About the battery age switch reset in 2010 Ford Fusion Hybrids aka cars are really just fancy computers

a 2010 Ford Fusion Hybrid. This is someone else’s picture of a perfectly reasonable driving appliance.

I’ve had a 2010 Ford Fusion for about 40k of the 150k miles on it, and I’ve been satisfied with it for what it is – a midsize sedan that gets 40ish MPG but still has power comparable to a 6 cylinder. I have not done anything to it other than normal maintenance, until now anyway – my engine would not turn off at idle or drive in purely electric mode. I only noticed because I’ve been getting low MPG for a while, I figured it was just cause I haven’t driven very much this year, but I had to wait for a grocery pickup and it took 40 minutes and I knew it should have turned off after 20 minutes or so. So I started googling and reading. There’s a service advisory for some electronic issue, but I didn’t think it was that. I noticed this thread:

https://www.fordfusionforum.com/index.php?app=forums&module=forums&controller=topic&id=19361

It says these cars have a switch that disables some electronic functionality around the 8th or 9th year and you can fix it with an OBD-II cable & laptop running FORscan. I had one for an old Subaru laying around, so I tried that – but I couldn’t connect. I took a chance on buying the cable recommended in that thread for around 30 dollars. It took me a while to get it recognize, first driver issues (and then issues finding them since they aren’t on their site), then issues getting it to connect with MS-CAN. Finally I get connected, and it says my battery is 10 years old? I’m not sure when it kicks in but I’ve barely driven at all this year so it’s possible it happened at the beginning of the year and haven’t noticed. I set it to 1 year old, hit the buttons, heard a click in the trunk, and drove. 10 minutes later I’m at a stop light and the engine turns off and the car is in EV mode again. Back to normal.

No check engine or anything comes up on the dashboard when this happens. It’s kind of silly, but maybe it’s a liability thing? I wonder how many people have gotten rid of these cars thinking something was bad when nothing was actually wrong.

I’m kinda bored of it and want to get a 3rd generation Mazda Miata, but I’m too reasonable to go from 40mpg and a bunch of power + space to a tiny noisy roadster just for fun when I don’t even drive much anymore. Maybe at 200k or a real issue happening to this car, or if I find a really good deal.

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Categorized as cars, tech