DCFC preconditioning is it coming????

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Johnny572

Johnny572

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Hyundai just added Preconditioning and its dealer installed no OTA and it’s 30miles only and above 20% or more of battery life. No Apple car play.


looks like Hyundai made a lot of mistakes with it’s new preconditioning update…..hope Ford is watching.
When I road trip I go below 20% state of charge….so Hyundai update is useless for most people. Ford don’t do this! 10% is better option.
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dbsb3233

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If it takes that long to warm up the battery pack with a heat source, it probably takes even longer for it to cool down, I assume. I've read some other pieces that suggest the same thing for how long preconditioning lasts from departure time preconditioning when plugged into L2, but I've never really tested it. I wonder if just doing a good departure time precondition before the day's drive is almost as good as this?

Anyone done any tests comparing a winter drive day (that includes DCFC stops) with vs without departure time preconditioning? I've rarely bothered doing those.
 

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The charge power max is the short term limit. Continuous charging will be limited to about half of the max. If you want to see what's limiting, you can look at what the charger is offering and what the car is requesting (one of the default car scanner dashboards shows those).

Also, my car is stuck on the old version without updates and I tested navigating to an EA station while less than 10 miles away. Nothing happened. I'm pretty sure the functionality is new.
Based on what others who have 3.6.2 have posted, we can precondition unplugged for any trip if we start the car with a local DCFC destination. We don't have to even go there, just trick the car to precondition before driving off. I might find that useful one day.
 

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So I did a rough little test for pre-conditioning yesterday. I have a 2021 GTPE that’s kept fully up to date via FDRS so all modules are at their latest versions as of Jan 23, 2022 (i.e 4.1.3).

Test conditions:

Charger is 100km from origin
Vehicle was cold on start
Between -1 and -4 degrees Celsius outside
Clear roads, no traffic cruising at ~120km/h for most of the trip

Initial temp readings:

Ford Mustang Mach-E DCFC preconditioning is it coming???? 381A8869-73D2-469A-B45A-257635E879ED


Had cabin heat running until I was approx. 40km away from the station, that’s when I noticed a slight spike in coolant inlet temp. I turned cabin heat off and when I reached 30km from the station I got a huge spike in coolant inlet temp up to 36 Celsius. It seems having the cabin heat on renders battery heating nearly useless as it shares the heat.

Final temp on arrival to charger:

Ford Mustang Mach-E DCFC preconditioning is it coming???? 003C680E-1D68-43AF-AFAC-46E89B87BDEE


So good news is it looks like preconditioning is working as designed. Unfortunately, the 150kW stations I went to were refusing to communicate with my car so I had to settle for a 50kW charger which didn’t allow me to test the charge speed.

This all begs the question:

How effective will this be when the temperature is much colder, say -10 or -20 Celsius? Being 30km away from the charger as the sole trigger for preconditioning seems irrational given the multitude of other parameters effecting vehicle range and charge speed.

I also had to disable cabin heat for any meaningful jump in battery temps, how viable will this be in extreme cold without causing much discomfort?
 

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So I did a rough little test for pre-conditioning yesterday. I have a 2021 GTPE that’s kept fully up to date via FDRS so all modules are at their latest versions as of Jan 23, 2022 (i.e 4.1.3).

Test conditions:

Charger is 100km from origin
Vehicle was cold on start
Between -1 and -4 degrees Celsius outside
Clear roads, no traffic cruising at ~120km/h for most of the trip

Initial temp readings:

Ford Mustang Mach-E DCFC preconditioning is it coming???? 003C680E-1D68-43AF-AFAC-46E89B87BDEE


Had cabin heat running until I was approx. 40km away from the station, that’s when I noticed a slight spike in coolant inlet temp. I turned cabin heat off and when I reached 30km from the station I got a huge spike in coolant inlet temp up to 36 Celsius. It seems having the cabin heat on renders battery heating nearly useless as it shares the heat.

Final temp on arrival to charger:

Ford Mustang Mach-E DCFC preconditioning is it coming???? 003C680E-1D68-43AF-AFAC-46E89B87BDEE


So good news is it looks like preconditioning is working as designed. Unfortunately, the 150kW stations I went to were refusing to communicate with my car so I had to settle for a 50kW charger which didn’t allow me to test the charge speed.

