Software problems of the 2010 Ford Fusion

It has been discovered that in many if not all fmc 4 door sedan hybrids with the 2. 5 liter engine and nickle metal hydride batteries, oem software starts to drastically reduce electric vehicle operation sometime after the hybrid warranty expires. The effect of this is the car's acceleration and fuel efficiency is drastically reduced and automatic periodic battery re-conditioning ceases. The car essentially ceases to function as a hybrid and the engine runs all the time except when at a standstill. Up to 70,000 vehicles may be affected. It has been found that this id controlled by a battery age feature in the software. Resetting this age to any lower value restores completely normal hybrid behavior and performance. Fmc has refused to do this instead quoting battery replacement for $8,000 as the solution. D. O. E. Tests many years ago showed robust performance of the battery out to 160,000 miles in accelerated testing. The fix is a ten minute software battery age change that fmc refuses to do. The reduced acceleration is a safety issue as the atkinson cycle engine was not designed to be unassisted by the battery and has very slow power acceleration without it.

I bought my 2010 Ford Fusion sel v6 with 12000 miles and drive it daily 120 miles/day to work. It has 106,000 miles now. Last week, for the third time, the "service power steering now" and "service advancetrac" indicators flashed on while driving 70 mph at night, using cruise control. Arrived home safely, next morning, no power steering. Drove car to Ford dealership, who hooked it up to diagnostic machine, and cleared messages, power steering now functioning again. The second time this occurred the dealership looked at something to do with the wheel on the passenger side. I have not used cruise control with this car since the second episode, nearly a year ago. Last week, when the third failure occurred, my friend was driving the car and had activated the cruise control, and I had warned him that I believed there was some relationship factor with using cruise control and the loss of power steering. I drive quite roughly, agressively, and have hit many bumps with no loss of power steering. During the first and second occurrence the cruise control was activated, a rough spot was encountered, and the "service power steering now -advancetrac" messages came on, with consequential loss of power steering. No mechanical work seems to matter, only effective action is clearing the messages and reestablishing power steering by hooking up to diagnostic machine. I believe it is a software glitch maybe involving a sensor. I am not a mechanic. Will the recall/replacement of throttle assembly solve this problem?? Ford needs to step up and respond to this problem.

After driving about 1. 5 miles from home, my wife came to a set of lights and stepped on the brake to stop. The brake pedal went nearly to the floor and several dash lights came on including the brakes & anti-swerve. The vehicle slowed to a stop as she entered the intersection. Fortunately 2 things were in her favor, there was no one ahead of her and there was no cross traffic at the light. Either could have resulted in an accident. She drove the vehicle back home since she considered that the brakes had failed and she may not be able to stop the vehicle. She called me. I told her to call the dealership. She left the vehicle running thinking that perhaps as it warmed up it would work and tested it several times over an hour's time in the driveway. She pulled out the car's manual to see if there was anything listed regarding the brake failure. She read in another part of the manual about resetting the car's computer by shutting off the engine. When she restarted the vehicle, the dash lights went out and brakes returned to normal. The dealer said they "never heard of this problem" and said the earliest they could see the vehicle was 5 days later. We dropped the vehicle off the night before with a description of what was experienced. The dealer said they "could not verify the concern" and Ford does not provide any guidance regarding the issue. I was able to find quite of few instances by simply doing a "google" search including a video by 'consumer reports' who experienced the exact same problem. Ford assured them it was a 'software' issue and claimed that all 2010 Fusion hybrid owners would be notified to have the software updated. My car was a newer model 2010 and apparently not under this notification since we did not receive anything from Ford. The 'Ford customer care' suggested taking the vehicle to another dealer for service who said, "there is nothing we can do. ".