What folks with failed HVB modules have in common

[RickLightning]

You may be correct. Hopefully we will get enough responses to verify that.

Not possible. To know the causation, you have to be able to rule things out or in, and you can't do that by a subjective survey of people on a forum.

Ford said it was within the first 3,600 trucks. They said they were proactively going to call people affected. Since then, many got the software update, and then the software update flagged a failure at some point (mine was 7,800 miles later).

I think it's more than the first 3,600 trucks. I think they had a problem with battery components into 2023.

I had thought my 2022 Lightning with only one visit to the dealer (and that was right away for a bad coax cable) was more reliable than the Mach-E, which seems to have something every few months (just got a notice regarding door seams rusting). Now, I'm not so sure.

It's disappointing that the proactive (we're calling) part seems to have not really happened, and that no information has flowed (surprise, not...) from Ford since.

Sponsored

 

[Grumpy2]

Ford said it was within the first 3,600 trucks.

As I remember the possible population was over 30,000 trucks incl all of 2022 and some of 2023. It was from this population they expected 4% failures.

 

[Danface]

Funny thought, Ford is hoovering up lots of diagnostic info from it's vehicles, shouldn't they have the data to do do real analytics on them? I'd be willing to put fuse back for the TCU if I knew Ford would be proactive in fixing issues (and not just collecting lots of personal information). I'll put my tinfoil beenie back on now!

 

[Joe Dablock]

Well, I own a 2022 MME er with 45K and a 2023 Lightning er with 15K on it and I charge both of them to 100% every time. At any given moment, I need to jump in and drive 200 plus miles without putting much thought into it, so I need the 300 mile range available, otherwise the vehicle is useless to me. At the rate I'm accumulating miles on both vehicles, I will soon have some real world statistics. So far both vehicles are performing flawlessly with no battery deterioration. After all, who is the big beneficiary if I baby my battery and get it to last over 100K miles? Ford! On the other hand, I rarely use class 3 chargers, rarely run batteries down below 50%, and drive relatively conservatively. I assume Ford has already taken into account battery life deterioration and built in safety precautions to minimize their warranty issues. The next two or three years are going to be interesting. Stay tuned!

 

[KurtsRPMGarage]

I had 3 module failures on my standard range pro before ford bought it back. I thought I was being extremely gentle on my pack. I charged to 80% most of the time and occasionally charged to 100 for long trips but would set it so it reached 100% right before I left. Only fast charged a couple times. Still had over 100kwh of the complimentary charging. I drive like a grandma in the slow lane to maximize efficiency. First module failed around 12,000 miles. Second failed at 19,000 and the third failed just a couple weeks after the second at 19,500 or so. I’m definitely convinced this is an either it’s going to fail or it’s not situation. Not much the user can do to prevent it.

 

[RickLightning]

Funny thought, Ford is hoovering up lots of diagnostic info from it's vehicles, shouldn't they have the data to do do real analytics on them? I'd be willing to put fuse back for the TCU if I knew Ford would be proactive in fixing issues (and not just collecting lots of personal information). I'll put my tinfoil beenie back on now!

Of course Ford has the data, and knows a lot more than they will ever reveal to customers.

 

[Danface]

Of course Ford has the data, and knows a lot more than they will ever reveal to customers.

I do have a problem with that, no TCU fuse for you!

 

[ctuan13]

You definitely won't have a Battery failure between 21K-100K. False confidence in this case is not a bad thing.

The thing is that most folks that have high mileage Lightning, put all those miles on their truck in a short period of time. We don't know impact of time on battery failure. So any assumptions, will be just that but I like how you are thinking.

I am still under 15K.



I do the same. I just accelerate as much as needed. If there is a youngster with a noisy sport car, I just stay a few feet ahead so they think they could have done it, just if......

Yeah many people seem to forget that calendar aging often plays a much larger role in battery degradation than pure cycling within a short time span, especially if the cycling was only only to a moderate depth of discharge and the peak cell voltage and stress wasn't too extreme (ie not being charged and kept at 100% very often).

 

[ctuan13]

I do have a problem with that, no TCU fuse for you!

TCU has been disconnected pretty much entire length of ownership except when manually updating and the last time I updated my truck was March of 2023.

