md40022

Experienced a little bit of a problem with my 2010 FFH this morning. Not sure if it’s related to the hybrid engine or not, so forgive me if I’m in the wrong forum with this. Opinions appreciated though…. This morning the car starts up perfectly fine and it starts up in EV mode (it’s actually 45 degrees out, woohoo!). I get the little green car LED in the bottom right corner of the dash, meaning the car is ready to drive. I press in the brake pedal and attempt to shift into Drive, but the button on the shifter will not press in. I can’t shift out of Park. My first thought is maybe the steering wheel is locked in a funky position since I’ve seen that not allow you to shift out of park in the past. The wheel isn’t locked though. I turn the car off and back on. It again starts in EV mode. I again get the green car LED on the dash. Still cannot shift out of Park though. After a few minutes pass, the ICE comes on. And after another minute or so of me screwing around finally the button on the shift magically allows me to push it all the way in and I shift into Drive and drive away. Because I was frustrated and trying several different pieces of basic troubleshooting, I don’t know exactly what I did to get things back to normal. I have no clue if it eventually changing from EV over to the ICE had anything to do with it or not. Could have been coincidence. I know for 100% certainty that I had the green car LED on the dash while experiencing the problem though, which to my knowledge is what is telling you that you should be ready to drive. I did release the brake pedal and then press it down again before attempting to shift out of Park several times before it eventually worked. So I don’t know if anything I did “fixed” the problem or if it was a matter of having to be patient until the car was ready to drive or what (although I thought that’s what the green LED was for). Any opinions here? I don’t even know where to begin any type of troubleshooting on this.

In regards to the extended license vs. the standard, I am of the understanding that the standard will allow you to view things, but not change them. Meaning you can read check engine codes and view your HVB's age and what not, but not actually make a change. So although I did not try it, I don't think you'd be able to make the change to the HVB life with just the standard. When I signed up for the extended license free-trial, I was approved right away. In less than an hour. I ordered the USB device from Amazon as well and immediately downloaded ForScan and applied for the 2 month free trial of the extended license. I then received the approval for the extended license within an hour tops. A day or two later I had my amazon order and it was as smooth a process as could be.

I didn't go through the dealer, but since making the adjustment myself a few weeks ago there is definite improvement. It definitely does NOT "stay" in EV mode for any type of extended periods of time, but it's really hard for me to gauge that given we are dealing with a terrible stretch of weather right now and the heat is pretty much cranking constantly and batteries are probably impacted by the cold somewhat. When you say that yours is not staying in EV mode, I will agree that mine doesnt either. But none the less there is definite improvement in my MPG since making the change. I don't know where you're located, but if you're dealing with a really nasty winter I think you might have to wait until spring before drawing any final conclusion...... at least that's kind of how I feel about it. My day-to-day for these last few weeks is starting the car cold in temperatures below 10 degrees (Chicago winter). Letting it sit for a few minutes while the defrost blasts and I scrape my windows. Then making a 12 mile trip to work while running the heat. I'm 75% of the way to my destination before EV mode even shows itself for the first time. This morning I did 26 MPG - which isn't great but given the scenario I just mentioned it's probably to be expected. On my way home from work things are a little better since it's a little warmer outside and I don't have to waist as much time defrosting windows before starting that 12 mile trip. I normally get about 50% of the way home before EV mode shows up, and I tend to be around 30-31 MPG...... My assumption is when the weather breaks that I can hopefully be in the mid 30s with the MPG and at that point, it's really hard to complain. But through all of this, I dont think I've even "stood" in EV mode for maybe more than a 1 mile stretch of road at a time. Prior to making the change in the computer though, EV mode didn't even seem to exist for me.

We've been dealing with over a foot of snow for the last week or two where I'm at and my 2010 has been really impressive in it so far. My first winter with the car and absolutely no complaints at all. That said I have a pretty good set of tires with probably 75-80% tread on them still. Like BBF said, admitting to having bad tires in the snow pretty much answered your own question.

Thanks for the response. I've been dealing with the cold conditions my whole life, so checking coolant levels and what not are things I do consistently. The HVB vs. 12v battery and EV vs. ICE are new to me though, hence why I'm unsure. Normally if I'm sitting at home all day and not using the car on a day like today (below zero) I would start the car and let it idle for 10 minutes maybe 2 or 3 times over the course of the day just to let the alternator run on the 12 volt battery, but with the Hybrid now I'm wondering if I start it and it runs the ICE for just a few minutes before switching over to EV then am I actually accomplishing anything? Did I cause more harm than good? Did I stress the 12 volt battery during the start-up and then since it only ran for a few minutes before EV kicked in, did it not reap the benefits of the alternator charge that I was hoping for? If that were the case then it almost seems like it does more harm than good. This is a brand new thing for me since I've only owned the car for 2 weeks.....

