Most of us have had a car that refused to start at one point or another, but have you ever owned a car that wouldn’t stay off? A thread in a (private) Ford Maverick group on Facebook from late September prompted a series of responses from owners claiming that their trucks have turned themselves on seemingly at random. One purported owner claimed that they found the truck running in their garage one morning—not the first time somebody has claimed that, as it turns out. That’s… not great. Are you thinking what I’m thinking? This sounds an awful lot like remote start, which is offered in two forms on the Maverick. There’s the old-fashioned version that uses a button on your key fob, and then there’s the newfangled app version, which not only allows you to start your truck from your phone, but it also let you to schedule a start for a future time. Starting the car remotely from the key fob itself requires pressing multiple buttons in sequence, making it tricky to do unintentionally, even if the fob is buried deep in a packed purse (or that one drawer in the kitchen where spare fobs intermingle dangerously with extra packets of duck sauce and petrified blocks of forgotten sticky notes). Could this be the answer to our mystery? Possible, but unlikely. What of the app? Just about every Ford dealership has a YouTube video that explains how to schedule a remote start using FordPass. The process is quite straightforward, and as you can see in the walkthrough embedded a few paragraphs down, the app doesn’t prompt the user for any additional security challenges when scheduling a remote start, so anybody with access to the owner’s phone (a kid, spouse, or that one friend who gets mischievous after their second or third drink) could theoretically schedule one without the owner knowing. The app seems a more likely culprit than the key fob, but what if it’s neither? A third theory suggests that the Maverick hybrid has a built-in protocol that can command a remote start if the hybrid battery pack’s state of charge runs too low. That sounds plausible at first blush, but it seems more likely that owners are conflating the Maverick’s hybrid system with a plug-in setup. In a PHEV, the gas engine will sometimes start in order to circulate lubricants and prevent sediment buildup in fuel lines and other components, but this happens only while the car is being driven, not while it’s sitting parked in somebody’s garage or driveway—a major safety hazard. The Maverick’s cooling system may come on during hot weather (You always disconnect the negative battery cable before performing any mechanical work… right?), but the engine itself should not start. There’s one more plausible explanation: Owners are simply forgetting to turn off their cars. While EVs are often left “running” when a driver departs, hybrids still need to be shut off the old-fashioned away—even if the “old-fashioned way” is a button now instead of a key. Even a gas motor can shut off when a car is in “Park” but still running. We’ve run all of this by Ford a couple of times, but so far, the company has not offered any insight into what might be happening. After digging around the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration’s database, we couldn’t find any formal complaints suggesting that Mavericks are spontaneously awakening in any meaningful numbers. So, prank or problem? We’re leaning toward the former, but we’re keeping an eye on it just the same.
