MeeLee

I did. The issue seemed to happen on one of two conditions: 1- Low 12V battery voltage, 2- cold outside. Both cause the battery to hit low voltage, before starting. The quickest solution is to turn on the car for a good 10 to 20 seconds, turn it off, and turn it on again. Second option, change the battery, or add a 12V Lithium battery (with 2Ohms resistor in series) in parallel to the 12v battery. The Li battery will keep the voltage at the terminals above 12v. A 12v Li ups battery goes for $37 on Amazon or Ebay. A 100W resistor goes for $2-3 on Amazon or Ebay. Third option would be to install a 1-3F capacitor on the battery. They go for $35 on Amazon or Ebay. I haven't tried this method. It should help with increasing CCA to the starter, but won't help voltage issues when the battery is below 12V.

From my experience fueling and driving rideshare well over 100k miles, most gas station fuels have the exact same mpg numbers within 1 to 2mpg. The ones that exceed is Shell (by 5%), and the one that lags is Chevron and Valero by -10% of the standard. I can only assume Chevron and Valero use more ethanol, and their gas definitely has more water coming out of the exhaust than any other. In other words, you pay for water. As far as octane levels go, they make sense in high compression, or turbocharged vehicles, or vehicles that run in very hot environments. In some cases atkinson engines as well. And even then, if the manual recommends 87 octane, the highest I'd be willing to go is 91. I wouldn't pay for 93.

I changed the cvt transmission fluid from my 2019 FFH at 105k miles to the Ford recommended oil, due to the fact that the cvt oil also lubricates the electric motor, so it's not regular transmission fluid. Cost me about $336, which includes $56 for the oil itself. The oil looked to be still in a good condition, meaning slightly off stock color. After the oil change mpg went from ~42.6 to ~43.6mpg, which is an average gain of 1MPG or ~2.5%. This indicates that the lubrication properties of the oil definitely degraded over time. Had I waited 20 to 50k miles, the oil would have been much darker. I would say, for hot south Florida weather, change the oil at 100k mile interval is a good idea. Next up spark plugs. I'll go with the dealer recommended 125-150k miles. usually you change them out every 100k miles, but the hybrid engine is usually kept under 2k rpm when driving (even on the highway), which means it has about 1/3rd longer life left compared to most other cars that regularly rev past 3k rpm.

The new mach e is interesting, They use the in-cabin sound through the entertainment system, as an outside sound. All it does is make an inline sound like a V-configuration. Adds some low end rumble. Ffh has it too, but it's not well noticeable (in cabin, not outside). When your HV battery wears out, the electric motor starts making more whizzing noises.

Depends on how much you use them. Theoretically, they should retain 75% of range before 10 years or 100k miles whatever comes first. Mine is at 50% range at 105k miles (issues started at 94k miles with 30% reduction). The main issue apparently is, don't run the ac for prolonged amount of time with the car not running!

I got a 2019 ffh, with 105k miles on the odo, and the range got down by 50%, mpg down from 45-48mpg to 41-42mpg.

So far mine is at 105k miles (granted it's only 3 years old). The good thing is battery checks are free with ford until the end of the year (though our ford dealer has a few day wait time before the first appointment is available). The high voltage battery in my case will go bad before the 12v battery. It currently has about 50% range left.

Not so sure,. For long distances, like uber drivers, the PHEV is the way to go (if it wasn't for Ford deleting half their trunk space on the Energi). You don't have the problem current Hybrids have, in that the battery only lasts a good 100k miles. If the Energi costs $7k more than the Hybrid, and I plan on driving the hybrid well above 200k miles, then the energi makes more sense; since Ford quoted me a $7k replacement cost for the FFH battery. For now, I can still find $1.5k second hand batteries online, with installation cost by a professional, should be $2k total. But that won't last for very long anymore.

