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'12 Focus low fuel warning


mrgdr57

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I've had an SE for 3 months and the warning has always started to come on at 50-51 miles to empty then again at 25, then 10 and finally at 0.

 

 

 

Someone on the Explorer forum here at BO ask me this question when I ran out of gas in front of a gas station in my '11 Explorer. The question was, how far past 0 MTE was I when I ran out of gas. I think it was 19 miles past 0 MTE and I determined I had .8 gallons at 0 MTE. This is exactly what my '09 FEH has at 0 MTE. My '05 FEH had 1.3 gallons left at 0 MTE so Ford may have decreased the amount of fuel at 0 MTE. The only way to know how much gas is in the tank is calculate your average MPG after 0 MTE until you run out of gas. I reset trip 2 when I hit the 50 MTE warning for a number of reasons as a hypermiler and reset trip 2 again at 0 MTE to determine how far I go past 0 MTE. E10 is mandated in Florida and starts going bad after 30 days. This is one reason why I prefer to fill with the freshest gas from a busy gas station and take the tank as low as possible just before filling. For the Explorer, about 10 miles past 0 MTE is my limit before a fill-up now. I also only get a gallon of gas (E10) at a time for my lawn equipment so it does not go bad before I use it. Same thing for my boat gas tank which is 63 gallons. I can't burn that much E10 in 30 days, so I never add more than I need before a trip fishing or diving.

 

My son is the sole driver in my '12 Focus and I can't comment on that car other than he will take it near 0 MTE, but not passed it before a refill. He has now reached hypermiling status with a 33.456 Lifetime MPG average from the first mile on the OD from the factory:

http://www.cleanmpg.com/index.php?page=garage&displayunits=MPG%28US%29&viewcar=3738

 

 

GaryG,

 

While trying to break 500 miles to a tank for the first time, I managed to get my Explorer to hit 0 MTE as I pulled into a gas station. It has an 18.4 gallon fuel tank and the pump didn't click until it took 18.54 gallons. Every single older Ford I've been in could go 20 miles or so past 0 MTE. I've been in a diesel F-350 that was pushed to 35 miles past 0 MTE. I've taken my '12 Focus and my Mom's '11 Focus about 4 miles past 0 MTE. As far as the Explorer is concerned, I'm not cutting it that close again unless I know I'll be at the station before I'm @ 0.

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Just found out today that my 2012 Focus means exactly 0 miles to empty when it says so. Engine hesitated and then cut out on the expressway exactly at 0 Miles to Empty.... I thought I could make it home (3 more miles), but luckily when it cut out I was able to coast up an offramp and right up into a gas station.

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Just found out today that my 2012 Focus means exactly 0 miles to empty when it says so. Engine hesitated and then cut out on the expressway exactly at 0 Miles to Empty.... I thought I could make it home (3 more miles), but luckily when it cut out I was able to coast up an offramp and right up into a gas station.

 

In summary, I believe we can conclude that '12 Focus drivers may or may not get a low fuel warning lamp and regardless of whether that does or doesn't occur, pay attention to DTE. Seriously.

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I've had an SE for 3 months and the warning has always started to come on at 50-51 miles to empty then again at 25, then 10 and finally at 0.

 

GaryG,

 

While trying to break 500 miles to a tank for the first time, I managed to get my Explorer to hit 0 MTE as I pulled into a gas station. It has an 18.4 gallon fuel tank and the pump didn't click until it took 18.54 gallons. Every single older Ford I've been in could go 20 miles or so past 0 MTE. I've been in a diesel F-350 that was pushed to 35 miles past 0 MTE. I've taken my '12 Focus and my Mom's '11 Focus about 4 miles past 0 MTE. As far as the Explorer is concerned, I'm not cutting it that close again unless I know I'll be at the station before I'm @ 0.

