Best practices for an "odd" BEV usage pattern?

[timbop]

Hi all, I know this is a bit long but I hope those with BEV's now willsuffer through it. I'm looking for tips and advice on how to keep my battery the healthiest, given the following constraints:

• My roundtrip commute to work is 95 miles total, with roughly a 50/50 split on highway (65 mph) and suburban (35-45 mph with stoplights) driving. The time it takes me is about 2 hours, so that's a roughly 50MPH average - almost exactly the EPA "highway" model.
• Before Covid-19 I was working from home 2 days a week (thu & fri), and I am hoping to up that to 3 days a week (wed-fri) post-pandemic
• I am getting the RWD Select model with 18" wheels, and of course it only comes with the SR battery. I am assuming that the car will get a base EPA rating of 3.6 mi/kwh since it will have the smaller wheels and no glass roof. That hope/assumption is based on the more recent threads regarding range/efficiency of the First editions, which indicate that efficiency is reasonable for the EPA tests.
• On days that I drive to work, I was planning to leave home with an 85% charge in winter and 80% the rest of the time. Crunching the numbers it looks like I will need the 85% charge in winter to ensure that the battery "penalty" for the cold combined with driving 50 miles on the highway still leaves me with a roughly 10%-15% charge when I get home. I assumed that I'll get an efficiency of 57% on the coldest winter days.
• Parking at my office is uncovered asphalt, although there are trees along the edge so I can get some shade in the summer
• I have a 1 car garage full of tools (lawnmower, table saw, etc), so I will be parking outside on a concrete driveway
• I live in NJ where the winters don't get much colder than 20 degrees F, nor higher than 95 degrees F or so in the summer. We do have a week or two of 10 degree winter weather, and for a day or two in the summer it might hit 100.

Given those parameters, I plan to leave my MME plugged in all the time while at home so that the BMS can draw power from the house to keep the battery happy in the cold and heat. Originally I intended to always charge to 80%, but if my boss goes for the change in schedule my car could be sitting in the driveway for 5 days at 80% SOC. I know Li-ion batteries prefer to be kept at a lower SOC for longer term periods of inactivity, but it is likely that I might use the car some on the weekend.

Any thoughts or suggestions? Should I charge only to 60% when I get home on my last commute day (ie before the 5 day idle period)? Should I mix up the commute days to monday and thursday to break up the idle time more?

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[JamieGeek]

I think you'll be just fine. Your 80% combined with the buffer will be more like 75% or lower on the overall battery.

Just use the go time and preconditioning and then it won't be charged up to 80% until overnight right before you leave. I wouldn't worry about those days where it sits there at 80%--you'll be ready to go somewhere if need be.

 

[timbop]

I wouldn't worry about those days where it sits there at 80%--you'll be ready to go somewhere if need be.

Yes, but I am a pessimist who likes to worry! I guess I just have to see how you can configure the software for the "go times" as you put it. Hopefully you can configure the days of the week instead of the thing assuming monday to friday are everybody's weekday. Also, when I get home in the winter there may only be 10% - 15% left, so I would need to charge it up to something then. It would be nice if I could set the SOC to 50% for my "weekend", and 80%/85% for the "go"/commute departure times.

 

[JamieGeek]

Yes, but I am a pessimist who likes to worry! I guess I just have to see how you can configure the software for the "go times" as you put it. Hopefully you can configure the days of the week instead of the thing assuming monday to friday are everybody's weekday. Also, when I get home in the winter there may only be 10% - 15% left, so I would need to charge it up to something then. It would be nice if I could set the SOC to 50% for my "weekend", and 80%/85% for the "go"/commute departure times.

Well the Focus Electric would let you set weekday times and weekend times but you couldn't pick only, say, Tuesday. You could enable and disable it, however. So you could leave it setup and then turn it off if you didn't need it that night.

Not sure if that functionality will be carried forward with the Mach-E.

 

[SnBGC]

My advice is to start each day with 100% charge. I am not sure where the charge to 80% idea came from. Only a certain percentage of the battery is usable to you anyway so 100% for you isnt 100% of the actual battery capacity.
I dont think my Focus Electric has a setting that allows me to limit SOC anyway......do we know for certain the MME will have that feature? Not sure why we would need that anyway. These arent like your cell phone battery.

When I charge, I top it off if there is enough time. At a minimum, I wake up each morning to 100% SOC. Never had any issues with the battery and haven't seen any degradation so far (18 months and two brutal summers so far).

Plus.....
You have an 8 year 100k warranty if your battery falls below the usable limits provided by Ford.

