Want Healthy, Fast Charging? Here’s the One Step You Can’t Skip

[ChrisO]

it’s incredibly lame that Ford won’t let MME and Lightning owners manually precondition. Heck, we need to PAY a subscription fee in order to precondition the battery. Absolute weak sauce.

https://www.ford.com/support/how-to...-mustang-mach-e-battery-for-dc-fast-charging/

Or get an Android phone.

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[Space_Pony]

I do as well, unfortunately my garage doesn’t go with me when I need to take a road trip. How did you manage to find a garage and home charger that travel with you?

I use my ICE F150 for road trips. It's cheaper and faster to fuel than the high priced DCFC stations.

 

[RickMachE]

That’s not my point. My point is that if it’s a matter of 3kWh, it’s worthless time savings regardless. We keep talking about it like it’s a game changer when it’s not.

And yes, I value the time out of my car seat. The car needs less time to charge than my family to get a bite to eat, take care of the dogs, and visit the restroom. We don’t all have the same needs and priorities. And that my friend is why I bought another Mach-E. Everyone criticizes the charging time, while I shrug .

I have never understood how people don't value time, or money. When on a trip, 99% of the time we bring our food with us. Saves money, and time. Maybe a good cup of coffee once in a while, but not often. Same reason when we ski, we pack a lunch. And why I check charging costs ahead of time on a trip.

As to preparing the battery, my 2022 Lightning still doesn't have this feature (@Ford Motor Company I am looking at you). On our last winter trip, it took about 10 minutes to warm up the battery to ramp up charging speed. That is say 40 minutes per travel day of wasted time. I value my time, and am really every time I sit there charging slowly.

 

[ChrisO]

BTW I was curious if one could use a cheap Android phone without setting up a cell phone connection. So, I turned off my internet connection and tried putting in a charger as the destination. And sure enough it worked. It showed the charge station icon which means it knows to do preconditioning, and I even heard it start the heater and such.

Because I was offline I couldn’t do voice searches, I had to type it in and it was using the offline information so one would have to download an area’s information while on WiFi, but it does work. Oh and yeah this was using wireless since that is just WiFi from the phone to the car.

 

[GreaseMonkey]

I have never understood how people don't value time, or money. When on a trip, 99% of the time we bring our food with us. Saves money, and time. Maybe a good cup of coffee once in a while, but not often. Same reason when we ski, we pack a lunch. And why I check charging costs ahead of time on a trip.

As to preparing the battery, my 2022 Lightning still doesn't have this feature (@Ford Motor Company I am looking at you). On our last winter trip, it took about 10 minutes to warm up the battery to ramp up charging speed. That is say 40 minutes per travel day of wasted time. I value my time, and am really every time I sit there charging slowly.

Different life stages and situations. I did the sandwich packing thing in my youth when I’d pump gas while eating my sandwich to get back on the road fast. Yeah, I’m well past that stage and will not be packing sandwiches anytime soon. And I’m never charging four times a day. If a trip is over six hours, I’m flying. My time is too valuable to do long road trips. Maybe when I retire.

So like I mentioned, I’m never “sitting there charging slowly”. I’m doing other things that take more time than the car charging. If I were sitting there waiting, I would also be bothered by it. Like I said, different situation.

 

[SbN]

Preconditions just fine with Android Auto with Google Maps...

Does it really? Without the subsription? I went to the android link in another post, which then took me to this page, and this page says:

Unless I'm missing something, this looks like you still need the Ford Subscription for it to work through Android Auto.

Honestly, if I have to pay for a service like this, I'll skip it. It's a cash grab that may or may not have any true impact on how I commute or travel.

 

[RickMachE]

https://www.macheforum.com/site/thr...ing-our-connected-services.50625/post-1032963

 

[RickMachE]

Different life stages and situations. I did the sandwich packing thing in my youth when I’d pump gas while eating my sandwich to get back on the road fast. Yeah, I’m well past that stage and will not be packing sandwiches anytime soon. And I’m never charging four times a day. If a trip is over six hours, I’m flying. My time is too valuable to do long road trips. Maybe when I retire.

So like I mentioned, I’m never “sitting there charging slowly”. I’m doing other things that take more time than the car charging. If I were sitting there waiting, I would also be bothered by it. Like I said, different situation.