 

Hi ClutchTime

 

It all depends on your personal MPG to calculate how far you will go past 0 MTE. I gradually worked past 0 MTE in my Explorer knowing I could run out gas at some point many times before I ran out. Carrying a spare gallon of gas is what I have done when I get near a distance I've never made it to. I now know the answer of how much gas is in my Explorer at 0 MTE which is .8 gallons. The 0 MTE warning has been very accurate in my 2 FEH's. In my '09 FEH, I've gone up to ~58 miles past 0 MTE on .8 gallons of gas when I know I'm averaging the low to mid 60mpg. The Ford hybrids still have the HV battery to drive in Electric if I run out, so I plan my routes accordingly getting to the gas stations I use.

 

While on vacation in June, I found myself getting low on gas in my Explorer in Louisiana where I've never been. At that time, I had never ran out of gas yet, but I knew I could go 15 miles past 0 MTE if I had to. Knowing my MTE, I knew not to chance getting any where close to that before filling up again. It's different when I'm around the town I live in, but this is one reason to know your vehicle and your MPG with it in areas you don't live or work near. Of course, I found a gas station before getting near 0 MTE and I had peace of mind knowing my limits ahead of time.

 

I've broke the 500 mile tank range in my '11 Explorer three times and have never put in near 18.54 gallons before or after that 500 miles. The '11 Explorer has a 18.6 gallon tank and I've put as much as 18.746 gallons in one of my fills so far. I go with the first click, but have went one more click if I think I should need more gas. Here is my gas log on the Explorer with my wife driving it to work in city driving. Those 500 mile tanks were with me driving only:

http://www.cleanmpg.com/index.php?page=garage&displayunits=MPG%28US%29&viewcar=3644

 

You can see from my gas log, my gallon fills were sooner than I needed around the 500 mile tanks because I didn't take any chances running out of gas during vacation.

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I ended up not buying the Focus but still like the car and design! I do work in IT and it sounds to me like Ford needs to improve the algorithm or code the computer is using for this cars fuel monitor. Computers only display what they are told to do with coding or the algorithm that speaks "to" the code for that warning.

Using this board for a short while when trying to make a decision on what to buy it appears there have been several problems with radio volume, radio off, low fuel warning, etc. I feel like Ford will fix the bugs and is fixing the bugs but probably if they had done better testing of their applications some (not all) could have been prevented from going to production.

 

BTW, Money is not the key to happiness, happiness is!

Ben Franklin

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I ended up not buying the Focus but still like the car and design! I do work in IT and it sounds to me like Ford needs to improve the algorithm or code the computer is using for this cars fuel monitor. Computers only display what they are told to do with coding or the algorithm that speaks "to" the code for that warning.

Using this board for a short while when trying to make a decision on what to buy it appears there have been several problems with radio volume, radio off, low fuel warning, etc. I feel like Ford will fix the bugs and is fixing the bugs but probably if they had done better testing of their applications some (not all) could have been prevented from going to production.

 

BTW, Money is not the key to happiness, happiness is!

Ben Franklin

 

The problems are known. The fuel warning could be a result of the European influence if it's not an outright bug.

 

Ford got screwed by the consulting company they hired to write the current MyFordTouch software. They've spent almost a year trying to stabilize it. In hindsight they realize they should not have released it. They are now in the process of rewriting it in-house with assistance from the real Microsoft for the 2013 models due out early next spring. The software will be backwards compatible with current models.

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The problems are known. The fuel warning could be a result of the European influence if it's not an outright bug.

 

Ford got screwed by the consulting company they hired to write the current MyFordTouch software. They've spent almost a year trying to stabilize it. In hindsight they realize they should not have released it. They are now in the process of rewriting it in-house with assistance from the real Microsoft for the 2013 models due out early next spring. The software will be backwards compatible with current models.

Thanks for the reply akirby as you helped me a bunch when I was looking to by the Focus and as stated I still think it is a great design and I am sure a great car!

