Finally personally saw the difference between battery preconditioning and no battery preconditioning

[bshaw]

Frankly, if that's what it takes, I'll just live with the few minutes longer to charge. Only time I DCFC is road trips anyway, every few months.

Uh, you may have gotten the wrong impression. Depending on the exterior temperature and SoC of your battery, it could be something like almost *double* the time to reach the same charge. For instance, your cold battery requesting ~45kW instead of a warm battery could be requesting ~90kW. In the summer, yeah, you are fine to skip it and it won't cost much time.

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[dbsb3233]

Uh, you may have gotten the wrong impression. Depending on the exterior temperature and SoC of your battery, it could be something like almost *double* the time to reach the same charge. For instance, your cold battery requesting ~45kW instead of a warm battery could be requesting ~90kW. In the summer, yeah, you are fine to skip it and it won't cost much time.

In my roughly 200 DCFCs the last 3 years, I don't think I've ever run into that big of a difference. Sure, DCFCs in cold temps have been slower. I might only get 90-100kw at 30F early in a session where I'd get 110-120kw in the summer. Or 65kw later in a session where I'd get 80kw in the summer. But I suspect full summer speeds aren't gonna be had from the charger when it's that cold anyway. Not saying preconditioning won't help, but I've never noticed 2:1 swings without it.

My point was more about turning off the cabin heat when it's really cold out though. Between comfort and adding a little more charging time, I'll usually settle for the longer charging time. I use Android Auto for all my nav too, not the Ford nav, so I've presumably never preconditioned en route before a DCFC stop. In fact my Ford nav subscription expired last month. Not planning to pay for a subscription.

 

[bshaw]

In my roughly 200 DCFCs the last 3 years, I don't think I've ever run into that big of a difference

Haha. 200 in 3 yrs is more often than every few months.
You have more DCFC charges than me for sure.
Whatever your preference… I’d rather take every precaution possible to get out of the DCFC as quickly as possible.
I have seen what appears to be half charging speed at EA, but it could be EA throttling here in the Northeast because the car never tells us what it’s requesting.

 

[Space_Pony]

they may be like us: retired and living in a gated apartment community where a 240 V drop would cost us about $2000?

So we are stuck with running a 110 V extension cord to our Ford charger and plugging in at level one; thank goodness we live on a ground floor

Whatever works for you. I wouldn't have an EV if I didn't have a 240 volt EVSE. I'm retired also but I've never lived in a town or apartment. I do have gates attached to my horse pastures.

 

[dbsb3233]

Haha. 200 in 3 yrs is more often than every few months.
You have more DCFC charges than me for sure.
Whatever your preference… I’d rather take every precaution possible to get out of the DCFC as quickly as possible.
I have seen what appears to be half charging speed at EA, but it could be EA throttling here in the Northeast because the car never tells us what it’s requesting.

I meant we do a road trip every few months, roughly 7 per year. But they're pretty long. 1600-4000 miles round trip each. Got a 6000 mile one coming up in May. So lots of DCFCs each trip.

We've had pretty good luck with EA in our travels thru the west and south compared to the common complaints we hear. We have run into some 31kw sessions but that's usually a sign of failed cable cooling, and I just move over to the next charger. Only had to settle for that for the whole session a few times.

Nothing right or wrong either way. I just haven't noticed a big enough difference to sacrifice comfort. We keep AUTO on pretty much all the time for comfort. Don't really care for the idea on compromising that.

 

[silverelan]

We've had pretty good luck with EA in our travels thru the west and south compared to the common complaints we hear. We have run into some 31kw sessions but that's usually a sign of failed cable cooling, and I just move over to the next charger. Only had to settle for that for the whole session a few times.

The 30kW-36kW sessions should hopefully be a thing of the past with the replacement campaign from EA. However, I’m not confident EA won’t be overrun with queues this summer even if all 4 chargers are working perfectly.

I had a short road trip this weekend that involved two stops at the same DCFC station, the recently added Mercedes branded dispensers at the Buc-ee's in Fort Valley Georgia.

Both stops started at similar initial SOC.

The first stop was without preconditioning.
32.2163 kWh dispensed
in 28 minutes
with a peak of 110 kW

The second stop was with preconditioning.
44.2208 kWh dispensed
in 24 minutes
with a peak of 165 kW

So 37% more energy four minutes quicker.

Why didn't I precondition for the first stop? Because I use Apple maps for navigation.

It was a bit of a pain to force the native navigation in the car to navigate to a specific desired charging station. But the speed was so much improved I guess I will go through the pain on future road trips.

I hope that in the future we get preconditioning through other navigation.

What SoC did you start and end with for both sessions?

 

[SWO]

But nothing on the two screens say anything about “preconditioning in progress “. That would be helpful personally. Or would you like to precondition YES or NO

This was something I really thought I wanted at one point (and it would still be nice to have), but watching temperatures on a longer trip convinced me that most people would just be wasting energy with it. It's really only required on the first DCFC of the day - the battery seems to often stay warm after that,

 

[SWO]

Here's a question I can't seem to get an anwer to. Beleive it or not your Native Ford Navigation is a "Connected Service". I think mine expires this summer or next, can't recall exactly. If I let the Navigation Service expire (as like you, I use a 3rd party app for navigation 95% of the time) how will I be able to precondition my battery when on a trip???

You can't.

