Bad press on a poorly built truck (Cars.com):
The decision to grant the 2021 Ford F-150 our Best of 2021 award was a unanimous one among our editors — one that can’t be reversed, and shouldn’t. But we admit we had a few doubts when, just nine days and 242.2 miles into our customary year of ownership and real-world testing, it started … acting up. We’re not strangers to replaced engines and foul odors in our Best Of award winners during our ownership, but having trouble this soon definitely isn’t typical for a new vehicle.
Coincidentally, it was after I’d been sitting in our F-150 Limited Hybrid for an hourlong teleconference — brainstorming all the great coverage we could publish over the coming year — that the truck itself decided to throw some more content in our laps.
Related: Owning the 2021 Ford F-150
Nine Days In, Three Malfunction Warnings
With the meeting over, I shifted the transmission into Drive, and instantly my phone lit up with multiple alerts from the FordPass app: “Malfunction Indicator Lamp — Regulatory,” each said. The screens include headings that can be expanded to show What Is Happening details, and the first (grammatical error included) read, “The Powertrain Control Module has detected that the modules internal central processing unit (CPU) has encountered an error when running its self-checks.”
The second alert merely read, “The Engine system has detected a fault.”
The third alert explained, “The software in the powertrain control module has been corrupted.”
Under the What Should I Do? heading, the app instructed us to have the system checked by an authorized dealer and provided a Find a Dealer button to do so.
If our accounting seems FordPass-heavy, it’s not by choice. Perhaps by contrast, the truck itself provided surprisingly little information. While the app was placing conspicuous flags on my phone, all I saw on the F-150 — despite its enormous optional 12-inch touchscreen — was a small glowing check-engine light symbol on the upper left-hand corner of the also-gigantic 12-inch instrument panel screen.
After I detail the rest of our truck’s misbehavior, I’ll give some more information about FordPass’ role in this process — and where it has succeeded and failed.
Maybe it was our experience with vermin chomping on our 2011 Chevrolet Volt’s wiring harness: When weird things start happening, we look for ourselves. I found no critters, but I immediately noticed a major wiring harness that wasn’t attached where it clearly was supposed to be.
2021 Ford F-150 engine
2021 Ford F-150 | Cars.com photo by Joe Wiesenfelder
The dealer would have to look at it. I booked a service appointment on Thursday for the following Monday so I could get a loaner car. Friday morning, the check-engine light had turned off, but I kept the appointment. I was glad I had …
On the Saturday before the appointment, I remote-started the F-150, and when I went out to drive it, it had warmed up enough to be in electric mode. When I attempted to pull away, the steering had no power assist; I could go forward and back, but the wheel acted like a non-hybrid with its engine off. I turned it off and back on again, but nothing changed. Only when I played with the driving modes, switching to one that triggered the gas engine, did the steering assist kick in. For what it’s worth, I then put about 100 miles on the truck that day with no problems.
The dealer service center secured our truck’s wayward harness, examined the codes and gave it the once-over. Before the day ended, they returned it to me explaining that it seemed like a transient glitch and in these cases, there’s little they can do but clear the codes and hope it doesn’t happen again. But because the truck “is so new and unique [a hybrid],” the service writer said he reported it to a Ford hotline in case they wanted to follow up. They did not.
What was behind this? Was that wiring harness loose? A computer glitch? It’s a mystery. Note that both of these glitches happened after the truck had been remote-started and had sat idling — once for an hour (on and off, due to the hybrid system) and the second time for the limited remote-start interval. Since then, Cars.com editors have continued to remote-start the truck through a month of subfreezing and subzero Chicago temperatures. Seven weeks have passed since the check-engine lights, and it hasn’t happened again.