DCFC preconditioning is it coming????

Jimrpa

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Batteries charge slowly at a DCFC when they're cold. Preconditioning will heat up the battery when the car knows you're on your way to a DCFC so that it's warm when you get there and can charge faster.
Don’t the batteries warm up by the simple act of driving to a DCFC? (Apparently not. I would have thought so though.)
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benk016

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Don’t the batteries warm up by the simple act of driving to a DCFC? (Apparently not. I would have thought so though.)
Driving does warm up the batteries some. But not enough to charge at normal speed when its cold out.
 

Jimrpa

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I thought the Ford Navigation was included in the purchase of the car. It's the navigation connected services (weather, traffic, parking info, basically any real time status info etc.) that is covered by a subscription. Just using the onboard Nav as a GPS should always work even without connected services subscription.
I believe the map updates are a subscription?
 

benk016

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I'm just going to go out on a limb and say that based on my monitoring during a few charging sessions recently, DCFC preconditioning is not active at this time.
 

dbsb3233

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I'm just going to go out on a limb and say that based on my monitoring during a few charging sessions recently, DCFC preconditioning is not active at this time.
Confirmed above, yes.

Just to add a few comparison points, I just completed a 1700 mile road trip yesterday. Lots of 20F-30F DCFC stops. Never quite reached 100kw on any of those, even in the early minutes where we see 163kw in the summer before settling around 123 for a while. Highest peak I got was 99.

Yesterday in Edwards CO it was 12F. Peaked at 84kw. Actually not bad, considering.
 


azerik

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Needs a manual button. More so if it involves turning off the HVAC so it CAN heat the battery. I would expect a LOT of people to lose their cool (see what I did?) or reality lose their heat, in the cabin 30 miles out from a charger in 20 degrees. Wind chill will strip the heat from the windows and that cabin will be COLD before you get there. Coupled with, wait for it, can't use the heat while charing? (Pretty sure I read that somewhere) If this is the case they won't turn on this 'feature' of making it look like the HVAC quit.

In my EV Focus if I lost heat it meant the battery was cracked. (twice it happened, twice I got a new pack) Heated seats or not, no one in the back will be happy about 30 min of no heat + 45 more min waiting in no heat to charge.

I know the L2 charger plugged in over night will run fans to cool the pack. Does it keep the pack above 40?
 

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Driving does warm up the batteries some. But not enough to charge at normal speed when its cold out.
This can be improved via application / cycling of max acceleration and max regen. Might make other drivers (and police) hate you though. 🤣
 

Logal727

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Ford Connected Built-In Navigation is a 3 year trial (Ford's words) of navigation services. After completion of trial, if not renewed it will revert to the embedded offline navigation. Features include "accurate maps, thoughtful points of interest, charge locations, real-time traffic and road condition updates, almost instant rerouting options". Note that the connected navigation updates full map yearly and "home zone" quarterly. It also provides navigation in "cellular dead zones".
Also this is how every car manufacturer does it now. My Honda only gave 1 year ... so..
 

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Maybe some of the more dedicate members who understand the details of the mach e charging curve could calculate how much time this really can save. I sorta doubt it will be that significant (charging at 45 - 70 vs 80 to 100 on average is my guess). The IONIC has a much larger change (40 to 220) based upon batter temp.
 

dbsb3233

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Maybe some of the more dedicate members who understand the details of the mach e charging curve could calculate how much time this really can save. I sorta doubt it will be that significant (charging at 45 - 70 vs 80 to 100 on average is my guess). The IONIC has a much larger change (40 to 220) based upon batter temp.
No way to really do that without knowing how much the charging improves with preconditioning. It's doubtful that it would get all the way up to summer speeds. I think we can only guess whether it would get halfway there? 3/4? It's anyone's guess.

We can do some comparisons for winter vs summer though. For example, that 12F session I mentioned above that got 84kw in the first half of the curve vs when would normally be about 123kw in the summer. If adding, say, 50kWh at those speeds, it's a difference of 11 minutes (35 minutes vs 24). Of course, it doesn't stay at those speeds the whole way, but it seems to track the similar charge pattern.