The Volt is a fully fledged plugin hybrid/gas car. Unlike others, when the battery dies, it can still drive regular gasoline. FFH doesn't work without high voltage battery. The Volt, like the fusion uses an ecvt. Has a motor/generator, and a power motor (down from 4 electric motors on the first gen volts). The cheaper variant hybrids like hyundai, have a much smaller battery, and use only 1 motor directly connected to the engine, mated with a 6 spd manual gearbox. The power motor is the generator as well. They don't have a separate generator, and as such, can't use an ecvt. Having a smaller engine, makes revving higher less of an issue, compared to bigger engines. Hence, they don't need an ecvt, to keep the revs low. They are a much simpler construction. The original Volt was actually an electric vehicle with a 660cc ptwin gas generator, like the BMW i3, only driving on electric. They didn't have a CVT or transmission. It was much cheaper. But they later decided to change it for a 1.5l, which is way too big imho, and added a transmission, to get power from the engine to the wheels, as it was seen as more economical. The electric motor by itself is powerful enough to drive the volt. The 1.5L has a sole function to charge the batteries and provide propulsion, just like the FFH. That engine normally won't rev above 1500-2000RPM, unless you floor the throttle, or going at or above a certain speed. Hence, they might as well have put a 1 liter engine in there, if it's not really responsible for any acceleration anyway. If you ask me, Hyundai had it right. A single power motor mated directly to the engine via a clutch, but with a slightly bigger battery pack. Then Toyota had it right, in allowing low speed acceleration and movement from electric only, and use a gearbox with much taller gear ratios, in that first gear would work from ~20MPH onward, and 5th gear from ~45-55MPH. The only danger with that, is when the battery runs out of power, and you're stuck in a traffic jam drive at slow speeds.. The engine would need to power the generator, which can only be used as generator, or motor, not both at the same time. Unlike what some forum members here say, I think it's way more beneficial to have a 1 liter engine nearly constant running at 1500-2000RPM, either propelling the vehicle, or charging the battery, than to have a 1.5l cycle on/off 50% of the time. The meaning of high efficiency, is keeping that engine running at low RPM and harvest as much energy from it as possible, either by using it to help the car cruise at a fixed speed, and/or charge the battery (at the same time). Also at stop lights, don't turn off the engine, but charge the battery, saving energy for when the light turns green. If the meaning for the motor is to provide propulsion, not acceleration, this method helps store energy of a small engine, so the bigger electric motor can utilize that for a brisk acceleration. Much more economical, than have a 1.5 or 2L shut off at a light, just to start and rev to 2.5k+RPM to accelerate the vehicle using a weaker electric motor. The Volt's high mileage is only attributed to people using it as an EV on short trips. Long trips, and the battery becomes a dead weight. The engine is too big to drive the car long distances. The gas engine by itself, only gets 35-36MPG highway at best. (meaning at ~60MPH). At 80+MPH or below 40MPH, it gets even less.

I think the actual average mileage on the Volt was closer to 35MPG, below the Mitsubishi mirage. The volt was a good idea, bad implemented. They should have reduced the engine size, and increased the electric motor. Anyway, they discontinued it because of low profit margins. Creating a volt, is creating an EV and a gas car all in one. Save for the 35-50 miles battery pack which is cheaper than an EV, it's still about twice as expensive than an economy car.

Normal mode for spirited driving, Eco mode for cruising and highway driving, as well as a bit stronger regenerative braking. Best practices for high mpg, is to accelerate in normal mode, then switch to eco when you're at cruising speed (45mph and up), and keep the engine running until there's enough charge in the battery to coast on electric (usually between bar 1 and bar 2).

Yeah, probably overfilled the oil. I think the best oil bar none, is Mobil 1, and on second place, it's close clone, amazon basics. I change my oil filter every 2 oil changes, and always use (semi) synthetic 0W20 or 0W16 oil. Runs fabulous!

I'm at 100k miles, and at 94k miles the mechanic left the AC on MAX, and left the car in the parking lot. I picked up my car, and 50% of the battery range is lost. MPG down from 45.5 to 42.6MPG, acceleration down, driving on e-motor now limited to 55MPH. Going to the dealership wednesday, as I'm at 94k when it happened, but still at 99.290 miles right now (100k mile battery warranty).

I know, it still shows 50-100% charged when driving, but the motor output is now closer to 15-20HP (55-65MPH) max, instead of the full 30-40HP (75MPH) max. The charge meter also goes well below the '0'-line, in to that I have to drive quite a few tens of seconds to a minute before the blue charge line reaches the first indication level. The reconditioning of the battery is for NiMh batteries or Cd batteries or whatever other batteries that are non-Li batteries. Apparently it doesn't work on the FFH Lithium battery.

The catalytic converter is on the left of 5, the can connected to the piece "11". You'd have to squirm your way up the car, and open the hood to take it out. Dumb thieves will think it's "17", but that's just the pre-muffler. It contains nothing but material for muffling the exhaust noise.

Depends, in Eco mode it does regen, but with Eco off, the regen is barely any different from switching to Neutral. I can testify, that my 2019 FFH doesn't charge when stepping on the brakes, even if the ECO regen icon is shown. The battery charge is lower than before the braking. It could indicate that the system charges the 12V battery while regen braking. The reason of a poor gas mileage is often a worn battery. Mine has 94k miles on it and the mechanic left the AC running in the car, and some cells went below the fully depleted level. Now the electric motor output only gets up to 15HP to the wheels (55-65MPH max, vs 75MPH before), and needs replacing. Problem is no dealership is willing to do anything about it.

