OTA Mach-E DC Fast Charging speed and threshold increases coming this winter

[dbsb3233]

but get tons of people pointing me to Tesla, etc...with how great they are and how far ahead they are with every little thing.

Yeah, no shortage of Tesla fans that make that exaggeration. Tesla is ahead on many things, but far from every little thing. They have their problems and shortcomings like everyone else.

Those staunch Tesla fans that make those claims (and you're right, many pretend it's every little thing and every possible way) actually hurt Tesla IMO, by kinda pissing people off with their arrogance.

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[imstriker]

A bit off topic but since it came up... I wonder what is the deal with the 34kw charging. I ran into that twice at multiple EA chargers on the free weekend.

 

[TRP]

A bit off topic but since it came up... I wonder what is the deal with the 34kw charging. I ran into that twice at multiple EA chargers on the free weekend.

From what I've read on here..............If you don't hear a loud click and then a hum start on the 350kw machines it will default to 34kw for delivery. That noise is the cooling for the hose.............I probably butchered the explanation but it's something like that. If you experience it try another machine

 

[timbop]

There is no way the American legacy automakers have any hope of meeting that demand for at least 5-8 years. This is going leave an opening for foreign manufactures to increase their market share.

THIS. Tesla has 2 factories in operation with 2 more coming soon; on that basis alone their valuation is fantasy.

What deeply troubles me is the chinese manufacturers - there are so many with so much capacity that they can easily fill the demand gap while Ford and GM crank out 100k BEVs a year for the next 3 years.

I also want to clarify that I'm not anti-Ford nor anything. I have a MME on order right now, but get tons of people pointing me to Tesla, etc...with how great they are and how far ahead they are with every little thing.

Their supercharger network is definitely an advantage today, but they are by no means ahead in "everything". The efficiency of Tesla is no better than some of the Korean brands, and much of that efficiency has to do with aerodynamics rather than actual "better technology". Their alleged range advantage has already been debunked by the Insideevs guys, alexonautos, edmunds.com, and several other publications that bother to actually drive the cars until dead instead of lazily parroting the EPA ratings. Their infotainment software and app are certainly more mature than Ford's (can't speak for GM, KIA, etc), but that is certainly not more than a 3 or 4 year advantage. "full self driving" is a punchline at this point, no matter how many times Musk hypes "the next version" as being awesome.

Before pulling the trigger on a car, I suggest you look into the "real road tests" with Tesla and the other brands. You'll find that no Tesla model comes close to its range, and the Mach E exceeds the EPA ratings.

From what I've read on here..............If you don't hear a loud click and then a hum start on the 350kw machines it will default to 34kw for delivery. That noise is the cooling for the hose.............I probably butchered the explanation but it's something like that. If you experience it try another machine

That seems to be the consensus here - that the drop to 34kw has to do with heat management.

 

[kennethjk]

Biggest issues some of my friends have is refueling an EV. They want to be back on the road in 5 minutes not 40. Add to that the fact that EV refueling pumps may be broken or slow only compounds the problem, even though they may not take many long trips.

just had that conversation today with two of them. They will look at hybrids first

 

[yngwenli]

Biggest issues some of my friends have is refueling an EV. They want to be back on the road in 5 minutes not 40. Add to that the fact that EV refueling pumps may be broken or slow only compounds the problem, even though they may not take many long trips.

just had that conversation today with two of them. They will look at hybrids first

This is why we still have an old 10+ year ICE for longer trips. I'm also someone who stops for gas and continues driving right away so 20 minutes at a charger is 20 minutes I don't want to be there. Not everyone, but you can imagine if it's late at night, some folks may not feel it's 'safe' to be charging at 10pm - 1am on the road at a random charging station at all. At least gas stations have more people honestly. My spouse hates getting gas.

Outside of that 520 mile Lucid where you can get to your destination without charging at all for shorter road trips, we're a ways from no charge so I could understand some folks not wanting to 'waste' an hour just getting gas (electrons).

And yeah, I know all about Tesla and their over promise, under deliver mentallity...That's so tech/startup like and why I don't want a Tesla and want more EV manufacturers to compete and offer better products.

