hybridbear

To reach 400 degrees of steering angle, the wheel must be at almost full lock. I can't recall the exact number now, but full lock was about 430 degrees, I think. This means that the 400 degrees that he used as the basis for his conclusion is when I was making a U turn at less than 5 MPH. Steering angle when the surge happens in the regen transition is about 1/4 turn of the steering wheel.

Ron Powell was the CSM who called. His customer service was terrible. I tried to explain to him that the data used by the engineer to reach his conclusion was incorrect. I asked him, how can we fix this inaccuracy? He said, "Ford stands by our engineers. We will not review this any further. The engineer felt his data was accurate & that is the position of Ford." I'd encourage everyone with this issue to do an NHTSA report. If you have a supportive dealer, like ours, I'd also ask that you please have the dealer report this issue to Ford. I will be contacting a lemon law attorney. I have data that proves that this behavior is not normal & isn't present in all vehicles. But Ford doesn't want to listen.

This is why Tesla offers an air suspension that will remember GPS coordinates of when you raise it & it will raise automatically to prevent this.

I received a phone call from someone at Ford this morning. They said that the engineer's decision is final & that Ford will not investigate this any further. He said the case is closed. I tried to tell him that the information written by the engineer is factually inaccurate. He said that Ford stands behind their engineers & they will not change their decision.

This post contains more info: http://fordfusionhybridforum.com/topic/9689-road-trip-observations-with-torque-pro/page-2?do=findComment&comment=92301

There was no noticeable feeling in how the car drove, just a sound. I could see it on my tablet with Torque Pro. We always use 87 or 89 octane.

When braking on an uneven surface the tires may momentarily lose contact with the road surface. This could lead to a tire locking up when it is not in contact with the pavement. This would trigger the ABS to kick in, removing regen. This is normal behavior. It doesn't matter if you're going straight or turning for this feeling on rough pavement. You will feel a lurch in this situation because the tire(s) are losing contact with the pavement. Tires cannot provide stopping power when they are airborne. This is not the issue we are discussing here. Let's please not confuse this "operating as designed" behavior with what is described in this thread. When braking and turning, the "operating as designed" behavior appears to be that when the difference in wheel speed reaches a certain threshold, the car reduces regen braking & blends in the friction brakes. This transition should be seamless & imperceptible. Since our car had the 14S21 & 15E03 recalls completed this transition has become perceptible. This is the issue. The car is "operating as designed" to reduce regen while turning, the problem is that there is now a momentary delay between when regen is reduced and when the friction brakes are engaged. There shouldn't be a delay. The transition should be smooth & unnoticeable. Had any of us noticed that regen braking goes away when turning before this? No, we hadn't. That shows that the transition was working properly for everyone in the beginning. It's only recently that these issues have begun to be reported. Either way, I'm done with it. We'll be getting rid of the Fusion next summer when the Focus Electric lease ends & I will never buy another Ford product. Ford is now on my black list of automobile manufacturers, along with Toyota for their stupid promotion of fuel cells.

There is no change in surface. The surging happens on perfectly smooth, dry pavement. It would not be surprising or an issue if it happened on uneven surfaces. It is an issue because it happens on flat, smooth, dry surfaces.

Laziness. I didn't want to take all the foam out, just to have to put it all back in a few months later. So I decided to leave a few pieces & monitor temps to see if it was okay. The foam pieces also tend to tear when being removed & I'd like to avoid having to cut new ones each year. So keeping as many as possible in the grille saves foam. Plus, that foam isn't biodegradable, so any that is thrown away will just sit in a landfill & not break down.

I was turning a corner with the Ford engineer. Normally when driving & turning from one street to another I do most of my braking before I begin to turn the wheel, while turning my foot is moving from the brake to the accelerator, and then I'm accelerating before I straighten out the steering wheel. In this scenario I don't feel the surge because there's no need to transition away from regen because I'm not braking with the steering wheel turned. With the Ford engineer I kept my foot on the brake all the way until the car stopped. Most commonly I notice it when turning into a parking lot. In that case I begin braking while going straight, but continue braking with the steering wheel turned. Since I'm braking with the wheel turned, the car must blend in the friction brakes to maintain stability. With the Ford engineer we drove around the cul de sac behind the dealer. I would turn from W 96th St on to Aldrich Ave S. I'd get my speed up to about 20-25 MPH before beginning to brake & turn. I would keep my foot on the brake from just before I started turning the steering wheel all the way until the car came to a stop on Aldrich Ave. I was braking gently, being careful to not exceed the regen limit. I'm not sure how steering wheel angle is measured, but to turn a corner you definitely aren't turning the steering wheel inside the car 400 degrees. Perhaps he's referring to when I made a U turn in a parking lot & had to crank the wheel all the way with the 400 degrees comment. I spoke to the SA on the phone & he said that the case is closed as far as Ford is concerned & that the dealership has been instructed to not do anything else about my concerns. He said that I should contact Ford directly if I am not satisfied. Hello... @FordService... are you there??? I sure miss Ashley. She was our first FordService rep on the forum & she seemed to be the only one who actually cared & bothered to try. Remember all the things Ashley found out for us?? Oil viscosity, detailed technical explanations of how things worked... The cynical side of me thinks that she did too good a job of providing customer service so Ford took her away.

