Towing 2021 Ford Escape hybrid

[Mulerider]

We bought our 2021 Ford escape titanium hybrid last November. Brought the blue ox tow plate and had a local rv company in Tucson Az install it in 4 hours, great job. Bought the plate and the tail lights with diodes from e- trailer. Then bought the blue ox tow hitch and blue ox patriot ll brake controller. With the brake controller you go into settings and change it to hybrid mode. Our windsport 29m 2019 tows it so easy. Great vehicle to drive too.
However, wondering where other folks out there got their constant 12 volt power for the brake controller. I ended up connecting directly to the battery which is in back of the car under the spare tire.

[16ACE27]

Wondering why you didn't get the Patriot III brake controller?

Our Patriot 3 is powered from the car battery when used with either of our TOADs, no charge line used. It just doesn't use that much energy, less tha 6 AH for a full day of towing.

[Mulerider]

Where do you plug in the patriot 3 in a ford escape.
I paid $950 in July of 2021 for the patriot ll

[Mulerider]

Oh I see you say no charge line so where does it get its power?

[16ACE27]

Originally Posted by Mulerider

Oh I see you say no charge line so where does it get its power?

As I said - from the car battery. The Patriot 3 has been available since 2019.

[Vibeman]

I have a 2021 Escape Hybrid too but use the RVI brake. I installed the RVI charger along with the brake, it gets its power directly from the coach trailer plug and keeps the Escape battery charged while towing. It has an output lead that supplies power directly to the brake actuator. You will need to do something similar otherwise you will probably drain your toad battery while towing.

[16ACE27]

Originally Posted by Vibeman

I have a 2021 Escape Hybrid too but use the RVI brake. I installed the RVI charger along with the brake, it gets its power directly from the coach trailer plug and keeps the Escape battery charged while towing. It has an output lead that supplies power directly to the brake actuator. You will need to do something similar otherwise you will probably drain your toad battery while towing.

I've been using the Patriot III on my toads for 2 years driving up to 7 hours some days powered from the toad's battery - never used more than 6 AH from the battery, never concerned about "draining" the battery.

[Vibeman]

Originally Posted by 16ACE27

I've been using the Patriot III on my toads for 2 years driving up to 7 hours some days powered from the toad's battery - never used more than 6 AH from the battery, never concerned about "draining" the battery.

There has been a lot written here and on other forums on this topic as it relates to the Ford Escape Hybrid. It is not only the brake actuator that draws power from the small battery while being towed, but some other vehicle systems too. I suggest you do some research. In almost 5k miles of towing so far with my setup, my vehicle battery has never run down. Many have had dead batteries in one or two days of towing.

[abjbrtd]

Originally Posted by Mulerider

We bought our 2021 Ford escape titanium hybrid last November. Brought the blue ox tow plate and had a local rv company in Tucson Az install it in 4 hours, great job. Bought the plate and the tail lights with diodes from e- trailer. Then bought the blue ox tow hitch and blue ox patriot ll brake controller. With the brake controller you go into settings and change it to hybrid mode. Our windsport 29m 2019 tows it so easy. Great vehicle to drive too.
However, wondering where other folks out there got their constant 12 volt power for the brake controller. I ended up connecting directly to the battery which is in back of the car under the spare tire.

Back on topic.
Most motorhomes have a hot wire in the trailer hitch connector.
The hot wire "should" be the black wire in the new pigtail under the Escape's hood.
Your installer for the baseplate and lights may have run the hot wire to the jumpstart post under the hood.
If he did you're good or you can move your charge wire to this post
Note: there should be a diode installed between the post and mh charge wire.

Good luck and let us know.

[thisoldman]

The 4th generation Escape Hybrid is a somewhat unique animal. It is not your father's toad. I bought a 2020 Escape SE Sport Hybrid instead of some other compact CUV because it was virtually the only one that could be flat towed when equipped with an automatic/CVT transmission. I installed all of the flat towing equipment on it myself (Blue Ox base plate, Brake Buddy Select 3 and battery charger, Roadmaster 6-pin wiring harness and brake/tail light wiring w/ diodes).

My wife and I absolutely love our Escape, but even before I started flat towing it I encountered occasional electrical issues, particularly in colder weather: touch-actuated locking/unlocking door handles that intermittently failed to function and the all-too-frequent appearance of the "Please turn ignition off or start engine" message on the Escape's main screen.