 

[Maxx]

Not possible. To know the causation, you have to be able to rule things out or in, and you can't do that by a subjective survey of people on a forum.

The idea is not finding conclusive evidence for behavior that made a good battery go bad. The idea is finding patterns (if they exist) that may speed up the process of a bad battery dying sooner rather than later. For example if 90% of the respondents that do 90% of their charging DCFC have failures under 15K and the rest are distributed evenly between 0 and 50 K, then we may have a pattern. I still may have a bad battery from a bad batch but I may be able to delay that dealer visit for a year or two by taking the ICE on long trips and keep the lightning local. This may be a bad example but you get my drift; patterns can be discovered from surveys on a forum. It is not like Ford is sharing the patterns they see from our visits to dealer. On the other hand if we don’t find any patterns, you can enjoy an “I told you so moment” . From some of the posts, it looks like we are heading that way.

They said they were proactively going to call people affected. Since then, many got the software update, and then the software update flagged a failure at some point (mine was 7,800 miles later).

7,800 miles after update? What was your total mileage at that point? Do you know what the update is looking for that was not monitoring before?

Well, I own a 2022 MME er with 45K and a 2023 Lightning er with 15K on it and I charge both of them to 100% every time. At any given moment, I need to jump in and drive 200 plus miles without putting much thought into it, so I need the 300 mile range available, otherwise the vehicle is useless to me. At the rate I'm accumulating miles on both vehicles, I will soon have some real world statistics. So far both vehicles are performing flawlessly with no battery deterioration. After all, who is the big beneficiary if I baby my battery and get it to last over 100K miles? Ford! On the other hand, I rarely use class 3 chargers, rarely run batteries down below 50%, and drive relatively conservatively. I assume Ford has already taken into account battery life deterioration and built in safety precautions to minimize their warranty issues. The next two or three years are going to be interesting. Stay tuned!

Really interesting. Have you checked MME’s SOH with scanner lately? What do you see?

I had 3 module failures on my standard range pro before ford bought it back. I thought I was being extremely gentle on my pack. I charged to 80% most of the time and occasionally charged to 100 for long trips but would set it so it reached 100% right before I left. Only fast charged a couple times. Still had over 100kwh of the complimentary charging. I drive like a grandma in the slow lane to maximize efficiency. First module failed around 12,000 miles. Second failed at 19,000 and the third failed just a couple weeks after the second at 19,500 or so. I’m definitely convinced this is an either it’s going to fail or it’s not situation. Not much the user can do to prevent it.

This is really bad. My nightmare scenario. All of those milestones are still ahead of me. Same truck as yours and I drive like you do.

Were the modules were different or same module filed twice or three times? If later is the case, it may be incompetent service guys.

I guess you are out of Ford business. How is your Tesla experience?

 

[RickLightning]

The idea is not finding conclusive evidence for behavior that made a good battery go bad. The idea is finding patterns (if they exist) that may speed up the process of a bad battery dying sooner rather than later. For example if 90% of the respondents that do 90% of their charging DCFC have failures under 15K and the rest are distributed evenly between 0 and 50 K, then we may have a pattern. I still may have a bad battery from a bad batch but I may be able to delay that dealer visit for a year or two by taking the ICE on long trips and keep the lightning local. This may be a bad example but you get my drift; patterns can be discovered from surveys on a forum. It is not like Ford is sharing the patterns they see from our visits to dealer. On the other hand if we don’t find any patterns, you can enjoy an “I told you so moment” . From some of the posts, it looks like we are heading that way.




7,800 miles after update? What was your total mileage at that point? Do you know what the update is looking for that was not monitoring before?



Really interesting. Have you checked MME’s SOH with scanner lately? What do you see?



This is really bad. My nightmare scenario. All of those milestones are still ahead of me. Same truck as yours and I drive like you do.

Were the modules were different or same module filed twice or three times? If later is the case, it may be incompetent service guys.

I guess you are out of Ford business. How is your Tesla experience?

You're missing my point. Failure of the battery is not due to usage, it is due to a manufacturing issue.

The software was added to detect the bad components, that is why after it was added, while still at the dealership, many immediately noted the issue.

