Apple Maps Preconditioning

[Bclarke902]

Apple Maps does a great job with EV route planning on the Ford Mustang Mach-E, but there’s still a key feature missing compared to Android Auto. Android Auto not only plans EV routes, it also preconditions the battery before charging stops—something CarPlay does not currently support.

This isn’t something Ford (or other automakers) can fix—it’s up to Apple. Adding EV battery preconditioning would make CarPlay’s EV routing far more useful and competitive.

If you agree this is an important feature, please upvote and help bring more visibility to Ford and Apple so they prioritize adding it in future updates.

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[HuntingPudel]

Apple Maps does a great job with EV route planning on the Ford Mustang Mach-E, but there’s still a key feature missing compared to Android Auto. Android Auto not only plans EV routes, it also preconditions the battery before charging stops—something CarPlay does not currently support.

This isn’t something Ford (or other automakers) can fix—it’s up to Apple. Adding EV battery preconditioning would make CarPlay’s EV routing far more useful and competitive.

If you agree this is an important feature, please upvote and help bring more visibility to Ford and Apple so they prioritize adding it in future updates.

Apple's not changing their privacy policy. It's up to the car manufacturers to work with Apple in order to create a preconditioning flag based on type of destination (DCFC) and time to arrival at the type of destination. Precise location and other pieces of information that affect the privacy policy do not need to be given to the car by the phone.

 

[Mach-Lee]

Blame Apple. Based on their developer documentation, I see nothing that will pass the POI type to the car.

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/carplay/cptravelestimates

Apple needs to create something like "POI_type_is_charger" true/false so the car can know if it's navigating to a charger or not.

Please share your feedback with Apple: https://www.apple.com/feedback/

 

[Tampamike]

Does pre-conditioning really save any time? I don’t have any experiential evidence to introduce but it seems to me it’s robbing Peter to pay Paul. You’re driving down the road and the battery heater has to use electrons from the battery to heat the battery. You arrive at the charger with less electrons than if it didn’t heat the battery thus requiring longer to charge to replenish the greater amount of lost electrons. If you don’t pre-condition, you arrive at the charger with more electrons and a cold battery requiring the charger to supply the electrons to first heat the battery. As I see it, the amount of electrons needed for heat and charge is the same no matter where it comes from or in what order they’re produced. So, I’m thinking the DCFC produces those electrons faster than the battery does for the heat portion and thus the net result is a faster charge without pre-conditioning.

Am I crazy? Or has this been proven that pre-conditioning leads to a faster charge?

Just spitballin’.

 

[MacheTX RT1]

Does the ford built in navigation prepare for preconditioning

 

[Gerbilicious]

Please share your feedback with Apple: https://www.apple.com/feedback/

Thank you for this, never thought to do this but just went ahead and did it.

 

[ChrisO]

Does the ford built in navigation prepare for preconditioning

Yes it does. And Android Auto does too.

 

[ChrisO]

Does pre-conditioning really save any time? I don’t have any experiential evidence to introduce but it seems to me it’s robbing Peter to pay Paul. You’re driving down the road and the battery heater has to use electrons from the battery to heat the battery. You arrive at the charger with less electrons than if it didn’t heat the battery thus requiring longer to charge to replenish the greater amount of lost electrons. If you don’t pre-condition, you arrive at the charger with more electrons and a cold battery requiring the charger to supply the electrons to first heat the battery. As I see it, the amount of electrons needed for heat and charge is the same no matter where it comes from or in what order they’re produced. So, I’m thinking the DCFC produces those electrons faster than the battery does for the heat portion and thus the net result is a faster charge without pre-conditioning.

Am I crazy? Or has this been proven that pre-conditioning leads to a faster charge?

Just spitballin’.

I think the main difference is time. I have heard that pre-conditioning starts anywhere between 30 minutes and a hour before you get to the charger. That is a nice slow warm up/cool down.

But if you have to wait until you get there, it would have to do it faster (if it can even do that) which is not good for the battery or have you sitting there waiting for that time before it even starts to charge. That kind of time can’t be “made up” because of the charge curve.

I’m not sure if it would give priority over starting charging over battery health, but it wouldn’t really work, it would charge must slower because the battery wouldn’t be able to accept the charge as fast when outside of it ideal temperature range.

I think it is interesting to note the charge curve. When you do something that the battery doesn’t like it can slow down much more than any kind linear manner. Charging 90% to 100% can take over double the time it takes from 10% to 80%.

