Hello everyone,

I have a Ford Focus (74 plate) and I have been having lots of issues with the adaptive cruise control feature since 2 or 3 days after I bought the car from new, in December 2024, and I'm hoping someone can help me diagnose the underlying cause of the issue. The car has been in the garage 8 times already (across three Ford dealerships) and is going back in tomorrow, none of whom can find the issue and instead keep updating modules, e.g the powertrain control module, the gateway module and the CBM module.

In short, I believe the camera and the radar are working correctly, it's just the adaptive element that often fails. When the issue occurs, it stays for 48 hours and then resets itself. The issue can sometimes come back the next day, sometimes it goes away for a couple of weeks. Understandably the intermittent nature of it makes it hard to pinpoint. To following describes what happens with the adaptive cruise control in more detail.

• Traffic sign recognition seems to work, as when passing though a gateway the speed icon is displayed correctly. However
  • It's literal - when passing a national speed limit sign, that image is displayed, whereas usually it's the speed icon, e.g. 60 on a single carriageway, or 70 on a dual carriageway or motorway.
  • After a short time (difficult to count seconds as obviously driving) the speed icon (or national speed limit sign) turns to a black and white, as opposed to remaining colour.
  • After a further short time (again difficult to estimate exactly) the speed icon turns to '--' (in a red circle, like a typical speed icon just without the numbers).
• After turning on the cruise control, the 'Set' button doesn't work, and instead I have to press either up or down to set a speed. I can press 'set' once an initial speed has been set to resume after breaking or cancelling though.
• The adaptive element doesn't work, even when a new speed is recognised as described above.
• The car will automatically slow when approaching another car on the road, and speed back up to the current cruising speed when the distance grows.
• When the '--' speed icon is displayed, turning cruise control on using either 'set' or up or down results in the message 'Adaptive Cruise Control Predictive Speed Assist not available', along with three warning beeps. The message and beeps also occur seemingly randomly when driving with cruise control on.

I should say that I've had 7 brand new Fords, the last three with the adaptive cruise control, and I've never experienced an issue on the previous cars. The dealerships are utterly stumped, and Ford customer care won't do anything except refer me back to a dealership.

Has anyone ever come across this issue before, or have any insight into what the underlying cause may be? Could the issue be related to a faulty sensor, for example? Anything that I can investigate or ask the dealership to investigate would be most helpful and greatly appreciated.

Many thanks,
David

Does your car have 'adaptive LED headlights' ?

Thanks for the reply @unofix.

No, I'm pretty sure I don't have the adaptive headlights. I think they were part of a option pack that I didn't add, as opposed to being in the same option pack as the adaptive cruise control.

To update on this, after going in the garage again this morning, they APIM is going to be changed. I'm fairly sure that's only relevant to the configuration of adaptive cruise control through sync, rather than the actual function (that's handled by a combination of the IPAM and the BCU I believe). But at least they are trying something this time.

Thanks.