Photo: Ford
On the other side of the blue pond we call the Atlantic Ocean, the peeps at Ford sell the Escape under the Kuga handle. Last year when the health crisis forced many Europeans into lockdown, the Ford Motor Company had to issue a stop-sale order and a safety recall for the Kuga PHEV over battery fire risk. More than one year after that fiasco, an Escape PHEV has been called back over a different problem concerning the busbar terminal.
October 12th is when the issue was brought to Ford’s Critical Concern Review Group for review by a German dealer. The automaker’s European division quickly identified a second Kuga PHEV affected by a sudden loss of drive power, but happily for everyone, no accidents or injuries were reported.
An overheated busbar terminal creates a high resistance connection, which means the bus voltage may fall below the operational threshold. As a result of this condition, the powertrain control module triggers a diagnostic trouble code and commands the powertrain to stop. A “Stop Safely Now” message is displayed on the instrument panel when this problem occurs.
As for the root cause, Ford says the busbar pad wasn’t seated properly, causing the pad to be mounted out of position prior to busbar welding, therefore reducing the contact area between the cell terminal and busbar. The high-voltage battery is supplied by Samsung, while the busbar comes from a sub-supplier by the name of Nex+. According to documents filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the welding width and area limits were modified by Samsung on August 25th, 2021.
U.S. dealers have already been informed of the issue, whereas the poor soul who took delivery of the faulty 2021 Ford Escape PHEV will have to wait until December 6th at the latest to receive a notification via first-class mail. Ford says the replacement battery has a properly seated and welded busbar.
An overheated busbar terminal creates a high resistance connection, which means the bus voltage may fall below the operational threshold. As a result of this condition, the powertrain control module triggers a diagnostic trouble code and commands the powertrain to stop. A “Stop Safely Now” message is displayed on the instrument panel when this problem occurs.
As for the root cause, Ford says the busbar pad wasn’t seated properly, causing the pad to be mounted out of position prior to busbar welding, therefore reducing the contact area between the cell terminal and busbar. The high-voltage battery is supplied by Samsung, while the busbar comes from a sub-supplier by the name of Nex+. According to documents filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the welding width and area limits were modified by Samsung on August 25th, 2021.
U.S. dealers have already been informed of the issue, whereas the poor soul who took delivery of the faulty 2021 Ford Escape PHEV will have to wait until December 6th at the latest to receive a notification via first-class mail. Ford says the replacement battery has a properly seated and welded busbar.
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