JJFocus said:
Thank you to everyone who have been posting about this issue.
I just leased a FFE on 5/30/13 for my wife to drive, with our two kids in the back...
I am wondering about returning the car as this is absolutely a major safety issue. Has anyone tried giving the car back before this issue actually happens to them?
I wish I had known about this before.
Thanks again!
I would doubt they would take it back. Ford didn't seem concerned, or acknowledge that there might be an issue that needed further investigating.
In my case, I considered it definitely a safety issue. WIth both of my kids in the car my car died right in front of a busy intersection during rush hour. I really felt like I was at risk for being rear ended. Others have reported it happening actually while driving which is obviously much worse. In my case the dealer and Ford seemed much less interested in it once they found that there were no codes thrown. I didn't just stop at my dealer, but also called Ford's customer service and their EV division customer support. Their only advice was to bring it back if/when it happens again.
I know some have said Ford definitely must be working on a solution the problem, but you definitely couldn't tell it from the lack of interest I experienced for further information once they couldn't find a code. I would suggest that with so many of us reporting almost identical experiences, it is much more likely that there is a single defect to explain it. In Medicine we call that "Occam's Razor": usually the single simplest explanation for an occurrence is more likely than many different or more complex ones.
I can only speculate from my experience with the lack of concern which was shown for what I considered a real safety issue that this is not a hot ticket item for Ford. The Ford Focus Electric is obviously a low volume car, and sporadic occurrences can easily be drowned out by all the other issues happening to all their other high volume lines.
I can only imagine that it may be difficult to track down what the defect is because it appears to occur so randomly. But when you really look at it there are many similarities. Most have reported the issue occurring at near similar mileage. Most have had it occurred when stopped, just after pushing on the brakes, or when slowing down again with a connection to the brakes. I do feel like the only way to get it isolated is with a concerted effort, and the pressure doesn't seem there, probably from our low numbers equaling low number f occurrences. I really feel that the only way that this will be solved is if Ford really takes a hard look at it, and looks at all our occurrences in total not as single isolated events. I would hope that we could pressure Ford somehow to do this before someone's FFE dies at the worst time and someone really gets hurt.
I would continue to propose that external pressure may be needed for Ford to really feel like they need to put this on the front burner. On the NHTSA site only three of us have reported our occurrences. (Take a look at the NHTSA site for our complaints: http://www-odi.nhtsa.dot.gov/owners/SearchResultsByUrlCode.action?referenceSearch.requestId=3952&referenceSearch.urlCode=I4PG7F9MUOS2N6Z) I would ask that everyone do their part to help us all get this issued fixed for all of us, and take the five minutes to report on the NHTSA site what occurred when you got the "stop safely now" warning before some unfortunate Ford Focus Electric owner gets killed when their car dies while driving on the highway.
Just my opinion, sorry for the long post.
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