Thanks again to everyone who took the time to reply to my original post. Your ideas and information are truly appreciated. It is especially helpful to know that the issue is with the contactors, not the capacitors
.
If you are curious to know, my wife and I decided to go ahead and purchase the MME GTPE. She just really loves this car and was not interested in any other EV currently on the market. We took delivery yesterday. Our local Ford dealer honored their promise to sell me the car at MSRP at the time of the original order (December 2021), which is a few thousand less than if we ordered one today. Plus, they honored the incentives available back in Dec 2021, which were more favorable than the terms available now. This included a $2,500 cash back incentive if I financed through Ford Options. I plan to pay it off within 3 or 4 months. Plus we are eligible for the federal tax rebate of $7,500.
And just to give us extra peace of mind, we did purchase an extended warranty that basically extends the bumper to bumper warranty to 8 years / 100K miles. We were able to negotiate a very favorable deal on this. This extended warranty is transferable to a new owner if we decide to sell it.
I realize it is a bit of a risk to buy this car, given that the situation with the contactors and the HVBJB is still playing itself out. I hope we will not have any problems. If we do, we are covered by the warranty for 8 years. If the worse case scenario happens and we have endless ongoing problems (which I doubt would happen), we will sell the MME and buy another Tesla.
One last point. One of the main reasons why my wife preferred the MME over a Model Y was the side mirrors and rear visibility. I drove the MME today and the rear visibility is definitely better than in my Model 3. And the side mirrors on the MME are definitely larger. Plus, I like the fact that the blind spot warning light is embedded in the side mirror on the MME. I wish I had that on my Model 3. Now if I could only get Ford to upgrade their iPhone app to match the features of Tesla's app!
Well, you pays your money, you takes your chances. As you might notice, I mention a 2018 M3; not quite R1.0, if you will, but R1.1 for sure. And this car has had its moments, the most spectacular being the day that a short in the Pagoda Wiring Harness blew the Pyro Fuse, necessitating a one week stay at a Service Center for replacement of the harness, the fuse, and the 12 volt battery while they were at it. And there’s been a couple other warranty repairs, too.
But.. as part of my job over the years, I’ve played Reliability Engineer. FIT rate analysis, MBTF calculations, Mean Time To Repair, multiple protection hardware, and all that jazz.
Thing is, over a long enough period of time, a big enough population of parts, and statistics, random failures of
every part in a manufactured thing just.. happens. A carving knife one buys at a home goods store snaps in two three years down the pike; an ICE car has a piston rod break and destroy the engine; brand new lightbulb out of the carton flashes and dies on the second use.
Good manufacturers work hard at lowering these kinds of faults and keep warranties around when the inevitable happens to one customer or another. I get it. At a forum like this one, you’ll hear about cockamamie faults all over the place, especially on a new model year. Sometimes they even gain enough coherence to form a pattern. Anybody remember the numerous cracked-T glass on a significant, but not overwhelming number of early M3s?
But otherwise, the complaints are for random parts all over. And they tend to reduce in number over time as manufacturing and design engineers work through the problems.
Thing is, these contactor failures on the Fords sounds a bit different than the usual run of the mill early teething pains. For one thing, Ford hasn’t said that it has a replacement part yet. For another, this seems to be a pretty common problem affecting, or potentially affecting, a
lot of MMEs. Since Ford hasn’t said anything official yet, it could be a big double-digit percentage. And there’s been zero mention of a retrofit program. There has, apparently, been mention of a software update. That slows down the car, but probably doesn’t do much for a partly damaged contactor.
Look, any kind of flat out acknowledgment from Ford that a) they know there’s a problem and b) they’re working on it would be really useful to potential buyers like yourself right now. But I’m afraid that any assurances from a dealer sales agent who’s
paid to move cars and nothing else doesn’t cut the mustard. Yeah, you may like the creature comforts inside.. but how much is that going to be worth when you get stranded somewhere?
If it were me, I wouldn’t be buying that car unless Ford, not the dealership, had something concrete to say.
Good luck. I’m afraid you’re going to need it.