my batteries were crated up and sent to Ford. They repaired them and returned and installed. The unfortunate thing is...SSN covers to wide an array of issues.

 

[NightHawk]

Should 2014 FFEs built since March 2014 already have the patches/updates including TSB 13-9-19 for these past known issues?
Or do they do the TSB updates only if a problem is noted no matter how recent the car was built?
Anyway to tell if your car already has a specific TSB update built-in already or not?

 

[jmueller065]

Yes FFE's built since (most likely) October 2013 will have the SSN fix applied (the SSN recall happened Sept/Oct of 2013).

 

[mdashali]

It seems that now, the SSNs are an actual physical problem. I just got my car back after 40 days in the shop. Rental fees for the time was $1200 charged to Ford. It cost me about $140 in gas. In my case, the batteries were in need of service. From what I can tell, my batteries were crated up and sent to Ford. They repaired them and returned and installed. The unfortunate thing is...SSN covers to wide an array of issues.

Glad you got your ride back. Did the invoice any specific part number for reference? Hope you don't get to see the SSN ever again.

For me, I was offered a rental car through Enterprise and they happen to electric car in their stable - Leaf was the only option. At least I save on the gas but the killer is the lack of Carpool sticker. In any case, I am missing my FFE more now that I am driving Leaf for the past 3 days.

 

[mdashali]

Yes FFE's built since (most likely) October 2013 will have the SSN fix applied (the SSN recall happened Sept/Oct of 2013).

But I wonder what they did during the first free service that could have caused it - reflashed a wrong FW?

 

[jwilson165]

SSN happened to me about 3 weeks ago. dealer couldnt figure out the problem at first and told me a new battery had been ordered. apparently, they received a call from Ford who diagnosed the issue as the harness. ive only had it back for 2 days, but so far, so good.

 

[davideos]

Glad you got your ride back. Did the invoice any specific part number for reference? Hope you don't get to see the SSN ever again.

Haven't received another SSN since. The artifact I'm seeing now is a very non-linear state of charge. In other words, the battery capacity seems about the same, but the first 25% goes very quickly. The next 25% goes very slowly.

As for part numbers, the only things shown on the invoice are the crates to send the batteries back and forth...and a new 12V battery since that died while sitting there 40 days with no charge.

Regards

 

[NightHawk]

Glad you got your ride back. Did the invoice any specific part number for reference? Hope you don't get to see the SSN ever again.

The artifact I'm seeing now is a very non-linear state of charge. In other words, the battery capacity seems about the same, but the first 25% goes very quickly. The next 25% goes very slowly.

Interesting.
I may be seeing a similar thing with my new 2014 FFE.
A few nights ago, after a full charge to 100% I drove a couple miles to a local Home Depot store and back to my house for a round trip of 4 miles.
I expected from the measured energy expended (KwH) the HV battery should have only gone down to about 95% but the charging screen showed it went down to 91%.
However I get a more inline drop of battery percentage capacity with a longer 50mile round trip in comparison.

 

[davideos]

I've done some observations before looking at the Trip odometer and the percentage of charge and used to see that the first 10% would give about 1.6KWh. After the battery replacement, the first 10% gave about 1.9KWh. However, I quickly noticed that the next 10% was not nearly as fruitful; in fact, after 30 or 40%, I was right in line with 1.6KWh per 10% of discharge. Before the battery swap, as the battery discharged, the amount of power per 10% would go up and I'd end on about 17KWh on a nearly depleted battery. I haven't done this measurement again on the new battery yet, but I don't believe my battery is actually new. I think they just repaired whatever was wrong with it.

As for a quick short trip with 100% at the start of the trip, it is hard to compare. I believe that there are factors that influence the total charge...likely temperature and/or the method of charging (L1/L2). What I've seen while departing work with a full charge, the distance traveled before regen will work differs from day to day. Sometimes regen starts while still in my work parking lot. Other times, it doesn't begin till I'm a mile down the road. So although you see it drop to 91% when you believe it should be 94%, might be due to how much the car was actually charged.

 

[NightHawk]

In my local 4 mile roundtrip the other night starting with a 100% charge, the FFE's trip meter and trip log indicated I used 0.5KWh + 0.6KWH = 1.1KWh for the trip, with some regenerative coasting and braking.
But the battery percentage display was down to 91% when I got back home after the 4 mile roundtrip.
That doesn't seem right to me 9% for only 1.1KWh - I think it should have been more like 95% left.
The energy used display and miles in range left seemed reasonable in contrast, so I think there is some error in the battery percentage calculation, at least in the top 10-25%?

 

[Rogerschro]

In my local 4 mile roundtrip the other night starting with a 100% charge, the FFE's trip meter and trip log indicated I used 0.5KWh + 0.6KWH = 1.1KWh for the trip, with some regenerative coasting and braking.
But the battery percentage display was down to 91% when I got back home after the 4 mile roundtrip.
That doesn't seem right to me 9% for only 1.1KWh - I think it should have been more like 95% left.
The energy used display and miles in range left seemed reasonable in contrast, so I think there is some error in the battery percentage calculation, at least in the top 10-25%?