Lastly...
If you use Go Times.....it will calculate backwards to begin charging to make sure you have 100% SOC for your trip....overriding your previous charge time settings. At least that is how it works now with the FFE. Maybe the MME would be different but I can't imagine why.

 

[JamieGeek]

My advice is to start each day with 100% charge. I am not sure where the charge to 80% idea came from. Only a certain percentage of the battery is usable to you anyway so 100% for you isnt 100% of the actual battery capacity.
I dont think my Focus Electric has a setting that allows me to limit SOC anyway......do we know for certain the MME will have that feature? Not sure why we would need that anyway. These arent like your cell phone battery.

When I charge, I top it off if there is enough time. At a minimum, I wake up each morning to 100% SOC. Never had any issues with the battery and haven't seen any degradation so far (18 months and two brutal summers so far).

Plus.....
You have an 8 year 100k warranty if your battery falls below the usable limits provided by Ford.

Lastly...
If you use Go Times.....it will calculate backwards to begin charging to make sure you have 100% SOC for your trip....overriding your previous charge time settings. At least that is how it works now with the FFE. Maybe the MME would be different but I can't imagine why.

Its different when you get more range. I used to charge to 100% on the Focus Electric too A) Because thats all you could do but also B) because with such a short range you needed everything every day.

With the Bolt and 200+ miles that is no longer necessary--I don't even have to charge every day. You can almost treat it like an ICE and simply "fill up" when "empty" (however you define empty).

The Mach-E will have even longer range than the Bolt and thus I suspect I'll be able to charge it even less.

As pointed out here in the forums you'll be able to tell the Mach-E what level to charge to.

 

[SnBGC]

Its different when you get more range. I used to charge to 100% on the Focus Electric too A) Because thats all you could do but also B) because with such a short range you needed everything every day.

With the Bolt and 200+ miles that is no longer necessary--I don't even have to charge every day. You can almost treat it like an ICE and simply "fill up" when "empty" (however you define empty).

The Mach-E will have even longer range than the Bolt and thus I suspect I'll be able to charge it even less.

As pointed out here in the forums you'll be able to tell the Mach-E what level to charge to.

Hmm. Interesting. Didnt know that was a thing. Cool then. Gives people something to play around with I guess.

I think I will continue with my value charge profile which is every night after midnight and let it go to 100% SOC.

So, what do you think will happen with the MME? Let's say we set the max SOC to 80% and schedule a go time and Value Charge is enabled? Will the MME override the Value Charge profile and make sure the SOC is at 80% at the Go Time? Seems reasonable I guess....
??

 

[JamieGeek]

Hmm. Interesting. Didnt know that was a thing. Cool then. Gives people something to play around with I guess.

I think I will continue with my value charge profile which is every night after midnight and let it go to 100% SOC.

So, what do you think will happen with the MME? Let's say we set the max SOC to 80% and schedule a go time and Value Charge is enabled? Will the MME override the Value Charge profile and make sure the SOC is at 80% at the Go Time? Seems reasonable I guess....
??

Yup that is exactly what I'm expecting it to do: Go out to the MME to go to work to find it all ready, warmed up (winter) and full to 80%.

The thing I'm curious about is: what will be the minimum % to charge to? 40% 50% 60%?

 

[SnBGC]

Yup that is exactly what I'm expecting it to do: Go out to the MME to go to work to find it all ready, warmed up (winter) and full to 80%.

The thing I'm curious about is: what will be the minimum % to charge to? 40% 50% 60%?

Cool.
I have L2 at work as well as home. I also have 2 Go Times set per weekday. One in the morning to go to work and one when I get off to go home. However, during the summer I have to remove the after work Go time because it will charge the car while at work when all I want the car to do is keep the battery cool and condition the cabin. Even if I set the work location to Value Charge....it still will want to charge up the battery while at work to make sure i have 100% SOC for the drive home.

So, during the summer months.....when I dont want to charge at work during the day because it is so darn hot outside....I disable the after work Go Time and set Value Charge. This has the net effect of still being able to allow the car to cool the battery while parked in the sun without charging the battery and generating any more heat than necessary. When it is close to quitting time....I remote start and that conditions the cabin. I am hoping the MME has a few more features that will allow more charging control compared to my FFE.