 

[Mirak]

Tons of great info in the video, I've been expecting/hoping the charge curve would be improved after more data was collected from the Electrify America network, and it sounds like that was exactly the plan! It was my belief this was one of the main reasons behind offering the free 250 kWh charging—data collection.

However, there are still a tons of issues with the EA network daily. Anyone that has used it more than a couple times has probably run into issues. The main problem is SPEED! Most of the time the car will charge, but often at a much reduced rate compared to what it should be. It should charge over 100 kW most of the time, but oh so often the EA chargers drops down to 70 or even 31 kW well before 80%. It's not clear whether this is the car or the charger causing the problems, it seems like the chargers because other brands of cars have the same issues if you look around.

If you're listening FORD, PLEASE MONITOR CHARGING SPEED at EA stations and work with them on fixing slow charger issues! This makes road trips extremely inconvenient especially when all the chargers at a location have the same issue! Your wait time can easily double or triple because of charger issues! Run into that a couple stations in a row and you're hours and hours behind schedule. EA can reboot the chargers but that doesn't fix the issues in a lot of cases!

Yes. EA has disappointed recently.

 

[Mirak]

BlueCruise was Q3. Q3 ends on 9/30, 13 days from now. Ford is famous for promising and then missing deadlines. I just drove close to 3,000 miles roundtrip, and BlueCruise would have been nice.

I got 1.6, then 1.4. However I cannot turn on SecuriAlert. I plan on visiting the dealer next week to get the noisy charging fixed and maybe that will update all modules.

We won’t be getting BC OTA by end of September. He hedged and also said October so there’s another 30 days we can wait for that Early Access.

Don’t sweat SecuriAlert - it’s basically useless unless you leave your car unlocked.

 

[dbsb3233]

Biggest issues some of my friends have is refueling an EV. They want to be back on the road in 5 minutes not 40. Add to that the fact that EV refueling pumps may be broken or slow only compounds the problem, even though they may not take many long trips.

just had that conversation today with two of them. They will look at hybrids first

Yep. That's definitely a big drawback that every potential BEV buyer needs to weigh for their situation. No way around it.

On the plus side though is overnight L2 charging at home (if one is in position to install a charger there). In many cases, that advantage week-in and week-out can more than offset a few extra hours on road trips a few times/year.

Really just depends on each person's situation and tolerance.

 

[kennethjk]

This is why we still have an old 10+ year ICE for longer trips. I'm also someone who stops for gas and continues driving right away so 20 minutes at a charger is 20 minutes I don't want to be there. Not everyone, but you can imagine if it's late at night, some folks may not feel it's 'safe' to be charging at 10pm - 1am on the road at a random charging station at all. At least gas stations have more people honestly. My spouse hates getting gas.

Outside of that 520 mile Lucid where you can get to your destination without charging at all for shorter road trips, we're a ways from no charge so I could understand some folks not wanting to 'waste' an hour just getting gas (electrons).

And yeah, I know all about Tesla and their over promise, under deliver mentallity...That's so tech/startup like and why I don't want a Tesla and want more EV manufacturers to compete and offer better products.

We made round two trips to Florida (no hotel) from NYS last year in an Ice car . 20 hours, 18.5 driving and 1.5 stopping. No way I would try that with an EV.

stopping time would probably be over 6 hours.

 

[buzznwood]

Agree. My brother could care less about any of that. He just wants a consistent charging experience and doesn't understand excuses as to why his car would take 30 minutes to charge from 25% to 80% on one trip and 2 hours on a different trip.

I would like to drive to San Diego next weekend but I don't know if it will be a 7 hour or a 10 hour drive each way. We'll, it would be 6 hours in our Wrangler. 7 hours in the MME (my preferred option) if the DCFC is guaranteed to perform as it did before. However, if the DCFC performs like it did when I went to Tucson (2 days after the SD trip) then it would be more like 10 hours to get to San Diego.

My confidence in charging away from home or work is at an all time low. I knew it was sketchy but had not idea how serious the situation actually is.