It's also possible that the cold will affect the chargers to different degrees too. Preconditioning won't help that though.
 

Phil-Springs

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I don't think it's a simple 1:1 correlation like that though for this case. That would be the case if we were just adding/subtracting electricity alone, but in this case we're talking about how some heating/cooling of the battery physically allows the electrons to flow better within it. There likely is a point where some heating/cooling produces a net gain (thus why there's a BMS and fluid running through the battery pack to keep it within a temperature range). But they've surely already optimized that for us via the BMS.
still don't think that is how physics works. This would imply you just magically got extra energy more than that which broke open so locked up molecular bonds to let the electrons to flow. Simply can't create it out of nothing. But if you find some scheme where the net trade does in fact work out.. patent it under perpetual motion machine.
 

azerik

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Take a gander at some youtube videos on Lipo RC car battery charging. They have thousands of people trying to explain it. Cold battery can't charge as fast and doesn't deliver power as fast. Inherit to LiPO. Once they cross a temp threshold getting hot (from draining) they also can't produce the same amount of power or take a charge as fast. It's all down to battery protection (reality, personal protection as LiPo fires are far from easy to deal with). Which is why battery devs are working to use other materials to make 'super duper fast charging batteries!'. However those, super fast charge at any temp batteries come with caveats. Either not as energy dense, or can't supply the higher power, or less lifetime cycles.

What preconditioning is really doing is helps remove resistance so the electrons can flow. Too cold and you can't shove the power down those leads. Too hot, it's dangerous to send high amps down those leads. Which is the idea behind this. Get the pack to X temp it can take X amps. Slightly warmer it can take X more amps, too hot back down the amps. Ford took a timed approach with X temp them removing amps to protect the pack. There'd be a LOT of logic behind DCFC BMS across many areas of the pack in order for them to make accurate amp predictions. Take the ER for example. In the rear the pack is double stacked. I'd venture to say that part of the pack stays colder or hotter longer than the single stack floor cells. How would they account for that as the charge current is coming into the car and goes all over the multiple cells.I highly doubt they have logic to balance cells in the pack based on the heat of each cell, rather just the heat (or lack there of) at a somewhat central temp measurement area.
 
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Mirak

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Ok, but setting a departure time does precondition the battery, right? The only time I really need preconditioning is on long winter road trips - like the 180mi jaunt from Wichita to KC - when I need the improved efficiency just to take the direct route, and a faster DCFC session at my destination. That is infrequent and planned enough that it is feasible for me to set a departure time.
 

Maquis

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I don't think that's accurate, otherwise Ford wouldn't have a BMS system that warms/cools the battery pack at all if it were always a net loss to warm/cool it.

I think it's really about when/where it shifts from a net gain to a net loss. And I presume Ford has already found those points and set the BMS parameters accordingly.
The main reason for BMS is to preserve long-term battery health.
 

sotek2345

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still don't think that is how physics works. This would imply you just magically got extra energy more than that which broke open so locked up molecular bonds to let the electrons to flow. Simply can't create it out of nothing. But if you find some scheme where the net trade does in fact work out.. patent it under perpetual motion machine.
It isn't really free energy like you are thinking, the extra heat would effectively be initiating an "exothermic" (not sure of that is the right word here) electrochemical reaction that outputs more than the initiation energy. This couldn't go on forever because you only have a certain amount of stored energy, and you had to input that energy into the system first. It is still net negative.

Made up number example

charge battery with 80 kWh of energy at 70F

battery is cooled to 0F - losing thermal energy, but no electrochemical energy. Battery now shows as storing 60 kWh of energy due to reduced efficiencies at the lower temp.

Heat battery using 5kWh of energy from the battery. Battery now shows 65kWh of available energy due to increase efficiency. You are more power than before you warmed up, but still less than the initial charge. In theory (not real life), if the 5kWh of energy used for heating got you back up to 70F with no other losses, the battery would show 75kWh available.

No perpetual motion needed.

All that said, I have no idea if our batteries would show this effect in the temperature range we are discussing.
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