This morning in the Chicago area it is 7 degrees below 0. The "high" for today is supposed to be 4 degrees. And I do not plan on leaving the house at all, meaning the car, a 2010 Hybrid, is going to sit outside (I do not have garage parking available to me) With previous non hybrid cars I've owned, on days like this, I would once or twice over the course of the day go start the car and let it run for a few minutes just for the sake of letting the alternator charge the battery for a little bit on a ridiculously COLD day where the car was just sitting outside. Is that something that should still be done with the Fusion Hybrid? I am still on the original HVB, of course. And the 12 volt battery is about 2 or 3 years old. I would think letting the car run for a few minutes on a day like this would be a good thing, but knowing that it switches back and forth between the ICE and EV as it sees fit - part of me doesn't know if letting it run is serving any purpose. Thoughts?

Thanks for the follow up. Seems to be a pretty nice sounding stock system. I've only had the car for about 2 weeks so far, but I've been really happy with every single aspect of it up to this point, which is why the issue with the steering wheel controls were so maddening!

Thanks for sharing! On my way home from work I reset the mpg meter AFTER I was done defrosting windows and ready to actually hit the road, and got home at 39.8 mpg - and that was with the heat running. So I think all is looking good here for sure. Part of me is wondering if the seller of the car was having problems with EV mode not working, maybe took it to a mechanic who couldn't figure it out or he just made an assumption that the HVB was on its way out, and maybe thats why he sold it for a low price.... I don't want to jinx myself, but if all it took was this forscan battery reset then this might be a heck of a car here!

Aaaaand it was installer error on my part. Wired the ASWC module up at nighttime with just a flashlight and crossed a wire because I couldn't see what the heck I was doing. And because I've literally spent the last 15 years of my life as a low-voltage service technician I figured there was noooooo chance that any of my wiring could be wrong when the steering controls weren't working, so I didn't even consider that possibility until I drove myself insane looking up every piece of info I could possibly find on both the ASWC and the head unit........ Ugh. Embarrassing. Don't do dashboard wiring at night time, kids. Everything is now working fine.

2010 Fusion Hybrid is the car in question. I installed an aftermarket Pioneer media player into the double-din opening that the OEM CD Changer Module was previously installed in. That went fine. No issues at all. However, a few days after the fact I decided to connect the steering wheel controls (volume up/down, skip forward/backward) to the aftermarket unit and that's where I run into problems. This is the steering wheel controls interface that I bought. It's very well reviewed and seems to work for everyone. - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00B4PJC9K/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o02_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1 So I wire up the ASWC module and turn the ignition on to allow the ASWC module to auto-program like it's supposed to do 90% of the time. It doesn't work though. I reset it and try again. Still nothing. The after market media player that I installed is working fine, but the steering controls are not working. The steering controls did work fine on the factory radio and CD player. So now I try to use the manual programming option on the ASWC. And when I manually program each individual button on the steering wheel, I get the "success" confirmation light from the ASWC module. Meaning when it prompts me to press the VOL+ button I press it and the module gives the green LED which means it is successfully recognizing that button and accepting the program. It does this for VOL-, Skip+, Skip-, etc. Every single button that I program gives the green LED on the ASWC which means success. And the ASWC module is clearly getting the signal/pulse of me pressing the steering wheel buttons since it gives the "success" LED upon me pressing them. However, after I exit out of the manual program mode, still no luck. The media player still does not respond to the buttons on the steering wheel The wild card here is although I've used this media player in a previous vehicle, I never used it with steering controls so I suppose the problem could be with the media player unit. Being that the ASWC module is giving the "success" LED every time I manually program the steering wheel buttons, a big part of me thinks the problem is between the ASWC module and the media player, and not between the car and the ASWC. The only thing I've seen in the literature for the media player is that it's compatible with "most" steering wheel control systems. "Most" Lol. I've spent so much time on it at this point that I have kind of lost patience and am at the "ehhhh f*** it...." point, but I'm curious if anyone else ever had this issue and if so, is there a fix? Just to provide as much info as I can on this in case someone has suggestions, this is the harness I used to install the aftermarket media player - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0025UDZDM/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 And this is the aftermarket media player - https://www.crutchfield.com/S-4S31Hhhai9m/p_130290BT/Pioneer-MVH-AV290BT.html any thoughts or opinions would be appreciated.

