Ford -> It's your charger. No Ford, it's your buggy &*# code.

[PrivateJoker]

Long story. TLDR at the bottom in case people like to play along at home and don't want a spoiler.

Two weeks ago did a long road-trip from Toronto to Tennessee. Get back on a Friday and truck charges fine overnight to my typical 90%. Seemed like it took longer than normal, but didn't really bat an eye at it.

Monday rolls around and I plug the truck back in. Wake up Tuesday morning and see a charge fault in my My Ford Pass. Now it gets interesting, because while this is happening I have two Juicebox chargers. They upgraded me to their new software which I had them roll back because the new stuff does not support load balancing which allows me to share a single circuit for two chargers.

I figure the new guys just messed things up and I would reset the power on the charger and retry. Plug the truck back in after the rest. It starts to charge for 5 seconds, stops for about 30, then retries. This happens in an endless loop. I try my other charger, same thing. I grab my neighbours 32A J1772 charger, plug it in. Same thing. Now I'm wondering if I have some kind of ground fault in my wiring. Plug my wifes EV6, it starts charging no problem with my Juicenet charger.

Bring the truck into the dealer. They call me back, they had plugged it into their FCP they have out front, no problem. They tech saw a code about the fault. I asked them to try a non FCP, I wasn't sure if the fact that its a CCS-1 connector had anything to do with it. I was concerned all the rapid charging fried something and that maybe when they cleared the codes, that's how it started working again. Finally after realizing they weren't going to do anything anyways as they were convinced the issue was my charger, I took back to the truck.

Sure enough took it home and it was charging at home without issue. Fast forward to the Wednesday after the Labour day weekend, and plug it in. Same garbage, it's cycling over and over:

This just repeats endlessly. Really hope that contactor is rated for more than 10k cycles. Call up Ford, and they have me do some troubleshooting which is basically reset the software by holding the left and right most buttons on the wheel. Familiar with this process, as I need to do it almost every drive to get Android Auto to connect. They tell me to go to a public charger and try. I'm lucky as I have one 1/4 mile down the street and go. Low and behold works fine. Rep basically tells me it's my charger or electrical, and they can't help any further because it's not a Ford charger. There's some back and forth where I try to explain its working fine on my wife's EV6, brother's ID4 and Sister'n'law's Model 3 who all charged that weekend. Basically I was told I could have the dealer look at it, but there might be a charge because it's probably a faulty charger.

Go back home, hoping the public charger somehow reset something - nope - same stupid cycling issue. Now I'm wondering if I have some kind of ground fault on my panel, so I grab my multi-meter and start checking resistance and voltage, etc. etc. Don't see anything. Next day, call an electrician in, they say everything is fine. I'm starting to think of all kinds of stupid things, maybe it's only when my A/C is in stage two plus the dryer plus blah blah blah. It's about 5.30pm and I decide to plug it back in, and it's working again?! This just reinforces maybe something else is somehow causing the electrical issues and I have to figure out a way to track voltage/resistance on my other outlet.

Now here's where I get lucky and it dawns on me what's happening. Normally I wouldn't plug in at 5.30pm it's peak tariff for me, it goes from 24 cents down to 6.5 cents at 7pm. But to troubleshoot with my multimeter I figure I'll plug in and see. I plug in, and Truck is charging fine. Go have some dinner, low and behold my phone starts going crazy right at 7pm. Damn truck is cycling again. It hit me then that the thing that explains everything was the Ford Profile settings that are based on GPS location. This is why it worked at the public charger, dealership, etc.

So I delete the charge profile and everything is working. I add it back, because I don't want to charge to 100% all the time, but so far it doesn't seem to have saved it yet. Oh well, at least I can charge it at home.

If I had to sum up in two words the software stack of this truck: Normalized disappointment.

TLDR: First step to troubleshoot charging issues is delete charging location based profiles.

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[TaxmanHog]

In recent months several of us experienced corrupted charge schedules on the truck after the application of a power update, has your truck had one recently?

 

[PrivateJoker]

In recent months several of us experienced corrupted charge schedules on the truck after the application of a power update, has your truck had one recently?

No I haven't:

 

[Adventureboy]

My charge profiles seem to be working but my departure settings seem to be getting messed up. I can turn the darn thing off daily and it still starts up the preconditioning in the morning. Finally ended up deleting the profile and it seemed to stop it. Definitely, they could use some software discipline on this front.

 

[tls]

This happened to me. I too have two chargers (Tesla HPWC gen 2) at home.

Thread

The problem would resolve for a single charge cycle each time I drove somewhere else to charge and came back. Consecutive attempts to charge on either of my home chargers would behave as you describe.

I also suspect that changing charging location settings fixed it - though in my case I changed the settings for a *different* nearby location to get the truck charged in a hurry - it may be that making any change to any location clears out whatever's making the truck go crazy.