 

Outsourcing can be a problem........you can fool yourself into thinking you (management) are saving money but in the long run I have not found that to be the case. We have excellent college graduates coming out of College every year in the IT field and we should utilize our resources and bring in house. So what if you have to pay them a little more or provide a pension or insurance. Is that not what we Americans need? Sorry to get political but I do understand the situation and I do see the mistakes made by management in my company as well as Ford. Outsourcing for IT overseas you are dealing with a language barrier and time zone barrier right off the top. You are also hire IT people that code with blinders on not ever looking at the bigger picture.

 

I see outsourced code for my company failing all the time. The few in house people correct it "after" a failure that was released to production (because the outsourced people with "blinders on" tested as good). Outsourced IT mostly cannot think out of the box they were trained to be in.

Example: I needed a change in the way a website worked. Outsourced answer would be to rewrite all the code. I could recognize it should not be that difficult and consulted in house. A stored proc running at 12pm every night could accomplish the same result with about 1 hour labor by one person (at a higher rate) other than 5 people working for a week (at a lower rate but not much lower) to accomplish the same result.

 

I blame it all on management following the other "sheep". Sorry for the rant but this struck a nerve! Management has a problem thinking out of the box also! What they perceive as the bottom line is not always the true bottom line.

 

The bottom line is I am sure Ford will fix the problem and other than and inconvenience to the first users of the new line it will be corrected with nothing more that a firmware update.

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Thanks for the reply akirby as you helped me a bunch when I was looking to by the Focus and as stated I still think it is a great design and I am sure a great car!

 

Outsourcing can be a problem........you can fool yourself into thinking you (management) are saving money but in the long run I have not found that to be the case. We have excellent college graduates coming out of College every year in the IT field and we should utilize our resources and bring in house. So what if you have to pay them a little more or provide a pension or insurance. Is that not what we Americans need? Sorry to get political but I do understand the situation and I do see the mistakes made by management in my company as well as Ford. Outsourcing for IT overseas you are dealing with a language barrier and time zone barrier right off the top. You are also hire IT people that code with blinders on not ever looking at the bigger picture.

 

I see outsourced code for my company failing all the time. The few in house people correct it "after" a failure that was released to production (because the outsourced people with "blinders on" tested as good). Outsourced IT mostly cannot think out of the box they were trained to be in.

Example: I needed a change in the way a website worked. Outsourced answer would be to rewrite all the code. I could recognize it should not be that difficult and consulted in house. A stored proc running at 12pm every night could accomplish the same result with about 1 hour labor by one person (at a higher rate) other than 5 people working for a week (at a lower rate but not much lower) to accomplish the same result.

 

I blame it all on management following the other "sheep". Sorry for the rant but this struck a nerve! Management has a problem thinking out of the box also! What they perceive as the bottom line is not always the true bottom line.

 

The bottom line is I am sure Ford will fix the problem and other than and inconvenience to the first users of the new line it will be corrected with nothing more that a firmware update.

 

I've been involved in outsourcing for 11+ years and I agree that it's not usually a good outcome. However, in this case it was not outsourced overseas but to BSQUARE - a U.S. company started by former Microsoft employees. It was done because Ford didn't have the expertise in house and they were supposed to be experts in GUI development. Who knows what went wrong - probably a combination of things. Live and learn.

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from what i understand you can also modify this setting with the ford mykey feature to have it chime when you'd like.

 

Nope. It changes with a restricted MyKey but you can't change the intervals.

 

MyKey restricted features

Standard settings – these settings cannot be changed

• Belt-Minder cannot be cleared and will not expire. The audio system

will be muted whenever Belt-Minder is activated until the safety belts

are buckled. Refer to the Seating and Safety Restraints chapter for a

detailed description of Belt-Minder operation.

• Low fuel warnings are displayed in the message center followed by a

chime when the distance to empty value reaches 75 miles (120 km).