Mine had less than 2,000 miles when the software was added. Months later, I took a trip of over 5,300 miles. Then I took a trip of over 1,700 miles. Then, weeks later, it failed.

SOH tells nothing. A test called a Pinpoint test is done at the dealership, after the error pops, to identify the bad components.

 

[Maxx]

You're missing my point. Failure of the battery is not due to usage, it is due to a manufacturing issue

Mine had less than 2,000 miles when the software was added. Months later, I took a trip of over 5,300 miles. Then I took a trip of over 1,700 miles. Then, weeks later, it failed.

I do get your point. If you had another truck with a good battery, taking the same two trips, your battery wouldn’t fail. I understand and agree with that.

My point is that although having a bad battery is a necessary condition for failiour it may not be sufficient. In other words if you didn’t take those trips with the your truck and instead, it sat in the driveway at 50% SOC after the update going nowhere, there is a good chance it would not have failed on the day it did. It is the combination of the use and bad battery that brings about the of death on the screen.

Of course we don’t buy these trucks to let them sit. That was just an extreme case to make the point that a change had to be there after your update to trigger that failure. It is possible that change is simply number of electrons passing through that wall, in which case your truck would fail at that mileage no matter how you drove it. But we don’t know other factors like temperature and rate of the electrons moving through don’t have an impact.

If you have to drive your truck the way you do, this whole exercise would be pointless even if we did find that certain charging habits or driving practices have an impact on when it fails.

I have two Ice on my driveway and at any point can chose which one to take so if there was a way to delay that dreaded day, I would like to find out. When I did my update the dude at the counter said mechanic said something was a border liner but he couldn’t articulate what and wouldn’t let me talk to the mechanic. That is why I want to know if there is anything I do have control over. Accepting my faith is sealed is a bit difficult for me. In the free will argument, I always say even if everything is determined, we have no choice but to believe we have control. Let me enjoy my false belief.

 

[Grumpy2]

Accepting my faith is sealed is a bit difficult for me. In the free will argument, I always say even if everything is determined, we have no choice but to believe we have control. Let me enjoy my false belief.

Well you got the real issue for all of us, but this new evolving technology and the complex nature of our batteries takes all of us into new uncharted territory.

Perhaps in a few years there will be conclusive study of the failure modes of our battery by some independent study. We have an extremely high Nickel content battery cell design, high Ni cells have been around for some time but were known to be unstable. SK On developed this new design that we have in our trucks, it is unique to the other popular EVs. As a result they have received awards and many contracts to build millions more similar cells.

I recommend you relax and drive it as you want to, you are protected by the 6-7 years left on your warranty. Ford was pretty gutsy to go with this new designed battery. It should last for a very long time if treated well, and should last beyond 8 years if abused; as long as it doesn't have a fabrication QC issue. These low voltage cell issues are somehow related to fabrication or materials. You won't know about the QC issue until it happens....and I believe it won't be related to how you used it.

 

[drummer]

On charging:

• Did you typically charge to 80%, 90%, 60%..? 90%
• On the average, at what SOC your pack spent most of its time before it failed? 80+%
• How many kWh of fast charging did you have before it failed? 0
• At what kW rates did you do your level 2 charging? 80 Amps (Ford Pro Charger)
• How low and how often did you let your SOC go? It might have been below 50% once or twice
• How many 100% SOC charges did you have? a few when I bought the truck and couldn't figure out how to limit it to the recommended 90%

On driving:

• Did you drive in sport mode very often? All. The. Time.
• Do you decelerate quickly at stop sign or very gradually? I use 1 pedal driving and rarely need the brakes.
• How often did you floor it? all the way to the floor...not too often. Quick...

Other:

• Do you live in hot climate, did your truck spent a lot of time under the sun in summer? I live in Iowa so we have hot and cold.
• When was your truck built? Or if you don’t know purchased? Built July 2022
• How many miles did you have on your pack when it failed? I don't recall. Less than 10,000. Right after the update.

 

[GoodSam]

patterns can be discovered from surveys on a forum

See the spreadsheet in my signature for my tracking of issues with the HV battery. Wish everyone would list their build date and mileage. Also interesting would be what you listed, especially typical maximum charge.

Sponsored