I'm sure all the cycling it did to the contactors didn't do wonders for the lifetime of my chargers, either.

 

[Pod]

Update? What’s an Update? <jk>

 

[GoodSam]

@TaxmanHog I wonder what the location accuracy is for determining if one is at a Saved Location? I have seen two different numbers for my driveway Home location latitude & longitude, say latitude 34.000000 vs. 34.001000 and the same small difference for longitude. Could that cause a Saved Location not to be recognized?
[edit 11-27, I have had the "One-Time Max Charge Limit" change to 100% a few times, so if the Saved "Home" Location does not match, I may get the over-charge - @Ford Motor Company - this may cause Ford to have more warranty replacements over 8 years of coverage? Software guys should change a default One-Time Max Charge Limit to 90% instead of 100%. I wonder if Ford can see these uncalled-for changes happening back at the office?]

 

[TaxmanHog]

@TaxmanHog I wonder what the location accuracy is for determining if one is at a Saved Location? I have seen two different numbers for my driveway Home location latitude & longitude, say latitude 34.000000 vs. 34.001000 and the same small difference for longitude. Could that cause a Saved Location not to be recognized?

I have a very constrained parking position within my garage so I very seldom deviate from the stored location which I later renamed "HOME" and have not had an issue with GPS location match-up, I can see where a problem might occur if you are parked in a wider area within reach of the EVSE cord, close enough to reach but outside the tolerance levels for the truck to recognize that it's at the stored location. I do not have a solid number on the tolerance, the manual doesn't say either. Best bet is to try to always position your truck consistent with the stored location in the charging profile.

 

[hturnerfamily]

37,000 miles...

I've not had any charging-at-home issues with either my Ford Mobile EVSE or my MaxGreen Adjustable EVSE in many, many months... although, finding the 'sweet spot' for the Scheduled Charging Window was very, very problematic from the get-go... Ford's engineers decided to 'default' to your set Charge Percentage as the 'main' factor, and no matter WHAT schedule you set, there are times when you plug in and it starts charging right away.

Mine works with Scheduled Charge Times(7 days) at 11pm to 5pm... that gives the 'calculations' always enough time to not start charging until 11pm, well, as long as I don't plug in until AFTER 5pm...but that works fine for me.

I use no 'Preconditioning' or 'Scheduled Departure Times', so I can't really say that those 'work' or not...

 

[GoodSam]

Best bet is to try to always position your truck consistent with the stored location in the charging profile.

Should be an indication on FordPass, Ford Navigation Map, the Instrument Control Panel ,and the Display header that one is parked at a "Saved Location". @Ford Motor Company

 

[TaxmanHog]

Try saving additional locations adjacent to the last saved spot, name them home2, home3, etc this might resolve the tolerance issues.

Also another concern, are you getting any odd behaviour with the map systems, Ford, Google, Apple, not locating you on the road position correctly, random odd placements, maybe there is an issue with the GPS antenna ???????

 

[GoodSam]

any odd behaviour with the map systems, Ford, Google, Apple, not locating you on the road position correctly,

The GPS coax cable splitter circuit board thing? was replaced a couple of weeks ago and Ford Navigation seems to keeping the location accurate, except for the shaky, jittering vehicle arrow and map which I am asking the dealer to follow up on (had to send pic of outside of truck to satisfy them!).
Shaky Ford Nav https://youtu.be/P45CjUffsa4?si=_i2EmfxkLZhe0B11

 

[PrivateJoker]

I've not had any charging-at-home issues with either my Ford Mobile EVSE or my MaxGreen Adjustable EVSE in many, many months... although, finding the 'sweet spot' for the Scheduled Charging Window was very, very problematic from the get-go... Ford's engineers decided to 'default' to your set Charge Percentage as the 'main' factor, and no matter WHAT schedule you set, there are times when you plug in and it starts charging right away.

The EVSE's I have are solid. I use them without issue with my wifes EV6 and before on my Model Y, and before on my 2018 and 2012 Leaf's.

Yesterday I brought my truck back to the dealer to get my steering wheel heat, tail-light recall etc. I also asked them to fix SYNC so it can update - It's stuck on a failed update since before this thread started. Ford tells me to bring it to the dealer to fix it and the dealer tells me they can't and blame Ford.

I don't know that Ford Canada has the same technical resources that the US has. So far it's been a bit of a clown festival to be honest trying to get this addressed. I've tried escalating, it's a nuisance for me. But for someone with less knowledge of contactors, and perhaps a less well built EVSE. I wouldn't be surprised to see someone burn down their house.

 

[PrivateJoker]

Well happy to report, 4 more trips to the dealer.... AND.... Drumroll...

Still the exact same charging problem.

 

[TaxmanHog]

Well happy to report, 4 more trips to the dealer.... AND.... Drumroll...

Still the exact same charging problem.

Without digging through ALL of post 1 which is WAY to long.
What is the primary charging problem?

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