Yea, correct on all counts. Everything you described was the case when I worked at the former Indianapolis Steering Systems plant - both when it was operated by Ford and when it became part of Visteon. And we had TVMs back then.   Plante Moran’s WRI last year found that Ford was the only OEM among the six they studied to worsen every year since 2020. The 2026 survey results come out soon. It will be interesting to see if Ford finally improved relations with suppliers or not.        

The error codes and needing to be jump started makes me believe this is the deep sleep battery issue. Having to be on a battery tender or jump started is very common with these mavericks if the battery goes to shit.    That being said, this issue is usually resolved with switching to a higher quality battery like it was for me. As for the error codes, I've heard it's pretty common for the car to pop up false error codes in these modern cars after they've been jump started and/or had a new battery swapped it. It's basically like the car going "What's going on?! Oh nevermind I'm fine". 

Fixed,  but seems nobody is interested.  

The 6.8 V8 was a replacement for the 6.2 boss and only offered in lower trim levels, they needn’t have bothered because the take rate was low.    

Well, maybe not this guy,,,,,,,,   Hahaha, HRG    

My experience has been great for both the 2.0 and 2.5 engines. I sold my 2011 Fusion with the 2.5 (purchased new) at 340,000 miles. Absolutely no engine issues. Still had original belts, hoses, alternator and starter. Nothing but 2 sets of plugs. My 2015 2.0 Edge has 232,000 miles with no issues. Still original including the spark plugs. My 2.0 Maverick has been trouble free other than the transmission. 

Yeah....definitely the sky is falling over on the other forum....lol 

Forums definitely make issues seem more widespread than they are. I almost traded my maverick in because of the issues I was seeing other maverick owners have were stressing me out. I had a few issues like the hybrid shuddering which went away after a software update, fingers crossed that didn't cause any long term damage. I also had the deep sleep issue which was resolved by my dealer swapping in a high quality, I believe they're called AGM or AGA batteries, in under warranty.    But neither of those issues were earth shattering. I've heard of a handful of e-cvt failures, maybe 10 at the most on the forums, but it seems pretty rare. 

Yeah I've looked into getting different variants of fusion, I've heard both the fusion hybrids, and the 2.5 fusions are really solid cars. I was surprised to learn the hybrid in the fusion isn't the 2.5, because it is on the escape, rather it uses a 2.0 I believe.    I've consider both a fusion, and a tarus at different points, I've heard the tarus sho is insanely fun to drive. But early versions of the 3.5 Ecoboost concern me in terms of reliability. You have all the concerns with the internalized water pump the normal 3.5 has, and all the issues with turbo charged motors on top of that. If you bought one new they were probably fine, but buying one that's 10 years old with 100k on it is too much of a gamble for me. 

There were some issues with the 8f35 - most were fixed with software but some did fail prematurely.  But when you consider how many they've sold in Edge, Nautilus, escape, BS and Maverick over the last 7+ years it's a small percentage.