Car won't start . . .

[JohnP]

This exact thing happened to my 2024 GT last night. The car has been great to drive and I have had zero issues with it. Went out last night, returned to my car a few hours later and it wouldn't start. Everything played out, exactly like the video attached here. Needed a lift home. Got up this morning, (4 hours later) and went back to the car. It started right up, normal. So strange! Not sure what to do, if anything. It's like the computer system just went crazy in that moment.

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[wilkinda65]

If your battery charge is low it plays havoc with the cars electronics. My 2015 LE when a cell in the battery went bad my windows went down on their own during a summer Florida afternoon rainstorm. Sat under a bridge til rain stopped. Went to dealer and battery was bad. Service advisor said low voltage/bad cells make the cars big out like they are possessed at times

 

[Dena]

This post is from my professional point of view. I have spent years fixing problems in units that were introduced by other people. Some of the problems were the result of mistakes in the hardware design. For the most part the fixes were fairly simple and were routinely applied when a unit or board was returned for modification or repair.
The vast majority of the problems were the result of program errors. The bigger and more complex the system the more errors were introduced. In our case, the first unit was 25,000 lines of code and the second was 100,000 lines of code. All of the code in the unit was written in house so we didn't have issues with software provided by somebody else. These units kept me employed for around 25 years chasing the bugs. It was a moving target because the designing was never froze and as one set of problems was resolved, new ones were introduced. Fortunately we were pioneers in the ability to download updated software into the units so once a problem was identified, and corrected in the software, the customer could receive updated code. Fixes weren't pushed out to customers without their knowledge because the units were mission critical and we didn't want to risk breaking a function unit.
Hopefully Ford has done something like what we did. When the unit failed, we provided a way to recover information about the failure. It was ugly in the newer unit because we froze the unit until the information could be retrieved or the customer chose not to report the failure. This was because memory was limited and we didn't have the room to store the crash information. Also note that these units didn't contain hard drives because they were unneeded and a potential failure point.
If the unit was still in production, we probably could have done a few things differently. The one thing we did right is when the unit crashed, the customer had a 24/7 number they could call and somebody was available to retrieve the information so down time was minimal.
Hopefully Ford has invested some money into bug chasers. It is a requirement when something is mostly software controlled and is expensive. Our units range in cost from about $7,000 and $50,000 depending on the needs of the customer. Even counting inflation, these units compare price wise to a Mustang and Ford sells far more Mustangs a year than we sold units in all the years we were in business.

 

[Ford Motor Company]

This exact thing happened to my 2024 GT last night. The car has been great to drive and I have had zero issues with it. Went out last night, returned to my car a few hours later and it wouldn't start. Everything played out, exactly like the video attached here. Needed a lift home. Got up this morning, (4 hours later) and went back to the car. It started right up, normal. So strange! Not sure what to do, if anything. It's like the computer system just went crazy in that moment.

Hi there! Will you send us a message with your VIN and your local Ford dealer? I can look into things on my end.

 

[MagneticMartian]

This just happened to me, I was about to leave to go somewhere an hour ago. I try to start the car sitting inside the car and I see a bunch of error lights pop up every light that exists and then it said service soon, pre collission not available etc. a bunch of service messages and nothing happened it did not even try to start. I tried again with the remote starter, this time it cranked for 2 seconds but did not start and showed the same error messages.

I left and got an uber to where I had to go, I come back now only about an hour difference and try to start it again sitting in the car and it started right up normally, reversed it out and brought it back in as I had something to do. I am wondering if this has to do with the battery because I don't drive it very much but this is the first time I have seen this issue. I'm very worried and don't know what to do about this as the car only has 2000km on it right now and I have been babying it. I might try to hook up a battery tender to see if that fixes the problem but I'm very afraid of this happening again. It's also interesting because it's a colder day than usual and this happens today which is making me think the battery could be an issue.

 

[Luckybob2485]

This happened to me this morning as well. 980ish miles, and car has been sitting for two days. Went to start, and nothing. Tried about 4-5 times, and just clicked as is typical for a dead battery. I let it sit for a few minutes, tried again and it started cranking, but not starting. Tried again, and it started up but threw battery codes and all my gauge/screen preferences I setup have been reset.

 

[Ford Motor Company]

This happened to me this morning as well. 980ish miles, and car has been sitting for two days. Went to start, and nothing. Tried about 4-5 times, and just clicked as is typical for a dead battery. I let it sit for a few minutes, tried again and it started cranking, but not starting. Tried again, and it started up but threw battery codes and all my gauge/screen preferences I setup have been reset.

Hi there! I can look into your mustang's no start concern on my end. To get started, could you please send a private message over with the name/location of your local Ford dealer and your mustang's VIN?

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