This all begs the question:

How effective will this be when the temperature is much colder, say -10 or -20 Celsius? Being 30km away from the charger as the sole trigger for preconditioning seems irrational given the multitude of other parameters effecting vehicle range and charge speed.

I also had to disable cabin heat for any meaningful jump in battery temps, how viable will this be in extreme cold without causing much discomfort?
Important question: What was the cabin temperature set to?
 


avdonr

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Important question: What was the cabin temperature set to?
I had it set to 22 Celsius the entire time it was on (about 60-70km of the trip). Then I turned cabin heat off when I noticed a change in battery coolant inlet temp and an additional pull on heating (about 30km from charger).
 
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So I did a rough little test for pre-conditioning yesterday. I have a 2021 GTPE that’s kept fully up to date via FDRS so all modules are at their latest versions as of Jan 23, 2022 (i.e 4.1.3).

Test conditions:

Charger is 100km from origin
Vehicle was cold on start
Between -1 and -4 degrees Celsius outside
Clear roads, no traffic cruising at ~120km/h for most of the trip

Initial temp readings:

Ford Mustang Mach-E DCFC preconditioning is it coming???? 003C680E-1D68-43AF-AFAC-46E89B87BDEE


Had cabin heat running until I was approx. 40km away from the station, that’s when I noticed a slight spike in coolant inlet temp. I turned cabin heat off and when I reached 30km from the station I got a huge spike in coolant inlet temp up to 36 Celsius. It seems having the cabin heat on renders battery heating nearly useless as it shares the heat.

Final temp on arrival to charger:

Ford Mustang Mach-E DCFC preconditioning is it coming???? 003C680E-1D68-43AF-AFAC-46E89B87BDEE


So good news is it looks like preconditioning is working as designed. Unfortunately, the 150kW stations I went to were refusing to communicate with my car so I had to settle for a 50kW charger which didn’t allow me to test the charge speed.

This all begs the question:

How effective will this be when the temperature is much colder, say -10 or -20 Celsius? Being 30km away from the charger as the sole trigger for preconditioning seems irrational given the multitude of other parameters effecting vehicle range and charge speed.

I also had to disable cabin heat for any meaningful jump in battery temps, how viable will this be in extreme cold without causing much discomfort?
20c HVB min and 30c HVB max would be the ticket for winter DCFC. Baby steps I guess!
 

Mach-Lee

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Had cabin heat running until I was approx. 40km away from the station, that’s when I noticed a slight spike in coolant inlet temp. I turned cabin heat off and when I reached 30km from the station I got a huge spike in coolant inlet temp up to 36 Celsius. It seems having the cabin heat on renders battery heating nearly useless as it shares the heat.

This all begs the question:

How effective will this be when the temperature is much colder, say -10 or -20 Celsius? Being 30km away from the charger as the sole trigger for preconditioning seems irrational given the multitude of other parameters effecting vehicle range and charge speed.

I also had to disable cabin heat for any meaningful jump in battery temps, how viable will this be in extreme cold without causing much discomfort?
Ah, you found the crux of the Mach-E battery heating system. If you want to heat both the battery and the cabin at the same time, the system puts the heater core and the battery in series in the loop. That means the battery only gets the leftover heat after the heater core has extracted most of it. As a result the coolant inlet temp for the battery pack will initially be only about 5-15ºC with the HVAC running, verses 20-30ºC with the HVAC off. With time the pack will start to warm up and the coolant inlet temp will continue to rise. FYI turning down the HVAC fan speed and temperature will leave more heat for the battery pack.

I've said this before, but because the inlet temps are limited when the cabin and pack are simultaneously heated, the battery heating process will be extremely slow. This is why I feel miffed about the measly 30 km restriction. It's honestly going to take close to an hour to make any decent progress on heating the battery. You should repeat your test and leave the HVAC on to see how many ºC the battery actually warms up. You only got about a 5ºC increase with HVAC off.

When the temperature is below about -15ºC, there will not be enough heat available to also heat the pack. You can forget about en route heating in those temps unless you completely turn off HVAC.

If it takes that long to warm up the battery pack with a heat source, it probably takes even longer for it to cool down, I assume. I've read some other pieces that suggest the same thing for how long preconditioning lasts from departure time preconditioning when plugged into L2, but I've never really tested it. I wonder if just doing a good departure time precondition before the day's drive is almost as good as this?
As I see it, for a DCFC trip in cold weather you will always want to set a departure time on L2 to precondition the battery pack up to 15ºC, and then the en-route preconditioning will really just be to put back the heat you lost while driving. En route preconditioning will never be able to "catch up" if you didn't warm up the pack before you left on a L2 charger. It's really just a "reheat" mode with the design limitations it has.