I'm new to all this electric KWh % stuff, so I may be way off, but could it be that the actual KW used is not a direct correlation to % of battery discharge? Maybe like ICE vehicles for MPG ave, the % battery used is averaged out per milage rather than actual energy used so a short range drive would not have enough data to represent actual KWh usage, thereby causing the system to use the default power estimates from the past logs. I've watched my est. range fluctuate up and down while driving and figured the charge on the battery would not be exactly as viewed on the screen, but close enough to get an idea of state of charge, if not an exact measurement.

 

[hybridbear]

I've done some observations before looking at the Trip odometer and the percentage of charge and used to see that the first 10% would give about 1.6KWh. After the battery replacement, the first 10% gave about 1.9KWh. However, I quickly noticed that the next 10% was not nearly as fruitful; in fact, after 30 or 40%, I was right in line with 1.6KWh per 10% of discharge. Before the battery swap, as the battery discharged, the amount of power per 10% would go up and I'd end on about 17KWh on a nearly depleted battery. I haven't done this measurement again on the new battery yet, but I don't believe my battery is actually new. I think they just repaired whatever was wrong with it.

As for a quick short trip with 100% at the start of the trip, it is hard to compare. I believe that there are factors that influence the total charge...likely temperature and/or the method of charging (L1/L2). What I've seen while departing work with a full charge, the distance traveled before regen will work differs from day to day. Sometimes regen starts while still in my work parking lot. Other times, it doesn't begin till I'm a mile down the road. So although you see it drop to 91% when you believe it should be 94%, might be due to how much the car was actually charged.

I see a fair bit of variation in the Fusion Energi where I can track data with Torque Pro. Sometimes a "full charge" is as high as 99.7% and sometimes as low as 97.0%. Both cases result in a full battery icon on the dash and 100% displayed as the SOC on the charge settings screen on MFT since the Displayed SOC reported by the car is 100% in either case.

Something similar likely happens with the Focus Electric.

In my local 4 mile roundtrip the other night starting with a 100% charge, the FFE's trip meter and trip log indicated I used 0.5KWh + 0.6KWH = 1.1KWh for the trip, with some regenerative coasting and braking.<br abp="734">But the battery percentage display was down to 91% when I got back home after the 4 mile roundtrip.<br abp="735">That doesn't seem right to me 9% for only 1.1KWh - I think it should have been more like 95% left.<br abp="736">The energy used display and miles in range left seemed reasonable in contrast, so I think there is some error in the battery percentage calculation, at least in the top 10-25%?

Remember that the display only truncates, it doesn't round. So 0.5 kWh is anywhere from 0.50 to 0.59999999. The Fusion Energi reports kWh to 8 decimal places and I assume that the Focus Electric does the same. I have been tracking select oft repeated trips in a spreadsheet and comparing the reported kWh & miles with the reported MPGe or Wh/mi and miles. The inaccuracy of having only 1 decimal place is highlighted there when I compare the calculated Wh/mi based on kWh & miles with the value reported by the car which uses all 8 decimal places that the car tracks (miles are also tracked by the car to 8 decimal places but only displayed with one decimal place on all screens available to the driver). Thus the Wh/mi reported on the MFM graph with 2 decimal places or the MPGe reported on the screen of the Fusion Energi to one decimal place is based on the highly accurate 8 decimal place measurements taken by the car and then truncated.

 

[NightHawk]

I see a fair bit of variation in the Fusion Energi where I can track data with Torque Pro. Sometimes a "full charge" is as high as 99.7% and sometimes as low as 97.0%. Both cases result in a full battery icon on the dash and 100% displayed as the SOC on the charge settings screen on MFT since the Displayed SOC reported by the car is 100% in either case.

Could the Torque android app work with a Ford Focus Electric too?
What do you need to add to the car to get it to work? Any details on this? Could provide more detailed info than the MyFord app does.

 

[hybridbear]

I see a fair bit of variation in the Fusion Energi where I can track data with Torque Pro. Sometimes a "full charge" is as high as 99.7% and sometimes as low as 97.0%. Both cases result in a full battery icon on the dash and 100% displayed as the SOC on the charge settings screen on MFT since the Displayed SOC reported by the car is 100% in either case.

Could the Torque android app work with a Ford Focus Electric too?
What do you need to add to the car to get it to work? Any details on this? Could provide more detailed info than the MyFord app does.

It does not unfortunately.

 

[Hugh]

I had my SSN occur last year at 5300 miles. Long time in the shop. Bummer but I loved the car and still do. My problem was the wiring harness, and once replaced, I am up to over 12,000 miles with no problems.