My instructions on restoring the hybrid EV function on the Ford Fusion Hybrid approaching the 8/9+ years mark.

[asicking]

Given that I applied “the fix” at 300k+ on the odometer and saw my average mpg jump from 37 mpg to 44 mpg I’m questioning just how much impact mileage has on battery life.  Note: I got the 44mpg average over about 20k miles of mixed highway and city driving — on short rural trips I frequently get 50+. 

[allen84]

Something to keep in mind. If there are people out there that haven't had their EV fixed yet, and are willing to wait on Ford, however long they may come up with a fix, your engine is going through unnecessary wear and tear, like a normal gasoline car. 

 

This means your oil change intervals are going to be inaccurate.  A normal 2010 Ford Fusion, needs an oil change every 7500 miles or every 6 months.  The hybrid needs one every 10000 miles or every 1 year. 

 

The oil life reminder reminds you to change, but it takes into consideration for the hybrid as the engine comes on less frequently. 

Edited November 20, 2019 by allen84

[bangster]

I am sure the IOLM knows the ICE is running more and adjusts accordingly.

[PaulGo]

Another thing I am concerned about is the HV battery staying consistently at abnormally high levels instead of mid-range levels.  I believe this could shorten the HV battery life. 

[Taurus]

On 10/13/2019 at 5:51 PM, Savhp said:

My hybrid was also running the ICE almost constantly and the HVB would fully charge and stay full as the electric function would never be utilized because the green battery availability meter showed less than 1 bar of power.  The only way I could discharge the HVB was to drop the transmission into neutral and coast down hills to allow the accessories to slowly drain it back from full.  

 

If anyone is wondering about on what symptoms to look for, please see a quote from Savhp that I've attached here. And I want to add that after a prolonged drive on a highway battery would drop to where is should be, around 50%. Even on a fully warmed up engine it wouldn't run in the electric mode. The only way it will is when you put your car in reverse. It happened after I've got my car back from the passenger side airbag recall as well as a very expensive (over $3K) brake component replacement. My Lincoln is 2011, so for those of you who thought that Ford fixed the issue a year later, it isn't so.

 

I consider myself lucky that I've come across this post a few month ago, before my hybrid system stopped working. This way I didn't have to take my car in to a dealer to be told that nothing is wrong.

 

Thank you, Allen for your detailed write up!

[DenverPed]

 

 

Posted yesterday at 12:50 PM (edited)

Something to keep in mind. If there are people out there that haven't had their EV fixed yet, and are willing to wait on Ford, however long they may come up with a fix, your engine is going through unnecessary wear and tear, like a normal gasoline car. 

 

This means your oil change intervals are going to be inaccurate.  A normal 2010 Ford Fusion, needs an oil change every 7500 miles or every 6 months.  The hybrid needs one every 10000 miles or every 1 year. 

 

The oil life reminder reminds you to change, but it takes into consideration for the hybrid as the engine comes on less frequently. 

Edited yesterday at 12:54 PM by allen84

Allen84-Another great post. Totally forgot about the engine wear and need for an oil change. I had a hard time adjusting to 7500 mile intervals when I bought the hybrid.

My grandson is coming over Saturday with computer to use your instructions and restore my hybrid functions.

[allen84]

Well..... It looks like my HVB might be going through its 1st re-conditioning event since I've applied the EV fix more than 5 months ago.  (explained on page 7 of the manual)   It's been so long, I can't remember how it goes.    It started happening halfway on my drive home.  got a little concerned when my EV box shrank to half a line.  The Up charging arrow stayed active.  It kept going until it filled up to the max at the H level.   I was like, did my HVB fix disappear?   Then the EV box disappeared entirely.  It eventually stopped charging.  Stayed at Max.   Regenerative braking stopped worked,  coasting to charge stopped working, and engine charging stopped.   With the occasional flashes of the Up and down arrow.   At least the system still knows not to overcharge.  Not sure how long it's gonna last, It was still going after 10 minutes.

 

So far what its currently doing:

-Battery at full charge.

-Stopped charging

-No EV

-No regen brake charge, no ICE charge, no coasting charge.

-ICE stays on.

 

I really hope this is the HVB re-condition event.

Edited November 23, 2019 by allen84

[lolder]

15-30 minutes is normal.

[DenverPed]

I have my Hybrid back!!!!

Allan84, many thanks for the detailed instructions. My Grandson got It quickly. Only difficulty or confusion was the Forscan license.

I knew immediately that the car was working as designed. I will gain 12-14 MPG.

It only cost me a delightful lunch with a great 23 year old.

 

[allen84]

10 hours ago, DenverPed said:

I have my Hybrid back!!!!

Allan84, many thanks for the detailed instructions. My Grandson got It quickly. Only difficulty or confusion was the Forscan license.

I knew immediately that the car was working as designed. I will gain 12-14 MPG.

