Yeah, that's my opinion. I'm sure these vehicles will go 300K+ miles mechanically if they reach that mileage within 5 years or so. But beyond that I do feel the electronics become unreliable.

 

If you consider the electronics in a car are subject to a lot of heat, cold, vibration, dust, etc., that environment can't be ideal. Wonder if the Aisin tranny and Sanyo battery packs are manufactured any more under OEM supplier contract since they were 'bespoke' to the FEH and Ford is likely not responsible for factory warranty coverage. Or, would the cost to continue to make them in small volumes exceed their value as replacements? Lots of questions could be asked here. Never saw Ford guarantee hybrid specific parts availability beyond the 8 year/150,000 mile extended hybrid warranty.

 

The Escape Hybrid will not start when the high- voltage hybrid battery is depleted.
It's a surprisingly simple fix:
1. Make sure your under-hood 12 volt battery is fully charged. If it isn't, either put a battery charger on it and fully charge it or you can put on jumper cables from another car if you in a hurry.
2. Pop out the plastic triangle panel on the drivers side dashboard (you can see it when you open the driver's door). Underneath is a button with a battery logo on it.
3. With the ignition off and key out of the ignition, press this button (don’t hold it) until the yellow LED light glows.
4. Wait 8 minutes. I set a timer on my phone for this. What is happening at this time is the hybrid battery is pulling juice from the under-hood battery to give it a little bit of power - that is why the under-hood battery needs to be fully charged or jumped if low.
5. After the 8 minute wait, the yellow LED will begin to flash - don't do anything until it starts flashing. Within 2 minutes, try and start the engine. If all goes well it should start.
6. Drive or run the car for awhile to allow the engine to charge up the hybrid battery. If the vehicle doesn't start, you can follow these steps one more time to give it another boost.

Here is a pic of the button and where to find it.

 

5 year old thread.

Not as simple as you portray.

Only 05-08 have the jump starter.

Not all years have the button in that location.

An excessively discharged battery will NOT respond to a jump start. NiMH chemistry can go "dormant" and produce very high internal resistance. When a charge current is applied, the voltage will spike, and the jump starter will throttle back its current or fault. In many cases, the light will begin flashing immediately, and the car will throw a code indicating jump starter failure.

Best results are had by NOT attempting start after the first and doing a second by default.

If the button starts flashing immediately, or very shortly after pressing it, or the HV battery voltage pushes well into the 300s very quickly but then rapidly settles below it, or after start attempt, the battery will likely have to be opened up and manually charged.

 

5 year old post on a 13 year old vehicle.

I'll have to take your word on the 05-07 years. I can only speak about my experience.
I have a 2008 Ford Escape Hybrid that had a stop safely now.
So did the OP.
I did the steps and it was a simple as I portrayed.
*shrug*
Or don't try it at all and bring it to a mechanic.

 

I have a 2008 that also displayed the stop safely now on dash and now will not start. The hybrid battery charg3 light will not work. It does not light up.
battery is charging overnight. It seemed low and is still not fully charged after 4 hrs.

 

It worked. After while not used my daughter 2008 Ford Escape, I got same “SSN” problem. I followed above method. My car started with no problem. I keep charged under-hood battery while wait 8 and 2 minutes. Only thing I can mention, the yellow light on the my car black battery button was very hard to see. I had to look very closely. Thank you so much.

 

It really sucks that Ford removed that circuitry for 09+ models.

 

This may help to explain why the ICE would not start if there was a problem with the transmission " "

 

Quote:

This may help to explain why the ICE would not start if there was a problem with the transmission "

The FEH does not have a conventional starter motor run by the 12V battery. It is the smaller of the two electric motors in the transaxle that acually supplies the torque to start the Internal Combustion Engine. It runs off the High Voltage power system. If there is insufficient charge in the High Voltage battery to turn the motor/generator in the transxale to start the ICE engine, the car is effectively "dead" and cannot restart the ICE and you are going nowhere. If the computers detect a critical fault that would cause more damage, they will inhibit the smaller electric motor in the transaxle from starting the ICE and you are also going nowhere.

You have to pull the codes, run the FORScan analysis and find the root cause of the problem. There is no way to start the internal combustion engine of these cars with the 12V system alone. The button you see here in this thread is an emergency stopgap method that Ford included, to allow someone with a discharged High Voltage battery to use the 12V battery to TEMPORARILY recharge the high voltage battery to a level where the ICE engine can be restarted. After the ICE engine starts, it is burning gasoline and it DRIVES the motor/generator in the transaxle to attempt to recharge the High Voltage battery.

There IS NO STARTER MOTOR in the conventional sense. The 12V battery under the hood only exists for compatibility with existing 12V electrical components in the rest of the car. That is also why there is no conventional alternator. There is only a GENERATOR - inside the transaxle, and then the DC converter does the rest, by taking high voltage DC power and downconverting it to 12V DC.

Hope this helps.