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I've been involved in outsourcing for 11+ years and I agree that it's not usually a good outcome. However, in this case it was not outsourced overseas but to BSQUARE - a U.S. company started by former Microsoft employees. It was done because Ford didn't have the expertise in house and they were supposed to be experts in GUI development. Who knows what went wrong - probably a combination of things. Live and learn.

I totally agree "who knows" and as you said "live and learn" Ford will get it right it will just be a matter of time. Just to bad the bugs were not caught on staging before being moved to production. Of course there are deadlines and from my experience it is sometimes more important to "some" to hit a deadline that hold back for a better finished product.

Take care akirby and good driving to you and the other members on the board.

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I totally agree "who knows" and as you said "live and learn" Ford will get it right it will just be a matter of time. Just to bad the bugs were not caught on staging before being moved to production. Of course there are deadlines and from my experience it is sometimes more important to "some" to hit a deadline that hold back for a better finished product.

Take care akirby and good driving to you and the other members on the board.

 

But they were caught. At one point there were 1500 known bugs according to insiders. Ford had to make a decision whether to go ahead with MFT in the 2011 Edge or wait. They gambled that they could stabilize it before it affected customers and that it would be worse to wait. I believe in hindsight they would agree that it was the wrong decision.

 

I feel sure they won't let that happen again.

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Nope. It changes with a restricted MyKey but you can't change the intervals.

 

MyKey restricted features

Standard settings – these settings cannot be changed

• Belt-Minder cannot be cleared and will not expire. The audio system

will be muted whenever Belt-Minder is activated until the safety belts

are buckled. Refer to the Seating and Safety Restraints chapter for a

detailed description of Belt-Minder operation.

• Low fuel warnings are displayed in the message center followed by a

chime when the distance to empty value reaches 75 miles (120 km).

 

let me clarify, mykey makes it chime EARLIER (75 mi to empty instead of 50).

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Thanks for the MyKey info. I hadn't bothered (mea culpa) to RTM about this particular feature. Time to do a little reading and testing.

 

From the OM:

 

MyKey restricted features

Standard settings – these settings cannot be changed

 

Low fuel warnings are displayed in the message center followed by a

chime when the distance to empty value reaches 75 miles (120 km).

 

In my vehicle this absolutely does not happen as described above. I programmed MK several days ago and have been driving with it since then, getting my fuel level down to an appropriate test level. This morning I took a drive starting at 87MTE and followed the progress down to 75MTE. No warnings at 75MTE. Continued travel to 63MTE including a stop/restart cycle and received no warnings of any kind. I've come to the conclusion that even though the warning lamp illuminates briefly during gauge-test at start up, the low fuel warning features in my Focus simply do not work at all. Time to undo MyKey - for a single driver, the features are pointless and the audio mute when you unbuckle (especially with the vehicle in Park) is really annoying.

Edited by mrgdr57
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From the OM:

 

MyKey restricted features

Standard settings – these settings cannot be changed

 

Low fuel warnings are displayed in the message center followed by a

chime when the distance to empty value reaches 75 miles (120 km).

 

In my vehicle this absolutely does not happen as described above. I programmed MK several days ago and have been driving with it since then, getting my fuel level down to an appropriate test level. This morning I took a drive starting at 87MTE and followed the progress down to 75MTE. No warnings at 75MTE. Continued travel to 63MTE including a stop/restart cycle and received no warnings of any kind. I've come to the conclusion that even though the warning lamp illuminates briefly during gauge-test at start up, the low fuel warning features in my Focus simply do not work at all. Time to undo MyKey - for a single driver, the features are pointless and the audio mute when you unbuckle (especially with the vehicle in Park) is really annoying.

 

Maybe it's a glitch in the programming? A loaner I had recently (2011 Focus) hit the MTE notification around the 75 mark (go figure MK was active on a loaner).