 

[kdonnel]

What SoC did you start and end with for both sessions?

22%-56% for the first stop
I had driven for 2+ hours in the upper 50's after the car was in a garage the night before where the low reached the mid 40's before the stop.

24%-73% for the preconditioned stop
I had driven 45 minutes in the upper 50's after the car sat outside in the mid 40's overnight before the stop.

 

[silverelan]

22%-56% for the first stop
I had driven for 2+ hours in the upper 50's after the car was in a garage the night before where the low reached the mid 40's before the stop.

24%-73% for the preconditioned stop
I had driven 45 minutes in the upper 50's after the car sat outside in the mid 40's overnight before the stop.

24% to 73% (+49%) in 24 minutes is a bit faster than anything I’ve seen before.

Here’s screenshots from Bjorn Nyland’s 10-80% charging test from July testing the MME’s revised curve beyond 80% and the ex-Mach ‘n Cheese from @scoopman on a similar test from 0%

Bjorn originally went from 10% to 55% in 24 mins adding 40kWh. His most recent test went 10% to 52% in the same time.

@scoopman did 0% to 46% in 24 mins.

 

[bbulkow]

Me personally I do not have the option for L2. The distance from the panel to the garage over almost 1000 feet away and above $3k to install.

Have you included not just the differential cost of electricity, but also the depreciation on your battery pack and car due to high wear from continual fast charging?

While no one seems sure how much it is, I'd put it above $3K over the life of the car. Ford doesn't recommend 100% fast charging, for a reason.

I probably spent $4k on my install (panel upgrade too), but consider the investment over likely several cars.

Over 100k miles, I'll add about 30,000 kwh. The *differential* between fast charging and home charging is about $0.30 / kwh (0.24 vs 0.5ish). That's $9k over the life of the car. Add the battery wear.... And the convenience.....

The extra cable run and panel, I'll have for a very long time. Seems a no brainer to me, even at the price I paid. Of course, one has to have the money in a lump sum, I appreciate that answer.

 

[Deleted member 19354]

Have you included not just the differential cost of electricity, but also the depreciation on your battery pack and car due to high wear from continual fast charging?

While no one seems sure how much it is, I'd put it above $3K over the life of the car. Ford doesn't recommend 100% fast charging, for a reason.

I generally charge L1

 

[kdonnel]

24% to 73% (+49%) in 24 minutes is a bit faster than anything I’ve seen before.

Here’s screenshots from Bjorn Nyland’s 10-80% charging test from July testing the MME’s revised curve beyond 80% and the ex-Mach ‘n Cheese from @scoopman on a similar test from 0%

Bjorn originally went from 10% to 55% in 24 mins adding 40kWh. His most recent test went 10% to 52% in the same time.

@scoopman did 0% to 46% in 24 mins.

My memory was off by 1%, it was +49% still, just 25%-74%.

Here is the charging curve from the Chargepoint app. The Mercedes chargers are advertised as up to 400 kW.

And the corresponding Ford Pass charging entry

 

[bbulkow]

Why didn't I precondition for the first stop? Because I use Apple maps for navigation.

I hope that in the future we get preconditioning through other navigation.

Teslas have a "precondition" button in the UI. Not sure why we can't have one, except to try to force people into Ford's Nav? Or maybe you don't trust people to only use the precondition button when they should? Please Ford!

I don't use Ford nav because it seems to have glitches. If I use Ford Nav to drive home, it tells me to go around the corner and pull into my neighbor's driveway. Sure, I know enough to pull into my own driveway, but it's an example. Google maps is 99% more accurate in my short tests of Ford Nav. Google's not perfect but very, very good. I trust it. I imagine Ford Nav's glitch rate with road trips and simple freeway nav would be minimal, but outside of that.... my trust level in Ford Nav has been broken.

When I precondition, I have to put the Ford nav up, nav to (any) charging station then also have my phone nav to the charger and continually check the nav with Goole (because I don't trust Ford). This usually means having the phone in my lap and being rather unsafe (because I don't have a phone cradle because I used AA normally). I imagine if I started having good experiences with Ford I wouldn't keep double-checking with Google, so far, each use of Ford Nav brings me back to Google Maps.

I haven't figured out if I can set the nav with Android Auto on the screen, then flip over to Ford Nav to start the precondition, then flip back to AA, and still have precondition, or whether AA running the route means Ford drops off and precondition stops. I'm sure I can tell by looking at CarScanner and seeing if the battery heater is running, if do more frequent fast charging, I'll run that test sometime.

THAT'S the problems with needing to use Ford Nav.... I don't trust it.

 

[bshaw]

I haven't figured out if I can set the nav with Android Auto on the screen, then flip over to Ford Nav to start the precondition, then flip back to AA, and still have precondition, or whether AA running the route means Ford drops off and precondition stops.

You can only have 1 destination routing at a given time. If you set a destination in Ford Nav, it will cancel out your CarPlay / AA app destination. If you flip back to the app and reset the destination, I am pretty sure it will cancel the Ford Nav destination (and precondition).

Use your preferred app in AA to navigate to within ~20-minutes of your DCFC destination. At that point, flip to Ford Nav and give it the same DCFC destination and let Ford Nav guide you for just those 20 minutes. I will usually flip back into Waze for alerts (no destination), and let Ford Nav route from the background. Seems like the best of both considering the constraints of the vehicle software.

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