Yeah, the engine will go on shortly, just to get a minimum charge. Apparently the AC allows the battery to run below the minimum levels. Apparently shock charging isn't really working well. I've tried multiple times to drain the battery and charge it, but I've not been able to increase range. The best range I got, was after a long highway drive. I presume that the voltage of the pack doesn't drop low enough to re-charge the disabled cells. I did recover about 15% in total, resulting in roughly 55-65% of factory range. But I now think my mechanic won't aknowledge he did it. What's worse is that our local Ford dealerships don't recondition the battery packs either. Because the battery still starts the engine, and helps acceleration (although roughly at half it's previous power), my gas mileage has suffered only by roughly 2MPG from 44.9-45.5 average to 42.5-43.9 avg. Basically the cruising time on electric battery that's gone. The motor accelerates slower, and now can do only up to 50-55MPH max (where as it could do 75MPH before), and the car as a whole doesn't feel as smooth anymore as before. Only when the battery shows it's fully charged, does the engine feel smooth. All other moments, it's the engine trying to propel the car, while trying to charge that battery pack.

So, my mechanic had left the car with the ac on full blast, and my car ended up with the high voltage battery completely depleted, and roughly 33% rechargeable. MPG aslo dropped by quite a bit. My model is a 2019 with lithium battery pack, and only has 95k miles on it. They supposed to come with automatic reconditioning, but occasionally this doesn't happen. I researched what this 'reconditioning' procedure is, and some mechanics may have tools to charge and deplete the battery pack several times, and restore it to much of its former glory. I don't have the tools, but I can do the charging and depleting from the car, as the "Empower" window shows the state of charge on my car, as well as the energy output to the electric motor. First I tried fully charging the battery for longer time, but that didn't do anything to recover the cells. Then I used the Empower window, to make sure the battery got completely depleted, by running the car on electric only. In Empower, a fully charged battery reaches about 2.25 bars (equals roughly 22kW or 30HP on electric motor output). I kept the motor output at 2 bars on the Empower indicator, where it struggled to reach even 50MPH (where as before it could easily do 70MPH at 2 bars). Once the battery level lowers to 2 bars, lower the motor output to stay below the state of charge indicator. If the output exceeds the state of charge, the engine will start, and you want to prevent this from happening, as you don't want to charge the battery just yet. At least not until the state of charge is below 0.1 bar (roughly 1-2 hp motor output). You'd have to have a fine foot, to keep the motor output under the state of charge the entire time, and a large safe space, where you won't hit anything, and won't bother cars behind you, as the car will slow down going on all electric. A good place to do this, if you don't own a dyno, is on a long straight road, without any side streets, preferably at night or late in the evening, when there's no traffic. And put lane assist on, as you need to switch your focus between keeping the car on the road, just not to end up in the ditch, and keeping the motor output below the state of charge on the indicator. Once the state of charge reaches nearly zero, the engine will automatically engage. You'll want this to happen with the SoC being as low as possible. When recharging, I find the battery charges fastest between 2.5 and 2.75 bars in eco mode, as less power is transferred to the wheels in eco mode, amd more power is harvested by the generator. You don't really need to fully charge the battery, but at least let it run up to 1 of 2 bars. The bms just needs to trigger the dead cell to charge. Once it charges, it can later figure out how much charge the cell can hold as you're driving normally, during its automated reconditioning procedures. Hence, the phase of emptying the battery cells during a manual reconditioning, is more important than the charging phase. Then repeat the process (completely empty the battery, and recharge) for a few times. Sometimes you can recover a significant amount of battery. Other times, only a little, as cells have lost even more voltage potential over the course of time when the bms bypassed them. Charging from a depleted state, will trigger a 'try to charge the cells'-action in the BMS, for those cells that are considered dead. The BMS will never charge these cells when the pack is charged up, because the charge current would be too high for the 'dead' cell (the dead cell would be charged from the other cells in the pack, and could overheat). Instead the BMS just disables the cell it sees as not functioning, until the rest of the pack has a similar low voltage. Then it'll try to charge the cells, just like the other cells, with a low current (divided over the other cells). The BMS will only try to charge the dead cells, when the rest of the pack is relatively balanced with the dead cell in terms of charge. I've repeated the process of charge discharge, about 5 times, and while I haf lost nearly 2/3rd of the battery charge before manually reconditioning, due to the error of my mechanic, I estimate that roughly 1/4th has been recovered since then, to a SOC between 50% to 66% of new (estimated). I'll probably need to redo the procedure again to about a good 10x charge/discharge cycles to have it working good again. Should take roughly 2 hours time (estimated). The procedure is nowhere explained, which is why I created this thread. If your battery has recently died, it should work without any expensive tools. I recommend to do the manual reconditioning procedure only when you've recently noticed a significant drop in mpg, and electric range. For me, that didn't happen until 95k miles. You apparently also can manually charge individual cells in a pack, when the above procedure was unsuccessful, by opening the pack, using a 1,2V charger, some crocodile clamps on each pouch cell cathode and anode pins, and bringing individual cells back to life through directly charging them (without bms). This procedure is significantly more tedious, but could save you thousands on repairs, if you have the time. That's also how battery repair shops repair a battery pack. They first recondition, and only replace the cells when necessary.