Agree, early adopters may put up with the adventure aspect of it, but really for the main stream this complete randomness in stations being unavailable or a real luck of the draw with your charging speed just isn't going to do. All a BEV is doing is switching the propulsion method it not the days of this new fangled invention called the automobile, its bad enough all the various companies wanting you to use a multitude of apps.

For BEVS to be a viable replacement for ICE on road trips a lot of people are going to want them work in a similar fashion just turn up a charger use your credit card and start charging. If the manufacture states x% to y% in z minutes then that is what people will expect each time and everytime, so total understand low confidence, sure you can't control unexpected traffic delays but how can anyone make an educated guess on your trip time, if the nav thinks your in for a 30 min charge that ends up taking 80 minutes of faffing around playing a game of wheres my KW with the chargers trying to trying to find one that gives the expected output.

If governments want to mandate no ICE sales after date x, then there also needs to be mandates in place and regulations so that charges have to always be capable of delivering the stated maximum

 

[imstriker]

From what I've read on here..............If you don't hear a loud click and then a hum start on the 350kw machines it will default to 34kw for delivery. That noise is the cooling for the hose.............I probably butchered the explanation but it's something like that. If you experience it try another machine

Yeah, I went through 3 different 150kw chargers and had that experience at the first site and 2 at the second. I've never run into it before, just on that day. I've never tried a 350kw version at EA yet.

 

[dbsb3233]

From what I've read on here..............If you don't hear a loud click and then a hum start on the 350kw machines it will default to 34kw for delivery. That noise is the cooling for the hose.............I probably butchered the explanation but it's something like that. If you experience it try another machine

Apparently it's often a failing temp sensor. Someone reported talking to dispatched tech that was working on one the other day, and the tech said that they're frequently being dispatched to replace those sensors.

In a backhanded way, I look at that as a bit of good news. It's a relatively simple fix, and if it is chronic, I would hope they'd have found an alternate (better) sensor to use as replacement by now.

 

[dbsb3233]

Yeah, I went through 3 different 150kw chargers and had that experience at the first site and 2 at the second. I've never run into it before, just on that day. I've never tried a 350kw version at EA yet.

I've used EA almost 40 times now on 3 long road trips. I've had to move over to a 2nd or 3rd charger on probably half of them when I couldn't get the first to start. In fact, I usually try to park in the middle of two right from the start. It does seem as though the 150's are a bit more dependable than the 350's, although not by a lot.

Fortunately there's almost never anyone there so it's easy to jump around. I've never left an EA station without a charge, although twice I had to settle for smaller charges because it was limited to 31kW power. I almost always charge up to 80% at them, regardless of what any trip planner/nav says I need. And I usually plan to arrive at the next charger with 30-40% still left in the battery so I have enough to reach a backup charger (usually the next EA in line) just in case. I also use Plugshare to see if there's any other DCFC's in the area that would be a backup. I plan all my routes ahead of time so I know the backup situation, and plan my stops accordingly. Definitely more work, but I want that extra piece of mind.

 

[Lord Polymath]

I've used EA almost 40 times now on 3 long road trips. I've had to move over to a 2nd or 3rd charger on probably half of them when I couldn't get the first to start. In fact, I usually try to park in the middle of two right from the start. It does seem as though the 150's are a bit more dependable than the 350's, although not by a lot.

Fortunately there's almost never anyone there so it's easy to jump around. I've never left an EA station without a charge, although twice I had to settle for smaller charges because it was limited to 31kW power. I almost always charge up to 80% at them, regardless of what any trip planner/nav says I need. And I usually plan to arrive at the next charger with 30-40% still left in the battery so I have enough to reach a backup charger (usually the next EA in line) just in case. I also use Plugshare to see if there's any other DCFC's in the area that would be a backup. I plan all my routes ahead of time so I know the backup situation, and plan my stops accordingly. Definitely more work, but I want that extra piece of mind.

Sorry for the newb questions but - are Fords constrained to the Electrify America chargers or can you use others? Are the other charging networks as problematic as EA? I will probably do 90% of my charging at home but I'm new to this and trying to learn.

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