Cold weather battery conditioning

ADowd

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Hello all,
It's now officially cold enough where I live (Maine) that my car has prompted me to plug it in when not in use. This in turn has made me do a lot of research about the risks of constant charging, and what I realized is that I don't want to continually charge the car. Instead, I want the charger to simply keep the batteries warm. I have adjusted the settings so that my home charger does not charge past 80% (based on recommendations elsewhere on this site) so I can confidently plug it in and not feel like I am charging it too much. I can't tell though if the battery is being warmed. The charger itself isn't humming, and the indicator lights at the charging port are just dark. I thought my dashboard display had given me a message one time indicating that it was "conditioning the battery," but I haven't seen that since. Does anyone have experience with this? How can I be sure that my batteries are indeed being protected from the freezing temperatures? Thanks for any help!
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bshaw

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I don't think you need to second guess the car too much. Ford has safeguards built into the car to protect the battery warranty. From what I've read on this forum, a too cold battery isn't likely to cause long-term degradation. But a cold battery will temporarily a) seriously reduce your usable range, and b) limit the speed at which you can DCFC.
 

Mach-Lee

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Yes, cold won't damage the batteries, it will just reduce the usable range.

Set the car to charge to 80% during the nighttime hours (e.g. 9 PM-7AM), use departure times daily which will warm the battery first and then condition the cabin. Battery will only be warmed before a departure time or before charging, otherwise it will sit at whatever temperature.
 
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ADowd

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Yes, cold won't damage the batteries, it will just reduce the usable range.

Set the car to charge to 80% during the nighttime hours (e.g. 9 PM-7AM), use departure times daily which will warm the battery first and then condition the cabin. Battery will only be warmed before a departure time or before charging, otherwise it will sit at whatever temperature.

Thanks for the response! I do find it reassuring. In the cold, I had seen my GOM drop the range to an average of 150 miles at 80% which is way less than it should be, and I was afraid the cold was damaging the battery.

I am still wondering though why the car tells me to plug it in when not in use on cold days. I interpret that as a precaution needed to protect the battery.
 

BostonPete

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The drop is range is just the impact of the cold in the batteries and their efficiency. It will come back once it warms up again.

That said you can I believe you can set the car so that it will not automatically start to charge when you connect power to the car.

I usually plug mine in every few nights and charge up to 85%.

The reason it recommends plugging in when it get below a certain temp is the system will not let the batteries get to cold so it will use battery power to maintain them within the temp range.

If you plug in the car it will pull power from the charger to keep the batteries in safe operating temp vs using battery power.

From there if you have a regular schedule and you schedule preconditioning it will pull house power to warm up the batteries as well as the cabin.

You can also remote start before you are ready to leave and the same hold true it will pull power from the house vs using the battery to get ready to leave. I was surprised to see that Remote Starting this morning was taking about 8kw of power.
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