Did the fix last night. My battery was showing over 11 years of age. Set it back to 1 year. And this morning I took it for the first drive since making the change. To layout the scenario, it was a 12 mile city drive that normally takes me about 30 minutes. Cold Chicago morning, about 19 degrees outside . I reset the fuel economy tracker thing upon first starting the car, and after resetting it I then let the car run for about 5 minutes with the window defroster blasting and the ICE running to get the frost off my windows. So I'm sure that has a negative effect on the gas mileage as it's burning gas but not actually moving. I did have the heat running over the course of the entire trip as well. I then started my trip and it did run in EV mode for 2 or 3 separate short segments. Once the engine was warm it seemed to go into EV mode consistently at stop lights, but the bulk of the actual travel was with the ICE. Those 2 or 3 short segments of EV mode are more than it has ever done before...... When I arrived at work, my final mileage on that trip was 28.7 mpg. That is definitely better than it has ever been (I seemed to be around 24-25mpg previously making this exact same trip). I'd imagine if I didn't have 5 minutes of running the ICE at a standstill while defrosting windows, and if I didn't have the heat running for the entire trip that I'd probably be over 30mpg...... Which I believe I should be happy with for city driving? My guess is when spring hits is when I will really notice the change. The one noticeable change on the dashboard is the HVB gauge showed lower levels than it has shown before. Prior to making this fix the gauge always showed the battery anywhere from maybe 60%-85% or so. I noticed this time it seemed to fluctuate between maybe 40%-65% or so. I didn't like seeing it dip down to 40% or so since I never saw that before, but from what I've read up to this point a 40%-60% fluctuation is how it's supposed to be and that is "better" than it being up at 100%? Hopefully that's normal. I'm an absolute rookie with this car. I've owned it for less than 2 weeks and since I'm not the original owner I don't know how the Hybrid and EV modes "should normally be". So if anything I mentioned above sounds wrong or not good, please let me know.

Thanks for that response. I only stumbled upon this thread within the last day or two and didn't get to read ALLLLL 16 pages of responses until just now. Seeing that Ford put out a tech bulletin on this makes me feel much better about doing the battery life reset. I was worried that we were all going rogue by putting this fix into play and all of the short term benefit that we gained would be lost a year down the road when we'd all have dead HVBs and would be ranting and raving on here. So for Ford to acknowledge the issue and the fix via a tech bulletin makes me feel better. I don't think they'd do that if they foresaw resetting the battery life as a potential problem in the making. Really good info here from everyone. In the week or two that I've had the car, I really love it. The funny thing is the only disappointment that I've had up to this point was that I was only getting maybe 23 to 25 mpg. It wasn't that big of a deal to me though because I wasn't specifically looking for a Hybrid gas-saver when I bought this car, it only happened that way because the price was right. But as I began to notice that EV mode veryyyyy rarely ever was used that's what made me start to research, and low and behold.... I've already got ForScan downloaded and if Amazon delivers my OBDLink today then I'll hopefully as good as new by end of day.

I just bought a 2010 Fusion Hybrid with 113k miles. The price was very good, but right off the bat I had the issue with it very rarely going into EV Mode. I already have the OBDLink on order from Amazon and will be putting that fix in to play within the next few days, but as a brand new Fusion Hybrid owner I have a few questions on this issue. Maybe I'm overthinking this, but can anyone put me at ease on the following points.... 1. Is there any chance that Ford set the HVB to specifically stop entering EV mode at 9 years or so, knowing that because of the battery's age that if it kept going into EV mode at the same frequency as it did when newer that the battery was going to completely dump-out in the very near future? And to clarify what I mean by that, let's say that by Ford setting the HVB to very rarely enter into EV mode once it reached 9 years of age they are allowing that battery to last for 20 years (as an example) by kind of "conserving it" in its old age. As where if we perform this reset maybe it seems wonderful and we are happy to have EV mode back in the short term, but then maybe the HVB ends up going completely dead a year after this reset. I guess what I'm wondering is are we all sacrificing a 20 year life on the HFB for the short term sake of milking an extra 6 months of EV Mode? I would love for someone who is smarter than I am to put my mind at ease with this haha 2. In the event that the HVB were to totally dump out at some point, is the car still fully operable on a day-to-day basis via the ICE or is the car non-op until the HVB is replaced? I've tried to search for an answer to this and there seems to be all sorts of conflicting opinions on this. A big thanks to Allen for this incredible info that he shared with everyone, I just want to make sure that I'm doing the right thing before putting the fix into play within the next few days.