 

Overall, I wouldn't see a single driver ever needing to activate MyKey, unless they are into that kind of punishment :)

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I am leaning towards a glitch that many of you have been experiencing. I have had my 2012 Titanium since late June, and whenever I do city driving I let it get closer to empty with the plethora of gas stations around, and like clockwork, 50 MTE each time, I get a single tone with the gas light coming on, and staying on.

I also have a frugal co-worker who in late July purchased the SE with the SFE package, and I know he likes to let it go as low as possible before filling up, and he also confirmed to see the light and tone at the 50 MTE mark.

I do more highway driving and usually sit around 38-42 MPG on my first 3.5k, and my co-worker has a stop and go city commute and sits around 32 MPG, and we both get the chime at the same interval. I'm not trying to disprove what anyone previously said, I just think its odd ours both goes on at the same MTE mark in quite different driving patterns.

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I am leaning towards a glitch that many of you have been experiencing. I have had my 2012 Titanium since late June, and whenever I do city driving I let it get closer to empty with the plethora of gas stations around, and like clockwork, 50 MTE each time, I get a single tone with the gas light coming on, and staying on.

I also have a frugal co-worker who in late July purchased the SE with the SFE package, and I know he likes to let it go as low as possible before filling up, and he also confirmed to see the light and tone at the 50 MTE mark.

I do more highway driving and usually sit around 38-42 MPG on my first 3.5k, and my co-worker has a stop and go city commute and sits around 32 MPG, and we both get the chime at the same interval. I'm not trying to disprove what anyone previously said, I just think its odd ours both goes on at the same MTE mark in quite different driving patterns.

 

I agree that it is apparently a glitch or malfunction in my vehicle. Clearly it is supposed to work and in your experience along with some other posters, it does work properly. I suppose I'll address it during my first service visit. Perhaps by then there will have been enough reports to establish a test and fix.

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I agree that it is apparently a glitch or malfunction in my vehicle. Clearly it is supposed to work and in your experience along with some other posters, it does work properly. I suppose I'll address it during my first service visit. Perhaps by then there will have been enough reports to establish a test and fix.

 

Hopefully. But if not, at least you'll be letting Ford know that there is a problem. I know on some other forums, people avoid the dealer like the plague and just don't understand that it's the only way Ford gets feedback on what isn't working.

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The MFT update has nothing to do with the instrument cluster....2 different modules.

 

That said, I have the 2.11 update and it hasn't changed how mine operates----comes on at 2 gallons of fuel left regardless of the "miles to empty display". Depending on your average MPG this will vary what the MTE display will say when the fuel light comes on.

 

And yes, it's different than every other Ford I have driven. No alerts at MTE intervals, and no alert right at 50 MTE. Must be the european influence. I noticed when mine gets to about 30 MTE, it drops like a rock but at 0 MTE I still have about 1 gallon left. I get about 38 MPG per tank so other people will have different experiences. People on the other Focus board have reported running out of fuel at an indicated 7 MTE.

 

Your answer is the closest to what I'm thinking, the Instrument Cluster and MFT can change the readings depending on the options you have on your vehicle. System warnings alert is not going to be same on every '12 Focus because of the options. My manual just says you get a warning when your low on fuel. I think the dealers will stick to the manual when it comes to repairs.

 

I've been driving new Fords for years, and found they change things with little notice. One thing was said here was that a poster ran of of gas at 0 MTE. The tank capacity of the '12 Focus is 12.4 gallons. That 12.4 gallons includes the amount of fuel past 0 MTE, which is called EMPTY RESERVE. The most gas added to my Son's '12 Focus was 11.801 gallons out of a total of 10 tanks since new. Since the manual states that the tank capacity includes an EMPTY RESERVE, and my son has never added 12.4 gallons of fuel, it must have EMPTY RESERVE like my other Ford vehicles. He has gone within 2 MTE in his Focus. You can run out of gas with gas still in the tank because of road slopes, but I don't know that was the problem here.

 

Your 2 gallons left at the warning is true or very close + or - .2 gallons based in my experience and data from my Son.

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