Hey, fellow hybrid owners! I have a problem. On July 1st I rear-ended another vehicle with my 2010 Fusion Hybrid. No airbag deployment, and I was able to drive the car to a body repair shop, where they proceeded to do about $7K in front-end component R&R. No issue with the engine was identified, and I picked up the car last Friday at noon. In the next 24 hours, I drove it about 15 miles in total, of which approximately 5 were on the highway, with no problem. However, on Saturday afternoon, I got on the highway for about a 35 mile trip. Approximately 10 miles in to the trip, the joint performance of the gasoline engine and the battery pack started going off-nominal. The gas engine began reving in a periodic fashion, triggered by pressing the accelerator. At the peak of the rev, the charge indicator on the charge display (the up-pointing arrowhead at the top of the display) would brighten, and then in the "valley" of the rev, the down-pointing (discharge) arrow would light up. This coupled behavior went on for the rest of the trip, but steadily got more noticeable (in mathematical terms, the amplitude of the periodic function increased), and eventually, the charge level for the battery pack dropped to zero. I didn't make it to my destination; trying to go uphill to reach a residence in San Francisco, the engine died. I was able to get it started again and got the car over to the curb. Flash forward to today. The car was towed back to the body shop, and they informed me that this afternoon they ran some diagnostics and got no error codes, and then road tested the vehicle without any recurrence of the problem. So, my question: has anybody ever experienced this kind of joint gas engine/battery pack failure? Thanks... whabbear@comcast.net
