mirak

Hi all, I just received a Safety Recall Notice 21S12 to replace the driver airbag in my 2010 Ford Fusion Hybrid. Apparently it can explode. And there are no parts currently available. And the letter says Ford is NOT issuing instructions to stop driving the vehicle. As such, the Ford hotline says Ford is not providing rental vehicle coverage for this issue while we await parts. Has anyone contacted their dealer and had any luck getting a rental car?

I suspect the dealer didn't properly reset the age. Either that or you really do have a problem with the battery. The fix should work long-term. Let us know what you find out. Good luck.

Quick update: It's now been a little over 6 months and 7k miles since applying the fix. The hybrid tech is still functioning perfectly. I've had this car for over 11 years and 150k miles and it still drives like new (post fix).

Past year or so, I’ve been getting intermittent CELs for Code P0128. The car seems to be driving great. The heater is working fine. I’ve cleared the code twice over the past year. It’ll go months without the CEL coming back on again. Recently came back on for the third time. I haven’t taken good enough notes to identify a pattern of what might be triggering this. I think it came on at some point over the summer so I’m not sure it’s the recent cold weather. ideas? Thermostat or more likely the sensor?

Statements like this are pretty silly in my opinion. So Ford is smart enough to design and produce a complex hybrid vehicle, but they’re not smart enough to add a few lines of code gradually throttling back performance that they think will (1) help avoid in-warranty HVB failure and (2) encourage out-of-warranty vehicle/battery replacement? What basis do you have to say this? Granted, I am likewise speculating, but as I have explained above, my speculation (what you refer to as conspiracy theories) is premised both on what we can observe and rational motivation for Ford. All you have to offer are flippant responses and stuff like “programming error” and “testing” - neither of which make sense as explained above.

akirby - I’m not inclined to conspiracy theories. I think that’s a pretty rude thing to say. Your claim that this might be a programming bug because maybe 10 overflowed is illogical. It ignores the fact that performance is evidently set to scale back with each successive year. Excusing this as “testing they forgot to take out” likewise makes little sense - do you really think they were gonna test this out over a 10yr period before taking the car to market? What did Ford have to gain? I should think that’s pretty obvious: (1) They were concerned that if they didn’t slowly throttle back battery utilization, they could be facing a high level of in-warranty failure, and (2) the throttling would encourage a higher level of out-of-warranty vehicle or battery replacement. Two birds with one stone. It is a classic case of planned obsolescence. There are MANY of examples of manufacturers doing this - google it. Why do you expect Ford to be any different? Why wouldn’t Ford have revealed this planned obsolescence in the manual? That strikes me as a silly question. Why would they?! That defeats the purpose of planned obsolescence if you tell the customer up front what you’re doing. And finally, even you acknowledge that Ford ought to fix this for free - you just don’t see the point in getting worked up over something that doesn’t cost much to fix or can be fixed at home pretty easily. To which I say, it’s the principle of the thing. I take a principled stance against being jerked around as a Ford customer and a Ford stockholder. This is not how companies should treat their customers, especially if you hope for any customer loyalty. Companies lament the lack of customer loyalty - well it’s a two-way street.

Having gone back now and read all 12 pages of this thread, let me add a few observations.... 1. I can confirm that upon applying the change, I heard a mechanical click from somewhere in the car. Others refer to it as a "clunk." It was pretty soft. It's just interesting that applying a software changed made some sort of physical noise. 2. This isn't a programming error. It's quite clearly by design. We know it is by design because Ford created an adjustable interface in the programming where you can change the "year" of the battery! And that changing that year changes the performance of the hybrid tech. 3. Now, it can be argued that Ford had a legitimate reason for doing this - that maybe they thought it was necessary to gradually throttle back performance to extend battery life. But there are two problems with this: First, Ford never disclosed this when I bought the car. That's a problem. All products wear down over time, but here Ford deliberately programmed the performance to diminish without telling the customer (or even the dealers, evidently). Second, Ford has evidently now decided that this issue can be safely changed because Ford has issued a TSB to the dealers with a "fix" (although we don't know if it matches the fix in this thread). 4. As a few other have noted, the mpgs aren’t the only thing that suffered with the diminished hybrid performance. Short term acceleration really suffered too. that’s because the car seems to be designed to rely upon the HVB for a power boost at the early stages of acceleration, and when the HVB isn’t present the car’s acceleration feels very unresponsive until the ICE really kicks it. This is a safety issue. There are times when you need a quick boost of speed, such as turning out from a neighborhood into faster traffic. Even putting pedal to the metal the car would seriously lag for 1-2 seconds. 5. The yellow wrench at high speed issue posted a few pages back is not related to this. That is almost certainly a cooling issue. This happened to me once a couple of years ago. It was a blistering hot 90+ degree day and I was barreling down the highway at 80mph+ because I was late to a wedding (an OUTDOOR wedding). The big yellow wrench came on and I though "crap" (actually a few slightly different words). I slowed down, got to the wedding, and later that night when I left the wrench was gone. Last I've ever seen it. This also is not a throttle body issue. That also happened to me, and it causes the car to barely be able to accelerate at all. Trying to clean the throttle body is a waste of money. You can easily replace it yourself for less than $150. Dirty throttle body is a known issue with the Fusions. 6. akirby - I'm not sure what I said that you are in a twist about. I'm not so much angry at Ford for baking this into the car's design as I am that they now acknowledge the problem yet still expect their customers to pay for the fix. That's not an unreasonable thing to be upset about. As others have noted, this issue smacks of class action. It's like the recent Apple and VW class actions rolled into one. Like Apple, it appears Ford deliberately baked a diminishing functionality into its product ("programmed obsolescense"). Like VW, this diminished hybrid functionality results in lower gas mileage. This issue could affect over 100,000 vehicles considering that all first generation FFHs, Mercury Milan Hybrids, and Lincoln MKZ Hybrids are likely impacted. Ford ought to do right by its customers, explain the issue, and fix it for free. Not charge $100+ for 5 minutes of work. I say all this as a Ford stockholder, btw.

