DCFC preconditioning is it coming????

[SpaceEVDriver]

Another interesting graph from the trip I did yesterday. This time with direct evidence of improved charging rate at DCFC if using in-vehicle navigation.

I apologize for the bad color scheme, I don't know how to change colors in carscanner.

This is a plot of the inlet coolant temperature (green), and the charge power limit (red) as set by the car.

Just a little before 14:07 is when we were about 30 miles from the charging station. You can see the inlet temperature starts to increase rapidly. After a bit of a lag, the maximum charging power limit starts increasing and peaks around 170 kW.
[Edited to remove the power to/from the HVB since the plot without is much clearer.]

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[Mach-Lee]

Also, it looks like the car will condition the battery if you're within the proper range of the DCFC and simply ask it to navigate there, even if you're plugged in to your home charger.

This morning, after a cold soak of the battery (HVB and exterior temperature both around freezing), I left the car plugged in to the 120 V Basic AC charger, turned it on, set the DCFC as the built-in navigation destination and told it to take me there. I left the car plugged in and then turned on CarScanner to watch the HVB Inlet Coolant Temperature. This is the result. Note that the temperature reached much higher peak than it did when I had remote started the car the day before (61 F maximum, even after driving a while).

So, it looks like you can use the in-car navigation to precondition the battery before you leave for a long trip or when it's very cold out by setting the immediate destination as the nearest DCFC (if there's one within 30-ish miles), even while the car is plugged in. Basic 120 V AC is not enough to keep the battery from discharging while performing this warming up.

Next test is to see what the departure settings do to the temperature...

Did you do a control test without inputing the destination? If your turn on the car, and turn off HVAC while plugged in, it will heat the battery like that without a nav destination.

If you use preconditioning on 120V it will heat the battery for about 30 mins with only 1.1 kW of heat. Battery will only warm up about 4ºC. Better than nothing but not by much. I did a test with that previously.

 

[SpaceEVDriver]

Did you do a control test without inputing the destination? If your turn on the car, and turn off HVAC while plugged in, it will heat the battery like that without a nav destination.

If you use preconditioning on 120V it will heat the battery for about 30 mins with only 1.1 kW of heat. Battery will only warm up about 4ºC. Better than nothing but not by much. I did a test with that previously.

I have not, that was my next test, but I wanted to "cold" soak it over night. Looks like I don't have to.

For my DCFC destination test while plugged in (i.e., not actually driving anywhere), the battery went from 32 F to about 54 F (about 12 C increase) in about 30 minutes.

And just now I went out and ran the control in which I just start the car without setting a destination. I see a similar climb in temperature. I suspect---given tests that @Mach-Lee ran---the Level 2 240 V charger would give similar results. The car probably won't warm the battery to much higher than about 54 F/12 C unless you start driving toward the DCFC. I might do some more tests once I re-install my 60A charger.

 

[Toy_collector]

Somebody at Ford is reading all this and laughing at us. They are telling their buddies "look at these guys trying to figure out our code".

 

[Maquis]

Somebody at Ford is reading all this and laughing at us. They are telling their buddies "look at these guys trying to figure out our code".

If so, I’d really rather they spend that wasted time fixing shit!

 

[SpaceEVDriver]

Somebody at Ford is reading all this and laughing at us. They are telling their buddies "look at these guys trying to figure out our code".

I would hope they're looking up the data themselves so they can make improvements. It's difficult to test all real-world cases and most of the data going back to them are likely to be short trips at 50-80% SOC. They need these tests so they can expand their known operating conditions and improve their parameterizations.

 

[Johnny572]

Large companies like ford are highly inefficient bureaucracies. Engineers do stuff, marketing wants to be the voice, and legal is, well, it's lawyers. One big giant entity where they can't even provide simple communication. Imagine a simple blog from the engineering and development side that said in plain language the exact changes made for each release, and what they're hoping to have in future releases / being worked on. That just makes too much sense.

Like the update that did nothing but "allow" for future updates. ChatGPT can do away with ford's marketing department......

#Ford is preconditioning to a DCFC coming soon???? Because we really need this here in the Midwest. Ionic 5 is rolling this out.

I

Somebody at Ford is reading all this and laughing at us. They are telling their buddies "look at these guys trying to figure out our code".

it’s just reading scan data in different scenarios…..nothing about coding

 

[Mach-Lee]

Somebody at Ford is reading all this and laughing at us. They are telling their buddies "look at these guys trying to figure out our code".

I feel like we have to because they don't tell us enough about how it works or how it should be used. We also want to find the flaws and limitations so they can be fixed or addressed with software or future design decisions. They are still learning a lot about how the cars are used, the conditions they face, and best practices for battery management.

 

[Johnny572]

25 minute precondition to a DCFC at 28 degrees. The battery was cold no precondition before this test. 25 minutes later. 86 to 62 degrees. Coolant inlet was good with e heat off up to 107 degrees steady. With e-heat on the inlet coolant temp would fluctuate from 65 to 87…..interesting. This will definitely help DCFC!

 

[Johnny572]

25 minute precondition to a DCFC at 28 degrees. The battery was cold no precondition before this test. 25 minutes later. 86 to 62 degrees. Coolant inlet was good with e heat off up to 107 degrees steady. With e-heat on the inlet coolant temp would fluctuate from 65 to 87…..interesting. This will definitely help DCFC!

I did not DCFC after this but is the charge power limit displayed @ 134 KWH what it can peak at??

 

[Mach-Lee]

25 minute precondition to a DCFC at 28 degrees. The battery was cold no precondition before this test. 25 minutes later. 86 to 62 degrees. Coolant inlet was good with e heat off up to 107 degrees steady. With e-heat on the inlet coolant temp would fluctuate from 65 to 87…..interesting. This will definitely help DCFC!

So it only warmed up the battery about 5-6°F in 25 min. Would take about 90 min at that rate to reach the optimal 77°F. Make sure you look at the average battery temp parameter rather than just the min and max. The average cell temp will be much closer to the min temp than the max temp.

 

[Johnny572]

So it only warmed up the battery about 5-6°F in 25 min. Would take about 90 min at that rate to reach the optimal 77°F. Make sure you look at the average battery temp parameter rather than just the min and max. The average cell temp will be much closer to the min temp than the max temp.

Min was 35f and max was at 48 to start. I didn’t take a picture…….I was told take the min and max and split it. This was more of a test using the e heat on or off.
the pictures are more for the coolant inlet temp with the heat on and off.

 

[Mach-Lee]

Min was 35f and max was at 48 to start. I didn’t take a picture…….I was told take the min and max and split it. This was more of a test using the e heat on or off.
the pictures are more for the coolant inlet temp with the heat on and off.

Ah. Yes the HVAC takes most of the heat so turning it off makes a large difference in the inlet temps. Battery will heat 2-4x faster with HVAC off.

 

[azerik]

I set a DCFC as a destination yesterday. Was 65 out. 18 miles to get there (because I missed the turn, or it would have been 16) but an EA gave me 100kw from 22 to 80, 40'ish from 80 on. I can't really complain about that. 4.1.3 and used the Ford nav. 'Corse P&C didn't work the first 3 times for me.

 

[Johnny572]

I set a DCFC as a destination yesterday. Was 65 out. 18 miles to get there (because I missed the turn, or it would have been 16) but an EA gave me 100kw from 22 to 80, 40'ish from 80 on. I can't really complain about that. 4.1.3 and used the Ford nav. 'Corse P&C didn't work the first 3 times for me.

I wonder if preconditioning even works when it’s 65f outside….I will car scan that in 3 months…lol

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