Yesterday I started the car, and began to pull out of a parking lot with a pretty steep incline. I noticed after sitting on the hill a bit that it seemed that I had no accelleration, however I brushed it off, figuring the engine had not had time to kick in as I could have been sitting in electric only mode.

As I go down the road I realize that something is wrong. The car has no accelleration, and at the same time the wrench light comes on and the "Service Soon" message comes up in the message center.

I punched over to the energy transfer screen on the nav system and saw that no arrows led to or from the engine, however it did show the highlight around the engine indicating it should be on.

As I began to pull over I also noticed that my tach was quite high, 3-4k however I did not hear any noticible increase in engine noise. I did however hear that it definitely was on.

So I did what I do with all highly technicial pieces of equipment when they are acting quite strange...turn it off and back on.

Afterwords the car acted normal, and I did not have any problems on my way into work this morning.

Just wanted to share my experience with you and see if anyone had an idea of what happened!

 

There is a FEH strategy used to prevent rollback on an incline like your describing. There may have been an error occur in the strategy and the VSC controller needed to be reset to continue driving the vehicle. Dale Crombez is the Ford engineer who invented this strategy and has invented other Creep Mode patents on the FEH/MMH. The name of the strategy is:

Torque control strategy for management of rollback in a wheeled vehicle whose powertrain includes a rotary electric machine

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6321144.html

GaryG

 

Hmm... this sounds vaguely familiar. I too once had my FEH rev very high as I was backing out of the driveway (which is a bit of an incline) and got the engine service light. I too shut the car off, then turned it back on, and it was fine. I drove around the block a few times (figuring if my car is gonna break down I'd prefer to find out when I'm within walking distance of (a) my house, (b) my other car. Only it never had another problem again.

I shrugged it off as being an excessively discharged battery (the battery level was pretty low because it had driven for the last few mile to my house the day before on all electric power).

But if it is basically a software problem that failed to reset itself, it makes me wonder why new firmware updates aren't made available to all owners of the FEH -- rather than just going into the latest models. After all, I think they haven't changed the drive train on this car since introduction -- but they have changed the software to take advantage of what they've learned over the last few years.

 

I had a similar situation yesterday, but without the incline. The ICE would not shut off and
HV battery AC was running(I figure this was the HV battery recondtioning). But while
this was happening I had no acceleration, the nav showed no arrows to or from the ICE,
and the RPM"S stayed constant. I had to stop by my office for about ten minutes. When I got back on the road all the symptons above still existed, but everything went back to normal on the drive home, the ICE & HV AC were still running(still recondtioning) but
everthing else was as it should be. Outside temp was about 102, but I don't think that had anything since it has been much hotter. It didn't do this the last time the HV recondtioning
occurred. Got in this morning, started fine, everything working normal, good acceleration, ICE shuts off, etc... Guess I will just wait and see if it happens again.

 

I had a similar situation yesterday, but without the incline. The ICE would not shut off and HV battery AC was running(I figure this was the HV battery reconditioning). But while this was happening I had no acceleration, the nav showed no arrows to or from the ICE, and the RPM"S stayed constant, I didn't notice the service light being on. I had to stop by my office for about ten minutes. When I got back on the road all the symptons above still existed, but everything went back to normal on the drive home, the ICE & HV AC were still running(still reconditioning) but everthing else was as it should be. Outside temp was about 102, but I don't think that had anything to do with it, since it has been much hotter. It didn't do this the last time the HV battery reconditioning occurred. Got in this morning, started fine, everything working normal, good acceleration, ICE shuts off, etc... Guess I will just wait and see if it happens again.

 

Well it happened again last night when I was parking in my driveway at home. I was pulling around and next thing I knew the service wrench was on, and I had no accelleration. I also noticed the tach wouldn't budge over 2,000 RPM. I turned the car off, and then back on and took a trip around the block, all systems nominal. No problems on my way into work this morning either. Anyone know if the code the car is throwing for the idiot light is stored that I could pull out with a code reader? Or would I need to read it while the light was on (may be an excuse for that scangauge I have been eyeing)

I guess this means a trip to the lovely dealer is in order. I also think it is time for something to be looked at with the brakes since I am over 55,000 miles. I know what people say about the breaks and the regenerative braking system, however I tend to stop hard too much :-P

Hopefully I can get out of the dealer without giving up my first born.

 

I actually had this happen yesterday morning. The previous night I played with my scangauge II and threw in the code number 22490B. Almost 2 seconds after I put the car in drive, I lost power, the wrench light came on, the service soon light came on and I noticed in the message center behind the steering wheel--loss of regenerative braking.

Look at my engine block heater thread on what I was trying to do with the code numbers.

 

What you did with the SG when you sent 22490B was to ask for the HV battery voltage from the FEH. You should hit the SCAN button on your SG to see if the FEH has set any trouble codes.

 

Carl, I did hit the scan button but no trouble codes were revealed. I can't remember exactly what or how I did it, but remember being able to find a location where I could input the 22490B and then there was a variety of stuff like cml, abbreviations that I had no ideal what they meant and then the send button/command. Something was sent into the engine control portion of my vehicle and caused the regenerative braking to go out and loss of power. Thank goodness I remember reading some thread in here that stated to cut the engine. Wait something like 10 seconds and try starting it again. I haven't had a problem since.

 

Watch your snail mail for Service campaign 07B48, your symptoms sound similar...