Thanks for the clarification - you made some good points. Seems like the plot has thickened on this story. For potential owners who are not DIY, it's perhaps not advisable to purchase one of these vehicles unless you have a competent mechanic with Ford Hybrid experience within a reasonable distance and that has a main battery charger on site. "Suddenly" and "dangerously under powered" is not a situation that benefits anyone including Ford. I concur that dealers and/or their mechanics can be awful. I cringe going into a dealer since I do most work myself and have a neighbourhood mechanic do the stuff I can't or won't. Judging by where Ford's stock price is going, there are storm clouds on the horizon. That said, during the course of doing some routine maintenance on our FEH, I have found the vehicle generally well designed for a mainstream SUV and easy to service .

 

Good key points too. I was also disappointed that our 2010 does not have the jump start button. That might have been the bean counters or worse. Our local dealer who swapped out a defective PCM treated us fairly but had at least one experienced hybrid tech that had serviced a fleet of FEH's owned by the City of Hamilton. The diagnostic charge was about an hour and the install about an hour which I thought was very fair but the "rebuilt" PCM (with two year warranty) was overpriced. Not having been to a (st) (d)ealer in several years, I was quaking in my boots as I was in the middle of a high stakes poker game that may have resulted in the vehicle being sold as is or scrapped.

 

Thanks for the information Steve, I might give it a try. I found Rmode Rebalance in Forscan Lite for Android, the free version, nothing to register. There is a ambient temperature restriction on running the procedure.

My now 13+ year old battery has deteriorated to a condition where it self-discharges to 30% overnight and stays there. I only drive it once a week and always find it in that condition. It does recharge to 52% during operation but regen braking is mostly gone now.

 

I just found that as well. I haven't tried it. Mainly because it's pretty involved... You have to let the car run for about an hour (according to the instructions) and allow it to run through a recalibration sequence. It didn't seem warranted at this point.

I drove the car today to work. I haven't been in to my office for 5 months - working from home due to Covid. It definitely behaves differently than my first gen '05 does. I knew some of these behaviors just through reading of the things that were revised through 2012 after the 2nd generation came out. My '05 will not go into EV above 35mph for example whereas the 2011 will drop into EV with a slight lift of the pedal, up to 45mph and cruise along that way for probably a mile or better. I also noticed that toward the end of my 17 mile commute, it will stay in EV even with light acceleration, depending on the state of charge of the battery it seems. It's just different... Admittedly, I might be just experiencing normal behavior. At this point I'm not really sure. This is the only 2nd gen FEH I've driven for any distance.

Corey

 

Keith I've owned the '05 since 2011. The battery is aging of course but it drives surprisingly (after 270K mil and counting) very much the same as it always did. It definitely doesn't tolerate heat the way it did when it was newer but other than that, it's amazingly resilient.

The 2011 I just bought just behaves differently than the '05 ever did but it seems to be getting better by the mile. I think you're onto it with the notion that it needs to be driven regularly. Hybrids don't like to sit.

 

The proven longevity of the FEH and FFH vehicles is a tribute to some **** good engineering. Our 05 was the first model year and one might expect some significant issues on such a new endeavor for Ford. Indeed, they got it right on the first try. At this point we're just going to keep driving it until it gives up but it shows no signs of doing that. When I witnessed the abuse the NYC cabbie can dish out to the FEH's they drive, it made a believer out of me. I had a salesman tell me that the FEH has the lowest "parts failure rate" of any vehicle ever made. I haven't ever researched this to find out if he was blowing smoke or not. It isn't hard to believe though, given our experiences with this one.

 

Performance of vehicles as cabs is 90% not applicable to a consumer driven vehicle.

The average person drives their car 2-4 times per day. A round trip to work and another round trip somewhere. The average number of miles driven per year is around 15000.

In most cases, consumer cars get a full thermal cycle every drive, i.e., operating temp followed by a complete cool down.

A cab is driven/running almost constantly while in use. Even if turned off, it's for a very brief time.

A cab may see 10-15K miles per month.

Consumer vehicles experience about 10X the thermal cycles per mile driven than a vehicle operated as a cab. Those are two completely different operating environments.

If all you're looking at are things like wheel bearings and suspension components, then yes cab vehicle experience applies.

For things like a hybrid battery, in most cases, cab operation is more advantageous on a mileage basis - less thermal cycling of the pack (not sitting in the sun all day at work). Of all the Gen 3 Prius I've seen, most fail in the 120-150K mileage range. The one exception was a privately owned Discount Cab. 2015 model with 270K miles on it after 2 years. That battery was also in DRAMATICALLY better condition than ALL other packs including those that failed at under 100K miles.

 

Well I don't think I could disagree more regarding the applicability of the cab example. I think I'll just end this now and say, I totally understand why you had to turn off your PM on this forum. You pretty much treat everyone here as though they are some inferior life form. Good luck with that.

 

You're free to disagree with me. Opinion/desire doesn't change facts/data. MOST cars will perform very well for 200-300K when driven as a cab for a few years. Far fewer will perform as well when that is stretched over 10-20 years.

Since you're keen on unsubstantiated assumptions, I had to turn PMs off from endless requests for individual help for topics that had been covered multiple times. Sorry you took things personally. They weren't intended offend you.

 

Funny... I don't see any sources or data for your musings here at all but of course, you're right, I'm wrong.

Here's your data Mr. Know it all:
https://www.greencarreports.com/news...000-plus-miles

This author definitely disagrees with your assessment of Prius battery reliability and even includes the YouTube FEH taxi teardown:
https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/20...5-years-later/

And... Even if your Prius Taxi battery DOES puke... It's really not that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things, although it is indeed relatively rare:https://www.forbes.com/sites/tonybra.../#581966d93ee9

https://www.consumerreports.org/hybr...o-hybrid-cars/

https://www.greencarreports.com/news...t-and-warranty

https://www.hybridcars.com/hybrid-car-battery/

https://hybridbatteryrepairservice.com/prius/

I could spend the next hour or two finding wonderful evidence that what I have stated is based in data and evidence... but of course I would still be wrong and you'd be right because that's what really matters here; that you must demonstrate to others how stupid they are and how smart you are. Thanks for the entertainment. Feel free to tell me how all this information isn't really representative of the point, blah, blah blah... YOU'RE RIGHT! Absolutely... So silly of me to even try to write something on the same page as someone as superior as you.