Driving cools off the pack a lot faster than being parked because all the wind blowing under the pack sucks out the heat.
 

dbsb3233

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Had cabin heat running until I was approx. 40km away from the station, that’s when I noticed a slight spike in coolant inlet temp. I turned cabin heat off and when I reached 30km from the station I got a huge spike in coolant inlet temp up to 36 Celsius. It seems having the cabin heat on renders battery heating nearly useless as it shares the heat.
Yeah, kinda reinforces my inclination that it's just not worth it, for us anyway. Comfort > 10 minutes saved charging for us.

That's been a requirement for us all along. I'm not one that uses seat heat and steering wheel heat in place of cabin heat. I use all 3 when it's cold out (steering wheel, low seat heat, 71F-72F cabin heat).
 

AZBill

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AC uses less because generally it is maintaining a lower temperature differential. Keeping the cabin at 70F requires less HVAC when it’s 90F outside (20F difference) as opposed to 20F outside (50F difference).
Those would be typical summer/winter temps where I live. Arizona will be different!!!
I live in Phoenix, car temps reach 160 when parked in the sun, and it is normal to hit above 110 ambient.
 

AZBill

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You’re explaining how a heat pump can be more efficient. I’m not disputing that. I’m disputing your statement that a heat pump is needed for preconditioning.
It is needed for effective preconditiong. The resistive heaters are around 5-6kw. The motor is using 15-20kw at highway speeds, so the heat pump has more heat to pass to the battery, thus the temp will be higher when reaching the charger.
 

Hammered

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It is needed for effective preconditiong. The resistive heaters are around 5-6kw. The motor is using 15-20kw at highway speeds, so the heat pump has more heat to pass to the battery, thus the temp will be higher when reaching the charger.
While driving the heat pump is extremely efficient while pulling heat from the motors / inverters. At really low temps static however (unplugged sitting in the cold), the heat pump has the same efficiency as the resistance heater and is no better -- it also augments cabin heat with a 1kw 12v heating element (air -- like a hairdryer). While plugged in however the newest teslas can store heat in the battery and then pull it back out to heat the cabin while the motors and inverters warm up in operation (though it could store heat in the motors too). This is a net gain in heating capacity as the battery has both electrical and heat energy in it. The octovalve is a true spark of genius. I believe the patent covers 12 way operation, not just 8 as is currently utilized. It's truly not leaving any wasted energy on the table. (couldn't locate if this is one of their "open source" patents, or if that only covered items up until that announcement).

For instance while plugged in the battery could be heated up to 80f (or warmer depending on conditions, not sure of the exact variables), and then the heat pump can send the cold side to the battery 'cooling' it while transferring the heat to the cabin. The heat pump would be using ~800w or so of energy while producing 6kW worth of resistance equivalent heating (20k+ BTUS). For comparison sake, a 120v heater commonly found in north America on high generates just over 5k BTUs.

Haven't fully read this yet, more info may be in here. Great info with graphs / curves and all
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/15/17/6118
 

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Still officially promised by the company. Also an extremely basic feature that every non Ford EV has.
well except the 2022 or earlier EV6 just to say that the Mach E has some company.
 

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I have a 2021 GTPE that’s kept fully up to date via FDRS so all modules are at their latest versions as of Jan 23, 2022 (i.e 4.1.3).
Are you sure that the 3.6.2 module updates have been released to FDRS?

I thought I saw a post listing what modules were updated with 3.6.2 and I have not seen them all appear for my car that is also fully updated as far as FDRS is concerned. I don’t remember applying a BECM update and have seen no change in my normal 260 mile range reported at 90%.

I must be just misremembering what modules I have updated based on your numbers.
 
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RickMachE

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My game plan going forward in winter trips is to do the following:

- At 20 miles from the charger, turn the heat off, or set it on 68 and fan speed 1 if we can't tolerate off.

- For the first 10 - 15 minutes of DC charging, turn off the heat as Ford recommends.

- As we near the end of DC charging, turn the heat in the car up a few degrees past where we keep it during the driving, to be able to leave with the charge % we want and an overly warm cabin to hold us for a while.

We should be traveling in the next 60 days or less so we'll see.
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