Has anyone with a non-nav car updated to 3.8 to see if this data is removed like Kim said it would be?

Over the weekend we did a ~525 mile road trip to visit some friends up north. The ambient temp was about 55 F on the way north, with calm winds. We managed about 47 MPGe doing 65+ on the interstate the entire distance. Coming home we were driving directly into a 25-30 MPH sustained wind for about 125 miles and barely managed to crack 40 MPGe at 65 MPH. For the part of the trip where we were driving into the strong wind the car could barely get 37 MPG. Once we got out of the flat part of the state & into the rolling hills of central MN the MPG increased because the wind speed died down due to the landscape changes. Similar to the results above, the TFT reached its peak temp within the first hour of driving. With a lower ambient temp it peaked at about 168 F this time, though and stabilized at 165 F. The ICE coolant temp stabilized at 192-193 F for our drive. The traction motor coil temp still reached 190 F, even with the cooler outside temperatures. Coming home the ambient temp was in the 70s so we were using the AC a little bit. Having the grille shutters partially open for the AC caused the TFT temp to only reach about 142-144 F on the trip home. The ICE coolant temp was 185-188 F instead of surpassing 190 F. The traction motor coil temp didn't exceed 175 F. Once winter ended I removed all the foam from the lower grille, and most of it from the upper grille, but I did leave 3 pieces in the upper grille to slightly reduce the airflow to the ICE radiator. Even on the hottest drive we made with the ICE on this summer (ambient temps 95+ F) the ICE coolant didn't exceed 200 F.

Ford's complete incompetence at repairing vehicles, see this post.

The dealerships can't help either. They also do not have any ability to diagnose or suggest repairs. All they can do is send data off to Ford & wait. The lack of competence is ridiculous! The SA at the dealer sent me this message this morning from Ford Corp: The vehicle cannot be operating as designed when this behavior was introduced by the 15E03 & 14S21 recalls & when other identical vehicles do not behave this way.

This was done in the interest of maintaining civility. Many of you have commented about how this forum is one of the most civil & courteous you have ever seen. GrySql & I want to keep it that way. We are glad to see the results of ptjones' testing with regard to ethanol free gas, but we don't need to start arguing about temperatures & grille covers. Thanks everyone for your cooperation & assistance to ensure that this forum continues to be a courteous & welcoming community.

It always recognizes my e-mail & password to sign in, it just annoyingly signs us out a lot now...

We had reached 60 MPGe Lifetime & about 50% EV miles in the 15,000 miles in the Energi, then we took a road trip to visit friends up north last weekend and lowered it drastically... Oh well...

The BECM monitors the current flow in & out of the HVB. It uses that data to estimate the HVB SOC, based on voltage. But the SOC of a battery can't really be measured until the battery has been at rest for a time. When the car is off, the HVB is disconnected & at rest. Then when the car is turned on again, the BECM can reassess HVB SOC based on voltage. It's common in the Energi to see something like this. If you drive using a large portion of the HVB & then turn the car off, the HVB SOC will usually drop while the car is off. Conversely, if you plug in the car & charge immediately after you have been driving, before the HVB can rest & reset to a lower SOC, until it shows around 95-97% and then stop charging, the HVB will change to showing 100% SOC once the HVB has the chance to rest.

Neat videos of Tesla Autopilot in action. I was talking with some Tesla owners last night at our local Plug-in Vehicle Owners Circle meeting & a few of them had been able to download 7.0 yesterday & test out Autopilot on the way to the meeting. One was downloading it while his car was parked outside & was looking forward to testing it out on the way home.

It appears that Toyota is copying Ford's driver coaching as well. Notice the scores for acceleration, cruising & braking on the dash... http://www.hybridcars.com/2016-toyota-prius-specifications-revealed/4-2_tft/

The new Prius eCVT looks strikingly similar in design to the HF35 eCVT in our cars... Right? http://www.hybridcars.com/2016-toyota-prius-specifications-revealed/transaxle_cutaway_3/ http://www.hybridcars.com/2016-toyota-prius-specifications-revealed/transaxle_cutaway/ http://www.hybridcars.com/2016-toyota-prius-specifications-revealed/transaxle_cutaway-2/

Has anyone else had issues recently with Sync Destinations signing out? For months my app stayed signed in, which was great. Recently, it seems that every time I try to use the app I have to sign in again. This makes it a hassle to use. I'm using an iPhone 5s running iOS 7.1.2.

Very good news! It's neat to see that about 350 employees are using the 145 EVSEs that Ford installed.

Ford Owner shows the 3.8 update for the Focus Electric, but not for the Fusion Energi. Both are MY 2013 vehicles. I sent a PM to Rebecca with the Fusion Energi VIN. I wonder if I could use the files for the Focus Electric to update both cars, or if the files are different since they are different vehicles with different features...

I'm listening to it less now than a few weeks ago. We only have one local Spanish FM radio station in the Twin Cities. They used to broadcast an analog signal on their own frequency. However, a few weeks ago they switched to being an additional HD channel of a local FM country station. The antenna for that station is far away northwest of the Twin Cities & thus the reception is now very poor :rant2: in the part of the Twin Cities where we live. I can still listen to that station on my phone via the TuneIn app, but I'm not going to do that in the car because of the complication & time. Since that change I'm spending less time listening to the radio in the car since this was the main radio station that I listened to.