Remote start Mach E

[Chrisw]

It would be useful to be able to use the remote start feature on the Mach E when it has been parked overnight and not been on charge. As the vehicle goes into sleep mode currently this can't be done without going out to the car and waking up manually. 

[chris200100]

@Chrisw 

What you have to remember is that your car is on when you use FORScan so it is showing the 12v battery being charged not the state of its voltage when the car isn’t on.

as for the main battery the in car display only shows the usable amount where as FORScan is showing total battery.

the Mach e has a usable battery of 88kw but the battery is 99kw for the extended range version.

all ev’s are the same they have a buffer within the battery some are larger some smaller is size the Ford one is one of the larger buffers and why they have now in the latest Mach e have increased the usable to 91 kw.

FORScan is a useful tool but to check the 12v battery you need a battery tester and do it when the car is off.

[ukcraigrich]

I'm joining the club on this one ☹️ I had my car five days before it started doing this. On the eighth day it stopped being able to charge at all. Both AC or DC charging would throw up a charging error and not charge the vehicle. It's been back at the dealership for over a month now, they replaced the charge controller which they claimed would also fix the deep sleep issue. It did not, the car still goes into deep sleep half an hour or so after being locked. They say they have run all possible tests and everything checks out. They also said they had been in touch with Ford who said they had never heard of this issue before, but that is clearly not the case and seems like they are just trying to fob me off. I've refused to accept the car back until this is resolved.

[jonno70]

@ukcraigrich I would stick to your guns with not accepting the car back. I’m guessing you ordered it online? There is clearly a fault with it otherwise the dealership wouldn’t be running all these tests and trying to solve it. So to say that ‘everything checks out’ might be correct in terms of the diagnostics that they are running on it, but there is still clearly an issue. I would go down the route of the car is not fit for purpose and that Ford have mis-advertised and mis-claimed the ability to prestart/precondition the vehicle from the app. If you read Ford’s ‘blurb’ the car should only go in to deep sleep mode if it is left un started to 14 days or more, or there are excessive temperatures (+/-) which I don’t think can apply to the UK temperature scale. If you still get no joy, I would seriously get legal advice or go to Citizens Advice which is what I intend to do if they don’t solve it. I’m not shelling out the best part of £60k for a car which doesn’t do as they claimed it would. It’s like buying a new house and moving in to find they didn’t fit any floorboard upstairs and you can only use half the house! 

[jonno70]

@Ikenna Is there anything you would like to add from an admin point of view? Any updates or knowledge you can share with disgruntled mach-e owners on this topic?

[chris200100]

Deep sleep is there to preserve the 12v battery if your car is going into deep sleep then your 12v battery is low. 
All fords that are connected have deep sleep petrol,diesel, hybrid and EV.

My 2yr petrol Ford is going into deep sleep as the 12v is lower than it should be but it’s still starting fine.

On an ev you must check the 12v battery when the car is totally off with a test meter, as soon as the start button is pressed it will activate the HV battery and the BMS will start recharging the 12v even if it’s not ready to drive.

[jonno70]

@chris200100 Thanks for the info. So where is the fault? If the 12v is getting too low and is going into DSM to preserve the battery, why isn’t the BMS doing a satisfactory job to keep the 12v battery at a higher level? Excuse my ignorance but this is my first EV. A close friend has a Tesla, never had anything similar. The guy who fitted my charger at home has a Mach-E as does a good friend of a work colleague. Neither of them have a problem. So why is it some vehicles go into DSM after only 30 minutes of switching off and others don’t have the issue? Surely that indicates that there is a fault somewhere on particular vehicles?

[chris200100]

@jonno70   

There could be a number of things causing this, most likely you have a faulty 12v one of the cells in it is gone and no matter how much charging the bms is doing it just can’t charge to the full level. 
it could be the the leads to the 12v battery not tightly connected.

or it could be the bms not charging it correctly this is unlikely as no one has said they can’t start their cars and if the bms wasn’t charging the 12v the 12v would have probably be flat by now.

the 12v on ev’s is much smaller that on ice cars as there is no requirement for cold cranking as all it does is switch the HV battery on. 
I have seen on a number of ev forums that Hyundai have had similar issues and Nissan with a faulty batch of battery’s. 
tesla have gone over to 12v lithium ion battery’s due to the complex nature on how to access the 12v battery.

on the Mach E it’s on the passenger side next to the frunk under the plastic.

the main thing is when testing the battery the car needs to be completely off and the battery tested directly not by the obd, if you test by the obd or when the car is on but not ready to drive the Bms is charging the 12v so you will get a false reading and get a higher voltage.

Also like a ice car if you do short  journeys it won’t charge the 12v as much as a long journey.

and before anyone asks No it doesn’t recharge 12v when plugging in that only for the HV battery and as far as I’m aware no ev does this.

[jonno70]

@chris200100 Really useful info, thanks. It’s having the 12v battery replaced in a couple of weeks so fingers crossed. 

[ukcraigrich]

@chris200100 this is great info, I'll certainly be passing that onto the dealership tomorrow. Although I would have hoped they would have known about this already and would have been testing the battery that way, but perhaps not.

@jonno70 yes I'm totally with you on that. It's a crazy amount to spend on a car and for that amount it's not unreasonable to expect it to operate as advertised. Really hoping not to have to go down the legal route, the dealership seems to be quite understanding and do appear to be willing to investigate as much as they can. Hopefully a new 12v battery is all it will take 🙂

[chris200100]

@ukcraigrich @You would hope the dealer would know this unfortunately sometimes it’s something that gets missed especially as an ev is that little bit different to a ice car.

can I also add for those with the deep sleep issue, do you have anything draining the 12v battery ie dash cam on parking mode, tracker fitted etc cause this can also cause the car to go into deep sleep as there is a constant drain on the 12v above what the car does.

also deep sleep only turns off the connect part of the car, which in a ice isn’t here or there there’s not much you can do with the app, but as an ev the app is part of the whole experience of ownership