Yes, clearly different life stages impacts trip planning. I too lived through the "Gas and Go" prior to kids. Then we had kids, and my strategy was to push the accelerator through the floorboards to get there even faster. Kids had to be occupied constantly, I remember a TV/VCR combo on the floor propped up so they could watch video tapes, and a tiny toilet for bathroom brakes, dumping excrement into someone's dumpster...

But, we virtually never bought food. I'm a big planner, including financial. When I worked, I brought coffee from home, and had the free coffee at work. I brown bagged most days even when I was in the C-Suite. A cup of coffee x 5 days per week x 50 weeks a year x 40+ years of working is real money. When we skied, one of our kids would put the backpack in the snow in the trees. Lift tickets x 4 were pricey, lunch x 4 was simply wasting money.

Long kid-free, we plan most trips by dividing total miles by days to see how many miles we need to do in a day. 1,300 to Florida is 2 days. 2,000 miles somewhere would be 667 for 3 days, that's too much, so I would lay out a 4 day trip of 500 miles per day, because 400 miles a day isn't enough. Hotel with free breakfast and ideally free charging, make sandwiches at breakfast, cooler on back seat. Usually stop at dinner time if that works, otherwise find a brewery to stop at for dinner, then drive at most 2 more hours for hotel, but only if it's necessary to make the distance or if at dinner there aren't valid hotel choices. We won't stay in the lower tier of hotels (Motel 6, Super 8, Days Inn, Econo Lodge, Red Roof, ...) unless there are absolutely no choices. Hampton, Fairfield, Embassy Suites if the rate is low enough.

As to driving vs. flying, it's clearly an available time thing when you retire. And cost. We looked at driving to a wedding in Oregon next spring, and then having to be in Florida a week later for a graduation, and driving simply won't work - plus the cost of driving to Oregon, then to Florida, vs. flying to Oregon, then driving to Florida (we haven't looked at flying to Florida yet) simply doesn't work. Of course the cost of a rental car, if needed, tends to severely impact flying trips.

 

[silverelan]

Someone else’s lazy time schedule doesn’t work for those of us with limited PTO or deadlines. A fast charging EV opens up options while a slow charging MME limits them.

If a 15-20 minutes charging stop to get a mere 100 more miles of range is simply too fast for you, there’s nothing stopping you from continuing to linger at the station for longer. It’s your time to waste.

The point of the preconditioning is to not add another 5-10 minutes on top of that charge time just getting the battery to an optimal condition.

 

[tonytaylor53]

I use my ICE F150 for road trips. It's cheaper and faster to fuel than the high priced DCFC stations.

If it's only 1 DCFC, it's cheaper (but slower i'll admit) since the first 91 kwh cost $0.06 each at home for me. The 2nd DCFC stop makes it about even with her gas car. The 3rd, it's just a much nicer ride so I don't care.

 

[ChrisO]

Does it really? Without the subsription? I went to the android link in another post, which then took me to this page, and this page says:

Unless I'm missing something, this looks like you still need the Ford Subscription for it to work through Android Auto.

Honestly, if I have to pay for a service like this, I'll skip it. It's a cash grab that may or may not have any true impact on how I commute or travel.

It does work, this has been verified by people that don't have an active subscription and are using Android Auto.

That documentation is misleading. It really means that even though you can still use the Ford navigation after the subscription expires, it will not do the preconditioning. Note also, that after the subscription expires, the Ford navigation will reset to the state it was when it was in the factory. So, new maps and such will not be available.

 

[MacherAWD]

Or get an Android phone.

Are apple people also still paying for AOL? They do know there are free email services also?

 

[ChrisO]

Are apple people also still paying for AOL? They do know there are free email services also?

My brother still uses AOL, but it is free these days.

From what I understand the reason Car Play can't do this is because Apple refuses to share the information with Ford because "security". This one of the reasons when people suggest that Apple and Ford should get together to make as car bring what they do best together I think it would never happen, both want to be "in control".

 

[devmach-e]

I have never understood how people don't value time, or money. When on a trip, 99% of the time we bring our food with us. Saves money, and time. Maybe a good cup of coffee once in a while, but not often. Same reason when we ski, we pack a lunch. And why I check charging costs ahead of time on a trip.

People do value time and money. They just don't value it to the same level as you. They may value getting a sit down meal and not being stuffed in the car for hours and hours. Different strokes...

 

[MacherAWD]

People do value time and money. They just don't value it to the same level as you. They may value getting a sit down meal and not being stuffed in the car for hours and hours. Different strokes...

"Life's a journey, not a destination....."

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