The root cause of these problems, which will only be exacerbated when using the Escape as a toad, is the woefully undersized BCI Group 99R (Cold Cranking Amps: 470; Reserve Capacity: 65 minutes) 12v flooded lead acid (FLA) battery that Ford's beancounters apparently dictated be used as the factory-installed battery in these vehicles. Replacing this battery with a Motorcraft BCI Group 48 (CCA: 760; RC: 120 minutes) 12v absorbed glass-mat (AGM) or comparable battery will make these problems disappear, or at least cut the frequency of their occurence to a tiny fraction of what it was before swapping in this far more powerful battery. This upgrade requires a trivial programming modification to the Escape's Battery Management System (BMS) to take full advantage of its much higher capacity. Some/many/most Ford service techs will tell you that you shouldn't/can't replace the puny factory battery with this more powerful battery and that doing so may/will void your warranty -- which is total BS -- but the truly competent ones know better. (In fact, if you have Forscan software on your laptop and the proper interface cable you can even perform the required reprogramming yourself in the comfort of your driveway or garage.) The battery mounting location under the Escape's cargo floor even includes a second threaded hole so that the battery hold-down clamp can be repositioned to accomodate the larger Group 48 battery, so in this small way the Ford engineers triumphed over the beancounters.

You can run wiring all the way to the rear of the car to access constant 12 volt power and to provide a ground connection (as I did originally) but much more convenient (albeit well-hidden and far from obvious) connection points are available right under the hood. The included pictures show these underhood connection points. The first picture shows the charger that came with my Brake Buddy Select 3 mounted on the driver side inner fenderwell toward the rear of the engine compartment. (The black box on the left-hand side of the picture is the edge of the underhood fuse module.) Focusing on the charger, the red wire is the charge line from the motorhome, the black wire is the output from the charger to the vehicle's positive battery terminal (positive jumper cable connection point), and the white wire is for the vehicle's chassis ground (negative battery jumper cable connection point). The odd-looking post at the top center of the picture is the Escape's negative battery jumper cable connection point.

The second picture shows the Escape's underhood fuse module with both the red cap (front) and black cap (left-hand side) open. The copper-colored post under the red cap (not visible in this picture and hard to access because of the shrouded wire bundle exiting from the fuse module) is Ford's less-than-brilliant location for the positive jumper cable connection point; it is to this post that I attached the black wire from the charger. The red wire extending from under the black cap is the lead to the connector inside the cabin that provides power to the Brake Buddy 3 system.

As abjbrtd noted, if you use a plain wire charge line to keep the battery charged while towing then you need to add a diode to avoid current flow back from the Escape to the motorhome, but this won't be necessary if you use an RVI or Brake Buddy or other similar charger as they have diodes and charge control circuitry built in.

One other thing...the purpose of the charge line is to keep the toad's battery charged. DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES USE THE CHARGE LINE FROM THE MOTORHOME AS THE SOLE SOURCE OF POWER FOR THE AUXILIARY BRAKING SYSTEM. The reason for this is that in the extremely unlikely event of a breakaway situation, if/when the charge line from your motorhome snaps your auxiliary braking system will lose its power source and your toad will continue rolling down the road like a runaway caboose, eventually contacting/smashing into the rear of your motorhome as you come to a stop.

[ducksface]

A 25w solar panel tossed in the back window won't take care of all this aux 12v thing?

A $30 solar panel and a $27 lawn mower battery as a reserve....
Maybe?

[16ACE27]

Originally Posted by ducksface

A 25w solar panel tossed in the back window won't take care of all this aux 12v thing?

A $30 solar panel and a $27 lawn mower battery as a reserve....
Maybe?

Before I wired a "direct-to-battery" outlet on my Sonic (powered outlets are off while towed), I used an 8 AH LiFePo4 battery to power the brake controller during the day and charged it at night with a small charger. That's how I know how little the Patriot3 brake system uses.

[ducksface]

Originally Posted by 16ACE27

Before I wired a "direct-to-battery" outlet on my Sonic (powered outlets are off while towed), I used an 8 AH LiFePo4 battery to power the brake controller during the day and charged it at night with a small charger. That's how I know how little the Patriot3 brake system uses.

I figured you know and I figured it could be that easy.

[thisoldman]

Originally Posted by Vibeman

There has been a lot written here and on other forums on this topic as it relates to the Ford Escape Hybrid. It is not only the brake actuator that draws power from the small battery while being towed, but some other vehicle systems too. I suggest you do some research. In almost 5k miles of towing so far with my setup, my vehicle battery has never run down. Many have had dead batteries in one or two days of towing.

And more than a few have had dead batteries after the car sat undriven in a driveway, garage, or airport parking lot for only two or three days. If you own one of these cars, you know the deal; if not, then you have no idea. Before installing the charge line and the Brake Buddy mini-charger in my Escape Hybrid, I once had a dead battery after a single day of towing. I was not amused. In addition to all of the other mysterious ignition-off current draws that occur with the 4th generation (2020 and newer) Escape Hybrid, being in Neutral Tow mode for any length of time apparently consumes a surprising amount of battery power.