 

[Badger_Prof]

Hi all, I know this is a bit long but I hope those with BEV's now willsuffer through it. I'm looking for tips and advice on how to keep my battery the healthiest, given the following constraints:

• My roundtrip commute to work is 95 miles total, with roughly a 50/50 split on highway (65 mph) and suburban (35-45 mph with stoplights) driving. The time it takes me is about 2 hours, so that's a roughly 50MPH average - almost exactly the EPA "highway" model.
• Before Covid-19 I was working from home 2 days a week (thu & fri), and I am hoping to up that to 3 days a week (wed-fri) post-pandemic
• I am getting the RWD Select model with 18" wheels, and of course it only comes with the SR battery. I am assuming that the car will get a base EPA rating of 3.6 mi/kwh since it will have the smaller wheels and no glass roof. That hope/assumption is based on the more recent threads regarding range/efficiency of the First editions, which indicate that efficiency is reasonable for the EPA tests.
• On days that I drive to work, I was planning to leave home with an 85% charge in winter and 80% the rest of the time. Crunching the numbers it looks like I will need the 85% charge in winter to ensure that the battery "penalty" for the cold combined with driving 50 miles on the highway still leaves me with a roughly 10%-15% charge when I get home. I assumed that I'll get an efficiency of 57% on the coldest winter days.
• Parking at my office is uncovered asphalt, although there are trees along the edge so I can get some shade in the summer
• I have a 1 car garage full of tools (lawnmower, table saw, etc), so I will be parking outside on a concrete driveway
• I live in NJ where the winters don't get much colder than 20 degrees F, nor higher than 95 degrees F or so in the summer. We do have a week or two of 10 degree winter weather, and for a day or two in the summer it might hit 100.

Given those parameters, I plan to leave my MME plugged in all the time while at home so that the BMS can draw power from the house to keep the battery happy in the cold and heat. Originally I intended to always charge to 80%, but if my boss goes for the change in schedule my car could be sitting in the driveway for 5 days at 80% SOC. I know Li-ion batteries prefer to be kept at a lower SOC for longer term periods of inactivity, but it is likely that I might use the car some on the weekend.

Any thoughts or suggestions? Should I charge only to 60% when I get home on my last commute day (ie before the 5 day idle period)? Should I mix up the commute days to monday and thursday to break up the idle time more?

I am in my 7th year driving EVs (first Leaf, now Bolt). I have used a very simple strategy—if the charge gets lower than I think I will need in the next couple of days, I plug it in overnight and let it ”fully” charge (“fully” because there is a hold back so it is not really fully charging the battery). In other words, I treat it just like I would treat an ICE vehicle. Only difference is that I do not have to go to a gas station—just plug in at home (where I do 90% of my charging). Neither my Leaf nor my Bolt lost any noticeable Battery capacity. I live in Wisconsin so the cars have been driven in temps ranging from -25F to +95F. Is it possible I could have protected my battery a bit more with a more complex schedule? Maybe, but it simply has not been worth the trouble to me and I can see no noticeable ill effect. Some people value and enjoy planning their optimal charge strategy. I enjoy planning my optimal driving enjoyment and have quit worrying about battery health.

 

[timbop]

Hmm, interesting. It would be great if I had a place to plug in at work, but my company only leases a portion of a building in a complex of 8-10 buildings. So, it's not like I can just ask my CEO to add some outlets; it would have to go up the chain to a large uncaring property management company

I will definitely not charge to over 90%, but it's a good idea to have the "go" time setting to put it up to that level just before I leave. The only question is how to configure to recharge from the 15% left when I get home to something in the goldilocks range, and then let it crank up to 80%-90% just before I leave.

 

[ajmartineau]

I think you have a good plan that will maximize the life of your battery. I would set the charge max to 89% on the slider (or 90% if you have to round it off) in the winter because that is really 80% of the true battery size. Once every couple of months let it go to 100% overnight to keep the pack balanced.

 

[ChasingCoral]

My advice is to start each day with 100% charge. I am not sure where the charge to 80% idea came from. Only a certain percentage of the battery is usable to you anyway so 100% for you isnt 100% of the actual battery capacity.
I dont think my Focus Electric has a setting that allows me to limit SOC anyway......do we know for certain the MME will have that feature? Not sure why we would need that anyway. These arent like your cell phone battery.

When I charge, I top it off if there is enough time. At a minimum, I wake up each morning to 100% SOC. Never had any issues with the battery and haven't seen any degradation so far (18 months and two brutal summers so far).

Plus.....
You have an 8 year 100k warranty if your battery falls below the usable limits provided by Ford.

Lastly...
If you use Go Times.....it will calculate backwards to begin charging to make sure you have 100% SOC for your trip....overriding your previous charge time settings. At least that is how it works now with the FFE. Maybe the MME would be different but I can't imagine why.

The Go time system works fine in my Leaf as well. It's like the FFE programming as well: time yes, SOC no. However, the Nissan system does allow you to tell it which days to follow a program.

You can guess and experiment to find the time that gets the SOC about right. If you leave at 8:00 am, perhaps setting it to a Go time of 9:00 would work but it won't preheat your seat.

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