It only cost me a delightful lunch with a great 23 year old.

 

 

That is great to hear.  Plus, you got to spend some quality time and bond with your grandson.

Edited November 24, 2019 by allen84

[Taurus]

On 11/22/2019 at 10:08 PM, allen84 said:

Well..... It looks like my HVB might be going through its 1st re-conditioning event since I've applied the EV fix more than 5 months ago.  (explained on page 7 of the manual)   It's been so long, I can't remember how it goes.    It started happening halfway on my drive home.  got a little concerned when my EV box shrank to half a line.  The Up charging arrow stayed active.  It kept going until it filled up to the max at the H level.   I was like, did my HVB fix disappear?   Then the EV box disappeared entirely.  It eventually stopped charging.  Stayed at Max.   Regenerative braking stopped worked,  coasting to charge stopped working, and engine charging stopped.   With the occasional flashes of the Up and down arrow.   At least the system still knows not to overcharge.  Not sure how long it's gonna last, It was still going after 10 minutes.

 

So far what its currently doing:

-Battery at full charge.

-Stopped charging

-No EV

-No regen brake charge, no ICE charge, no coasting charge.

-ICE stays on.

 

I really hope this is the HVB re-condition event.

From what I remember you can't interrupt the reconditioning, you have to let it finish or it will start again after the restart.

 

How's your car? Did go back to normal?

[allen84]

On 11/23/2019 at 8:49 AM, lolder said:

15-30 minutes is normal.

 

You were right.  I think it lasted around 20 minutes or so.   The EV box came back, and now it's back to normal.   I guess the re-conditioning functions normally after the EV fix.  This is the first event after the battery reset that I've experienced so far.  At least that feature is still functioning.

[gillessv]

Many thanks for this post. Our mileage continually declined to the low 30s. Last night, I followed these instructions (with some trepidation that I would accidentally click something wrong) and now we're back to higher mileage. Today, my wife got upper 30s and 40s while commuting.  Like others, I heard the clicking in the battery compartment when it kicked in. First trip and EV mode was back to normal! YESSS!!

[thehoyhouse]

On 11/26/2019 at 10:51 PM, allen84 said:

 

You were right.  I think it lasted around 20 minutes or so.   The EV box came back, and now it's back to normal.   I guess the re-conditioning functions normally after the EV fix.  This is the first event after the battery reset that I've experienced so far.  At least that feature is still functioning.

 

Congrats, allen84!  You are a true trailblazer here!  I just stumbled across this thread in researching the symptoms that are all too familiar to everyone who's posted here.

Question: did you check your "BECM Module Configuration" values after your reset?  And just as important, have you checked since your recent re-conditioning cycle?

Edited November 28, 2019 by thehoyhouse
Misspelled word

[allen84]

9 hours ago, thehoyhouse said:

 

Congrats, allen84!  You are a true trailblazer here!  I just stumbled across this thread in researching the symptoms that are all too familiar too everyone who's posted here.

Question: did you check your "BECM Module Configuration" values after your reset?  And just as important, have you checked since your recent re-conditioning cycle?

 

Only the config battery age turned 1.   the rest stayed the same with the 3 "error" values and the 1 "Module configuration" on the other 4 settings.  I didn't mess with those.   It's probably the ForScan not reporting it properly as mentioned on the 1st page.    No, I haven't checked it with device to see what it looks like after the re-conditioning cycle, maybe a little later when I have time.  

 

I think the "Config charge since rebalance" is a counter.  If it reaches a certain interval, it will trigger the re-balance.

 

Since my rebalance happened at close to the 5 month mark,   2400 divide 1 year? = 6.57

 

6.57 x 152 days (5 months) = 999.     My guess is the re-balance triggers approximately every 1000 on the config battery life counter?

 

This is just an educated guess. 

[allen84]

Here is a video I found on youtube that was posted a couple of days ago.   It is the battery age reset procedure on the Ford's IDS diagnostics scan tool, used by the dealership.   He said in the video,  that even if you did replace the HVB, you still had to perform the battery reset.      Well, that would suck if you got the HVB replacement and the car still runs on ICE, because the service tech didn't know about the battery age reset.  That wouldn't do any good. lol

 

I guess now the dealer has no excuse not knowing how to perform this if the video shows it here.  

 

 

Edited November 29, 2019 by allen84

[lolder]

There was a discussion here about 10 years ago that the Achilles Heel of the FFH would be the inability of dealers service to deal with the technology. It seems like it was prophetic. 

[oriza]

I hope I'm not necro-bumping this thread. I can't tell when the last comment was posted-- it only says "November 29" and doesn't include the year...my apologies if I shouldn't be replying to this thread anymore.

 

Anyway, I'm wondering if anyone else is having trouble with this. After six months of dealing with 32-33 mpg, I did this fix about six months ago. For the first few days it worked great, seemed like the EV mode was way more responsive and my fuel mileage was in the 40s. 

