My escape Hybrid died on Thursday. 9600 trouble free miles and poof it drops dead in the Girlfriends driveway. The cause (one week later they are still diagnosing it) seems to be a defective Hybrid electronics cooling pump . The system DID NOT enter safe mode nor did it issue ANY warnings of any kind. The only alert was a "stop safely now" and a complete shutdown at the same time. Because the transmission remained in gear the car stopped immediatly. THis actually happend 3 times, twice in the driveway and once after a 30 minute cooldown on the drive to my house (about a mile away).

I will post more info when I have it.

By the way I got the impression from the dealer that thier is a TSB on this issue, but I have not been able to find it.

My mileage was averaging 27 MPG in very hilly county (2500 ft vertial commute daily).

 

Chris-
Please keep us all informed about how this turns out.

 

Just got the car back, one week to the day later. The diagnosis is as follows -

TM Code p03ac
History Code p1a0e
Historu Code p1a0f

Performed tests TM 1 thru TM 5

Unable to duplicate - called tech assist hotline

ORDERED NEW COOLANT PUMP AS PER TSB 05-04-10

Installed new external coolant pump and test drived per hotline tech - no lights and no new codes.

Clearly the Technical Service Bullitin is the key, but I have neither a code referance or access to the TSB itself.

I have yet to give it a real test to see if it is fixed. I will be driving it uphill to home this evening which should give me a clue. Summer temps here can be extereme (110 is relatively common) so I have some concern about what happens when the heat hits.

I will keep the list upto date.

 

Well she made it home with no problems. I think they updated some software because she doesn't quite drive the same. The steering feels lighter and it needed to relearn all the driveablity stuff. It feels a little less peppy too, but that could be because I was driving that Focus ZX4 for a week (that thing could move). I beleive it is fixed because I could hear the cooling fan cycle on and off, right before the breakdown the cooling fan ran all the time.

Anyway I will keep the group informed if anything else pops up.

The dealership claims this is the first 'real' repair that they have done on any EHs. I had a bad drivers side rear glass (the one with the vent) on delievery and some interior touch ups.

Chris Brown
05 Silver Escape Hybrid 10,000 miles
90 BMW K 75S 75,000 miles (runs better than new and beat the hybrid MPG.