Ford refused to fix it for free. The dealer (same one I bought the car from new 10 years ago) wanted $150. I bought a $20 adapter, followed the instructions, and five minutes later my car is driving like new. This is an insanely cool fix. It’s crazy that Ford deliberately and significantly throttled back the hybrid performance by design. Infuriating really. I’ve been driving around for over two years just thinking my hybrid tech was dead.

If Ford offers to fix it for free, I’ll give that a shot and report back. Otherwise I’ll just use the fix here when my new OBDII arrives on Friday.

The document looks to be missing. What is the TSB Number? Never mind - I had to join that other site to access the document. It is TSB. 20-2142. I called the dealership (the same one I bought the car new from in 2009) and they want $115 to reprogram. I have a call into Ford Customer Relations to ask them to cover the cost of the fix. We’ll see if they do right by me - I kinda doubt it. It really aggravates me that Ford is acknowledging a design defect in the programming but still expects customers to pay for the fix out of warranty. It just doesn’t seem like a good way to treat customers.

This is really exciting. I'd love to try this with my 2010 FFH (130k). Let's get started.... I have an OBDII Reader! I have a Windows laptop! I downloaded FORScan! I plugged my Ancel AD310 into my laptop using a USB - to - mini com port cable. The Ancel lights up and says "USB Connected Update Ready"! <<<< FAIL - Because Nothing Is Ever As Easy As It Looks Online >>>> When I open FORScan it doesn't find the Ancel. When I try to find out if the Ancel can connect to FORScan or how to do it, I find nothing online. Help?

I have a 2010 FFH with about 130k. Still ran great except that the hybrid tech appears to be pretty much shot. A few days I was driving down the highway and noticed the car had a mild shudder. Like I had a tire problem or they had just scored the highway surface or something. The shudder continued after I got off the highway. The car also felt sluggish. Like I was driving in low gear or something. When I got home, I put the car into reverse and heard a grinding noise. I let the car sit for a day and then took it out for a few test drives. No issues at all. I took it to a transmission place and they found two codes stored in the memory (not an active check engine light): c1011:67 and u3003:16. Both appear to be possibly related to the ABS system? Not sure how either could be related to my issue. The transmission guys found no problems with the transmission. Anyway, it’s driving fine now but there definitely was a problem. Thoughts?

By “EV limit bracket” do you mean the green bracket on the PWR Meter of the display? That bracket is still displayed, but flat at the bottom of the meter. Back when the hybrid was performing more effectively, this green bracket sat about an 1/8 of an inch above the bottom of the meter and I was good at stretching this bracket with slow acceleration. I simply can’t do that anymore. I note that the display says my hybrid battery is at least 80% charged and I still get the up and down arrows very briefly showing the battery is banking or disbursing power. in other words, the hybrid tech still seems to be functioning - just at a very poor level. When I put my foot on the gas, even softly, the ICE kicks on. Now if the worst that’s gonna happen is that I’ll get non-hybrid mpg, I’ll just keep driving the car. The gas savings will never justify dropping another couple thousand on replacing the battery. But I’m trying to figure out if I’m headed for more serious trouble, or if I still might have some warranty coverage, or if there is some easy fix I’m overlooking.

I bought my 2010 FFH new in fall 2009 and have since put about 115k on it. I know that hybrid battery performance is always weaker in winter weather, but this latest winter the hybrid performance is more or less nil. Even in today’s 50 degree weather, the ICE kicks on pretty much instantaneously every time I hit the gas pedal. There’s just no more driving on battery. The car does still use the battery in reverse, and otherwise drives normally. So what should I do? Any warranty coverage? If the battery just up and dies will I still be able to drive the car on the ICE? What am I can I expect at this point long term?

I’m well into my 4th month of rental. Very much enjoying my 2018 Fusion Hybrid! Wife and I take turns based upon who has further to drive that day. We’ve put nearly 10k miles on it! That’s 10k miles not on our other two vehicles. Ford offered to give me a great trade in value for my current Fusion. Latest offer was $3,000 over KBB trade-in value. Why would I take that? I’m perfectly happy with my old Fusion and I’m not interested in signing up for a new car payment. I’ll tale the free rental for as long as I can, thank you very much!