NHTSA Complaint #11432929 — 2013 FORD C-MAX

While my son was driving his / my 2013 C-Max Energi (on gasoline, the "battery only" range had been depleted), the vehicle lost power and shut down completely, and could only be coasted to the side of the road and not restarted or moved. Fortunately it was not on the highway at the time. The CEL was on, and unfortunately I do not still have the 3 codes which appeared, however the three codes were all for systems in the hybrid propulsion. When I did a google search on the three codes together, for the C-Max, I located a service bulletin from Ford showing that there are two low voltage wires which were improperly routed and insulated, in the back of the car behind the rear seat and under the steel cover over the Energi additional battery. Since the vehicle is a 2103, I had it brought to my home rather than the dealer, and I was able to remove the rear seat, rear carpet, rear seat belts, side panels and battery cover to get to the defective wiring. The "Ford Fix" involved replacing part of the wiring harness and rerouting the new harness, but with about 4 hours of my own labor, I was able to disassemble the rear interior of the vehicle, insulate the 2 defective wires and zip tie to another harness next to them so that they would not rub the steel housing over the Energi additional battery again. After thinking about this, after the fact, I realized that this should absolutely be a recall by Ford. **** Ford knows of the problem, Ford issued a Service Bulletin for the repair, and most importantly, the issue is incredibly unsafe because when the vehicle stops, it will only coast to a stop wherever it is, whether it is on a parking lot of the fast lane on the interstate, and cannot be moved under its own power. ****.