Discrepancy between FordPass & vehicle range estimates

[AMachE]

I’m a new owner of a ‘24 with the extended range NCM battery. I hope I am posting this in the appropriate are of the forum.

I understand that cold weather affects range quite a bit and where I live the temperature has been between 20 & 40 degrees(F) for several weeks. I’ve gotten used to seeing 185 miles of range (give or take 10 miles, depending on temperature) at 85% charge when I unplug from my level 2 home charger at the start of the day. I also have read enough forum posts (thank you, everyone!) to know that I need to consider the range meter as the “guess-o-meter” and not an exact measurement.

What I am noticing is that when I arrive at a destination, park, and then return later to depart, the remaining range stated in the Ford Pass app and in the vehicle do not match, even though the remaining battery percentage matches.

For example, today I left home with 85% charge and FordPass and vehicle instrument cluster both stated 192 miles of range. I drove about 14 miles and when I parked FordPass and the vehicle both stated that there was 176 miles of remaining range and the battery % also matched. Returning to the car a little more than an hour later the FordPass app indicated that there was 170 miles of range, but when I turned on the vehicle it indicated 175 miles of range. The remaining battery percentage still matched in FordPass and in the vehicle instrument cluster.

I noticed something similar when I got home. While the battery percentage matched in FordPass and the vehicle, FordPass indicated that I had 146 miles of range remaining and the vehicle cluster stated I had 153 miles of range remaining.

Is this normal behavior? Does range drop by 7-8 miles while sitting in cold weather for an hour or two?

Am I to trust the vehicle estimate more than FordPass?

Any insights, explanations, or help is appreciated.

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[Mach-Lee]

Is this normal behavior? Does range drop by 7-8 miles while sitting in cold weather for an hour or two?

Any insights, explanations, or help is appreciated.

Yes. You put way too much faith in the actual precision of the range meter. It's a guess give or take 20 miles. Vehicle and FordPass figures will differ if they were updated at different times.

 

[AMachE]

Thank you, Mach-Lee. I appreciate that you responded and I trust your insights about charging & batteries.

It caught my attention because it is consistent that I park the car, get out, return, & have a discrepancy between the app & the car’s individual range estimates.

I guess I won’t put too much thought into it going forward.

 

[Maquis]

To add, the calculation (guess) is done by the car. The value then gets uploaded to Ford’s servers, then to FordPass. If they differ, it’s due to communication lag. It can happen any time, but the car being parked where it has poor or no cellular connectivity is a common cause.

 

[dan_meh]

It caught my attention because it is consistent that I park the car, get out, return, & have a discrepancy between the app & the car’s individual range estimates.

I’m also a new owner - about 6 months now. It’s my first electric car. Maybe another rookie story would help?

I stopped worrying about it the moment I realized my double standard. I almost never thought about the range guess in my hybrid. I paid more attention to the fuel level.

So in my electric car, I started looking at the percentage, and just like a gas car, I see it at 25% and think, “I should plug in.” Granted, I’ve learned that I almost never get to 25% on the electric car! It’s funny to me now that I even worried about it.

Ford recently released data saying that we use only a fraction of the battery daily. I identify with that data. I usually range between 50-80% because I am a lucky person who can charge where I sleep. So in day to day driving, I don’t bother looking.

In the occasional road trip, I do worry about the distance between charging stations, but only when I head west from the east coast (north to south is uneventful). On road trips, I only look at percentage and only to understand what the car’s navigation is doing. Because let’s be honest: unless you’re like Kyle Conner - who famously makes road trips taking cars to like 5% fuel left - you want your nav to plan for charging at 25%.

The parallel to the hybrid guess o meter was a family trip that took us across South Dakota (no navigation-planned fuel stops, unfortunately). I was trying to stretch the car to stop at lunch, and the guess o meter in the hybrid said I had 75 miles. I looked down a few miles later and it was 25. My wife was unhappy, and for good reason. I put us at risk of low blood sugar kids. I should have seen the fuel percentage and stopped at about a quarter tank.

Notice that in the hybrid story, it was fine. I wasn’t stranded and the kids were happy (I bought them potato chips and let them run into the Dakota wind, playing like Little House on the Prairie). But I caused parental stress by focusing on the guess o meter and trying to “optimize” like a Kyle Conner-ish human navigational device.

The girls are older now. They’ve moved on to Anne of Green Gables (that Gilbert!) and the Penderwicks (Tommy!). I have learned to just stop when the car wants me to and pay little attention to the guess o meter. Their snacks are a bit more sophisticated too. The one who is now in high schooler drinks matcha ?. The middle schooler drinks boba ?. I still eat potato chips ?.

NOTE: All the love to Kyle and the out of spec team. But just like I watch camper van videos with no interest in camper van life, so too do I watch the low percentage road tripping videos and think, “better them than me.”

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