mikeg

Paul - Agree, all previous dead battery cases were related to the car sitting around for longer than usual (leaving the house in the afternoon instead of right away in the morning). We park in a garage, and so I park the car and leave. There is no way to hear anything from the house. However, I have heard stuff in the back in the past after the car was sitting for a couple of minutes already - but I was told that it was normal - cooling the battery off. Zathrus - Thank you for sharing. I think that I will go for this. I will plug that thing in and try to see the impact of using Bluetooth, and also if it makes a difference how I leave the car - 1) go to park, take the keys out, leave it unlocked. 2) go to park, take the keys out, lock it, 3) go to park, turn the radio and bluetooth audio manually, wait 5 seconds, and then take the keys out..

Unfortunately, I don't have good news. As I wrote above, our shop did everything they were told to by the Ford Hotline - including replacing the pump. However, our C-Max was found dead this morning. When we tried to get in using the electronic key, we could not - the car was locked, so we had to get in using a manual key. Nothing went on in the car when we tried to start it. Totally dead. Nothing was plugged in to the car via any of the ports. We had Bluetooth audio on for the drive down to a different city - so a long drive (50+ miles) on a free-way at over 70 miles per hour, but Bluetooth audio was not on for the drive back. For now, I would say that driving in the dark is the cause. That’s the only pattern that I noticed between these dead battery occurrences –a late night drive / battery dead next morning – the car is ALWAYS in the auto setting for lights to be on. The time the car showed when it was jump started was 7:53AM – and we got back at 10:30 PM. I am not even taking it to the shop since they wrote back, "I have gotten with my shop foreman and he is getting with Ford to see if there’s anything else. I would say to hold on to vehicle for now, unless it happens again. Once I get any news I will be back in touch with you. If anything else arises please contact me." We are at around 20k miles now..

Just a quick update on our case: I had my C-Max in the shop for 9 days. They did everything that Ford Hotline told them to do - accessed, inspected and applied electrical grease to connectors C1812, C1651, C140 and C134. They also inspected PCM Connectors C175B, C175E, and C175T. No issues found. Based on hotline's recommendation they replaced coolant pump and connector and retested. In other words, we will see if any of this solved the issue or not. They told me that if it doesn't start again, I should call in and they will check if the hotline has any other recommendations on their list... I am of course hoping that some of this did the trick.. They provided us with a free rental - and I must say that I was very happy to move back to C-Max after those 9 days in a Hyundai. ;) I will keep monitoring this conversation here to see if any other new recommendations show up over time. Really hoping that we won't have any more jump-starting cases. Thank you everyone for your support & recommendations.

Salman, Thank you for your advice. To your questions, the shop says that they tried all of the above and that Ford told them to look for an "outside cause" which we translated as something taking "too much power" via the USB port, but obviously that's not it. I agreed with the service advisor that I would bring it in on Monday, but he said that he has not heard back from Ford on what else to try, so the will get me a rental, and keep it there for a few days again, and then say that they couldn't find anything / replicate the problem - unless something changed in the car in the last 3 weeks, but somehow I doubt that. In other words, I feel hopeless and helpless. I have read above that the same stuff is happening with 2014 models, so obviously Ford hasn't identified what the source of all these problems is. The guy that was jump starting it said again, "I am getting a lot of these for some reason." After the car was jump-started, the clock in the car was at 9:28AM... Is this the time when the car died? We drove back in the late evening, and the drive was a lot of downhill, and the lights were on. Then the next morning, we didn't drive anywhere. The car was sitting in the garage until the late afternoon when we discovered that it was dead. In other words, I feel like if we had driven my daughter to school in the morning, then this last jump starting would have been prevented. I offered to let them add some "debugging" device to the car and watch the battery and other systems until it happens again, and then they would know if something didn't turn off, but obviously that's not an option - I find it weird that Ford has not asked for volunteers for such a program. I am sure that most of us would agree to having their car monitored just so they can find out what's going on and get it fixed. The car is awesome when it drives. Once I get it back, I will stop using bluetooth audio as well. In other words, i will be driving a hybrd car without any perk (bluetooth, usb, or electicity plug). Is there anyone whose car has been jump-started 2-3 times and hasn't had the problem for over 3 months since the last occurrence? Michal

Ok, so our C-Max is dead again. Not plugging anything into the USB port is not the cure. No idea what to do now, no point in bringing it into the shop, they have no idea what to do with it either. :(

After our last case (4th) I bought an external battery (Jackery) for my cell (Nokia Lumia 925) and stopped using the USB port. I am still using Bluetooth audio, but before I turn the engine off, I manually disconnect the phone from the car, turn the radio off, count to 5, and then turn the engine off. I always lock the car - since I am not sure what triggers things in the car to turn off. I am at 45mpg and 19k miles after 17 months.