 

Now it's back to its old self! It's winter, so I expect the fuel mileage to be considerably lower, but now I'm back to averaging 32.5 mpg-- way lower than I'd expect. 

I went back and redid this fix in case it didn't take the first time. But I think it did "take" the first time around-- during the procedure, the config battery age read "error" like before, but this time around the error marker was closer to 2 years than 10 (see image below).

 

Anyone else find that this fix did not work the way they hoped? I don't know much about cars, but I saw that people have been talking about getting an HVB replacement. Is that worth looking into?

 

(Much thanks for writing this procedure up anyway, OP! I'm glad it's helped so many other people.)

[drolds1]

Welcome to the forums. Don't worry about bumping the thread.  We've had people respond to 5 and 6 year-old posts. The lack of a year after the date is an indication that it's from the current year.  Anything from 2018 and earlier will show the year after the mm/dd. Also, if you quote another post, it will show the full date.

Edited December 7, 2019 by drolds1

[asicking]

18 hours ago, oriza said:

 

Anyone else find that this fix did not work the way they hoped? I don't know much about cars, but I saw that people have been talking about getting an HVB replacement. Is that worth looking into?

 

I live and drive in New England.  I drive about 5K to 6K miles per month.  I applied the fix at the end of August.  September mpg was almost 45; now with some cold wintry weather it is dropping to about 40.  This is consistent with what I observed when the car was new (it now is approaching 330K miles).

 

My research indicated that replacement batteries cost a few thousand dollars.  There are also places that claim some sort of battery restoration services.  Neither of which make economic sense to me for a car with significant miles on it.  In my case, using actual gas prices I'm finding that I've saved about $100 in fuel costs (I subtracted the $25 I paid for the OBD scanner) over the 17k miles I've driven since the fix.

[oriza]

On 12/8/2019 at 7:59 AM, asicking said:

I live and drive in New England.  I drive about 5K to 6K miles per month.  I applied the fix at the end of August.  September mpg was almost 45; now with some cold wintry weather it is dropping to about 40.  This is consistent with what I observed when the car was new (it now is approaching 330K miles).

Well, sounds like the fix worked for you then, no...?

 

Wish it would for me. I really don't wanna spend thousands of dollars on a new battery. I've only got about 75k miles on it though.

 

I guess I'll just take it in to the dealer at some point and see if they can figure it out

 

[kb9ilt]

Thanks Allen!

 

My 2010 Fusion Hybrid with ~123,000 miles is like new again after changing the battery age. Wow, it's sure nice to have EV mode back!

 

If Ford would have disclosed that the car I was about to buy 9.5 years ago would only work as a hybrid for 8 or 9 years and then become a sluggish standard Fusion, I wouldn't have bought it. I think it was somewhere around year 8 that I noticed that the green EV mode indicator seemed to be shrinking. More recently it was rarely seen and then mostly when stopped, which made driving it rather depressing. With the fix driving will be fun again! 

[apothicca]

On 11/20/2019 at 12:44 PM, asicking said:

Given that I applied “the fix” at 300k+ on the odometer and saw my average mpg jump from 37 mpg to 44 mpg I’m questioning just how much impact mileage has on battery life.  Note: I got the 44mpg average over about 20k miles of mixed highway and city driving — on short rural trips I frequently get 50+. 

 

what maintenance have you done with 300 on the clock? My FFH has almost 150k and I’m wondering if I should change the transmission fluid or not. I’ve heard from absolutely to not necessary. 
 

if you changed your fluid, at how many miles did you do it? 

[asicking]

I have ‘em use synthetic oil on 10k mile intervals.  I don’t recall having ever touched tranny fluid, though I agree it seems reasonable to expect it should need something after 330k miles. Sorry, I am probably the last person from whom to seek automotive maintenance advice  

[bangster]

1 hour ago, asicking said:

I have ‘em use synthetic oil on 10k mile intervals.  I don’t recall having ever touched tranny fluid, though I agree it seems reasonable to expect it should need something after 330k miles. Sorry, I am probably the last person from whom to seek automotive maintenance advice  

While the fluid in an eCVT doesn't get contaminated by things like clutch material and as many wear parts as a CVT or regular automatic, it still does get pretty hot.

 

The Owners Manual says it is "filled for life" which could mean as soon as it dies that was its life... The Maintenance Schedule for the Hybrid says for normal conditions every 150k miles (and it includes interval for Hybrid only things like "Inspect engine and motor/electrical cooling systems and hoses").

 

I would never try that with the regular transmission (which has the same interval) and probably not with the eCVT, it doesn't hold more than 6 quarts of fluid. I don't know if there is a drain plug or just a sight plug that you have to suck the fluid out from. It also doesn't use CVT fluid (blue, or SP).