As I said earlier, I didn't want to weigh in too much here, but I noticed that he mentioned both wife and daughter ride, but only the daughter has burns, and he's concerned about his daughters safety.

Weren't you ever able to shock yourself or anyone else? The person at the dealership? Anyone other than her?

 

First answer. I say my daughter's safety because she is the only person that has sat in the front passenger seat. My son is too young to sit in the front seat and we didn't drive that car as a family. So, only my daughter would have been at risk. We originally bought it for her to drive.

Answer to the other questions. We contacted Ford directly and all we got was a two sentence reply saying that they would not do anything else for us. If I was in charge, I would try to explain the possibilities that we learned about on this board, but there was no qualified technical available to have that conversation, or they were not willing to take the time. We know exactly what Ford did and didn't do because we asked them and this is this information that they gave us. The reason we plan to but a Toyota is because we have done some research and found that Toyota has many more qualified and better trained technicians to work on hybrids. We like the technology and don't want to give up on it. We feel that we will able to get a better product and better service at Toyota. By the way, it is not my job to educate people who are supposed to be experts.

 

We came to this board after giving Ford more than 4 months to come up with an answer.

 

Sorry about the typos on my previous post, I was in a hurry. Just know that we have tried to do the right thing and give Ford a chance to prove that they are able to service these vehicles. There is a problem if people like us have to get information on our own and tell the experts how to do their jobs. If Ford wants to sell hybrids, they should be interested in hiring qualified people to service them. Toyota seems to have done just that!

 

I think it's certain that Toyota has more technicians available to diagnose a presumed electrical hazard on a hybrid than does Ford. And the availability of mechanics and technicians to work on your hybrid is a valid issue.

But I think that Ford decided there was no way the electrocution hazard you described could exist.

Best to you.

 

Ford has never been able to answer any question about the hybrid without making it an ordeal. At the dealership we go to, they have one part time person that is trained to work on hybrids. If there was a quick explanation and suggestion of a remedy, this would not have tuned into such a problem. Because of this, we have no faith in Ford. If they don't understand the technology, they should not be selling the product. I shouldn't have to understand the technology to be able to drive a hybrid as a previous post suggested.

To the people interested in the car. Make an offer. The car has 12K miles on it. It's fully loaded and in perfect shape.

 

Aside from the fact you think it's going to electrocute someone...?

 

I think you are misunderstanding the issue you posed to Ford. If someone comes in convinced that their new car is going to kill them, Ford can't really give them a remedy, if nothing is wrong. Neither will they give you an assurance that nothing is wrong--their lawyers (same as Toyota's) wouldn't allow it.

It's true that they could have told you it was static electricity and not the 300 volt battery. And they could have told you to spray the seats with an anti-cling spray or attach a ground strap.

They should have done that.

Is it 4WD? What part of the US are you in?

 

To GeekGal: I don't plan to drive it, but most people here seem to think the car is just fine, so I thought one of them might be interested in buying it.

To Jim: Ford's way to deal with the problem is to ignore it. I think it's because they don't have the knowledge to be able to deal with hybrid cars and that scares me almost as much as the problem itself. Yes, it's 4WD and we live in Los Angeles.

 

It's a bit late for me to get in here, but my guess as to what was happening was that the entire frame of the car, in the right conditoins, was building up a static charge. Many static charges, such as rubbing up against a door etc. are due to ones own body picking up a static charge, and don't represent a lot of current (this is what peopel often think of when speaking of static shocks), but if in some special conditions the frame of a large car were to develop a charge, that represents a lot of mass which can hold enough current for a very powerful shock-- a problem that should probably be addressed by some sort of ground strap or such on the car, as standard issue.

However, such a thing would be almost impossible for Ford to reproduce in testing at a single dealership. Driving it around for 5 minutes etc. won't cut it as it would need to be the same driving conditions (lots of stop and go? long steady road trip?) as well as humidity conditions, which are essentially impossible to control. Even a variable such as the type of shoes worn could make a difference with something like this. Since there have not been lots of other reports of this as well, I'd also guess it was the result of some unusual local weather conditoins, also. But this is purely speculative.

Anyway, best of look with your next vehicle.