 

[Mach-Lee]

Does pre-conditioning really save any time? I don’t have any experiential evidence to introduce but it seems to me it’s robbing Peter to pay Paul. You’re driving down the road and the battery heater has to use electrons from the battery to heat the battery. You arrive at the charger with less electrons than if it didn’t heat the battery thus requiring longer to charge to replenish the greater amount of lost electrons. If you don’t pre-condition, you arrive at the charger with more electrons and a cold battery requiring the charger to supply the electrons to first heat the battery. As I see it, the amount of electrons needed for heat and charge is the same no matter where it comes from or in what order they’re produced. So, I’m thinking the DCFC produces those electrons faster than the battery does for the heat portion and thus the net result is a faster charge without pre-conditioning.

Am I crazy? Or has this been proven that pre-conditioning leads to a faster charge?

Just spitballin’.

Yes, it does save time if done right (the battery gets fully warmed up to 23ºC+ before DC charging). Preconditioning might use 1-3% more battery, but it can save you approximately 5-15 minutes depending on how cold the battery is to start. At peak rates, it only takes a minute to put back the extra energy of preconditioning. It also becomes more important the higher power charging you have. For example, the Porsche Taycan (which can hit 300+ kW) might take twice as long if not preconditioned.

 

[Mache_Nor]

Give me a god damn manual preconditioning button. No excuses are valid for Ford not getting their fingers out their A to fix this.

 

[Tampamike]

Yes, it does save time if done right (the battery gets fully warmed up to 23ºC+ before DC charging). Preconditioning might use 1-3% more battery, but it can save you approximately 5-15 minutes depending on how cold the battery is to start. At peak rates, it only takes a minute to put back the extra energy of preconditioning. It also becomes more important the higher power charging you have. For example, the Porsche Taycan (which can hit 300+ kW) might take twice as long if not preconditioned.

So, I guess the time to heat up the battery is relatively the same whether it’s the car or the charging station doing it - let’s say 10 minutes. Whereas the time to recover the energy used by the car to heat the battery is relatively quick at the charger, say 1-2 minutes. Makes sense. I’m fortunate to not have to worry about it down here …

 

[music_cities]

Give me a god damn manual preconditioning button. No excuses are valid for Ford not getting their fingers out their A to fix this.

Relying on Apple to change their policies seems like the hard way to tackle this problem. The easy way is just a manual precondition feature in the menus. Perhaps in the built-in "charging" app.

 

[clarkston]

Give me a god damn manual preconditioning button. No excuses are valid for Ford not getting their fingers out their A to fix this.

Seconded. A simple manual button cuts out all the hassle of:

Do I need to buy the Ford nav connectivity add-on?

Ok, but the Ford built-in nav doesn’t see any of the chargers I need and I can’t update their maps.

Man, the cell service really sucks in this area and I can’t get nav to work. How am I supposed to pre-condition?

Can I, while roadtripping and needing the nav to this charger, trick the precondition by using a charger the built-in nav does see?

Oh wait, what phone OS am I on?

Which nav apps do it, again?

Oh shit, Apple doesn’t allow this feature with carplay.

Did the last update to Android Auto, etc break some integration piece?

Just K.I.S.S.

 

[Sikkun]

This is why I don’t live in places with winter. Problem solved.

 

[Bclarke902]

Does pre-conditioning really save any time? I don’t have any experiential evidence to introduce but it seems to me it’s robbing Peter to pay Paul. You’re driving down the road and the battery heater has to use electrons from the battery to heat the battery. You arrive at the charger with less electrons than if it didn’t heat the battery thus requiring longer to charge to replenish the greater amount of lost electrons. If you don’t pre-condition, you arrive at the charger with more electrons and a cold battery requiring the charger to supply the electrons to first heat the battery. As I see it, the amount of electrons needed for heat and charge is the same no matter where it comes from or in what order they’re produced. So, I’m thinking the DCFC produces those electrons faster than the battery does for the heat portion and thus the net result is a faster charge without pre-conditioning.

Am I crazy? Or has this been proven that pre-conditioning leads to a faster charge?

Just spitballin’.

Preconditioning does save time because of how sensitive batteries are to temperature, both when they’re too cold and when they’re too hot.

When it’s cold, the battery can’t take in charge very fast — it needs to warm up before high-speed charging can even begin. Without preconditioning, the charger has to dump energy into heating the pack first, so you sit there longer while the charge rate stays low. Preconditioning uses a bit of energy on the way, but it gets the battery to the perfect temperature so the charger can immediately deliver full power.

On the flip side, when the pack is too hot (like after long highway driving or in summer heat), preconditioning can actually cool the battery before you arrive. That’s just as important because a hot battery will throttle charging to protect itself, again slowing down your session until temps come down.

So yeah, some energy is spent heating or cooling ahead of time, but the payoff is that you hit the charger ready to take max power right away — no waiting for thermal management to catch up. The total “electrons used” might be similar, but the time spent plugged in is shorter and your battery stays healthier.

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