Really depends on how much the temperature variation is. All you have to do, is make sure the PSI rating never reaches the tire's max rating during a hot day, on a long highway ride. Stay at least 1PSI below. If the max rating is 45PSI, and after you park the car on a cold morning, the tires could very easily read 38PSI. Also depends on the weather. When rain is coming, the PSI readout goes down. When it's sunny, your tires can just seem to gain 2 PSI easily. With the OEM tires, which are mostly rubber, you can do with 35-40PSI. But if the tires are replaced, especially with cheaper variants, the MPG rating drops, and you'll have to compensate with higher PSI. Chinese tires are notorious for having a high silicon, and a low rubber content. Those tires can usually handle 50PSI just fine, and have amazing grip. They also handle heat better/ But their MPG numbers suck, and they usually last no more than 10-15k miles. They also insulate the temperatures, so the air in the tire tends to get hotter, and the tires pressure can at times, increase by over 4PSI hot vs cold; this vs usually only 2PSI on high quality rubber tires. I've found some Taiwanese, and Indian tires, use less silicon, more rubber, and last a bit longer, but the highest graded Japanese and US tires, have a very high rubber content. Their grip is usually less (for touring tires), but their durability is very high (~30-50k miles minimum, 75k miles maximum).

I always thought Ford engineered their cars pretty well. But is it normal for the car to make rattling noises when braking and turning, or when turning and heavy accelerating? No noise when accelerating or stopping at a mild angle or going straight. I have this (faint) rattle noise now for about 10k miles (88k on the odo).

Check your 12V battery voltage levels. If it reads 12.25V or less after a night parked, it may be time to change it. You can also prevent low battery voltage, by turning on your car for 20-30 seconds, turning it off, and turning it on again. The High Voltage battery will have charged the 12V battery enough to at least run the software without voltage bugs on 'cold' start.

Used to get 45-48MPG on my 2019 model, with the stock tires. Hot (80 to 90+F) weather, sea level. They were $210/tire, and were pretty loud. Went with cheaper bridgestone tires. Their max PSI is rated at 45PSI. Got some lousy 38-41MPG on them, so I put 40PSI in them cold. On a hot day on a long highway ride, they don't get more than 44PSI, most of the time hovering between 42 and 43PSI. I later bought some taiwanese tires, as the chinese tires lasted only 10k miles front, and 15k miles rear, and noticed they were rated for 50PSI. So I put 45PSI in em. Drops down to 42 on cold nights. I now get between 42 and 44MPG. Also, I feel that for acceleration, normal mode is best. For braking and highway cruising (55+ MPH), eco mode is best. The optimal speed lies between 55 and 60MPH. If you're lucky you can keep the engine running charging the battery. After the battery is full, you should be able to get ~55MPG out of the engine (the white bar almost hitting 60MPG). On the Hyundai Elantra 2.0, that same engine (2.0 Atkinson) nets 75MPG at those speeds. It doesn't have a hybrid system to charge, so it does a bit better on gas. Below 45MPH you can run the engine, charge the battery, and then cruise on electric, for higher MPG. In such zones you should be able to achieve 50MPG easily. Turns out high MPG is a combination of driving style and tires.

Depends, the FFH energi (PHEV) has the 80HP motor, which the C-Max doesn't have. I've heard the energi is much nicer to drive than the more sluggish FFH, and has a higher MPG too. I just worry about the Maverick, being released with the 80HP motor, and only a 1,1kW battery, which is even less than the FFH's 1,4kW battery. Owners of older FFH models have said the battery is only good for about 170k miles. I'm halfway there, and can already notice some cells have reduced capacity.

It is a slightly weaker 2.5 liter engine with the 40HP electric motor, making roughly 200HP (Vs 180HP on the FFH). The 20 extra HP should be more, like the FFH has about 198-205HP, so this one should have closer to 225HP (when electric motor and engine work in unison (pedal to the metal). Similar to the Maverick Hybrid, but with only a 40HP electric motor, instead of the 80HP of the maverick. I prefer a bit more electric OOMPH, especially on a body that's heavier. The Escape hybrid is closer to the Maverick or C-Max than to the Fusion hybrid.

Not me, but I regularly hear noises from the rear suspension, like the spring 'clicking' back into place. 2019 FFH, started around 75k miles. also ~87k miles on mine now.