Does Preconditioning Really Matter?

[RickMachE]

Can't speak to ChargePoint, but my JuiceBox graph will show the power pulled over the entire time it's plugged in. I've posted it before.

I preconditioned back in November. Here's my JuiceBox graphs. I just found out I'm leaving in 18 minutes to go somewhere, so I set a departure time. Vehicle immediately activated, and said it was "cabin preconditioning in progress". It's 22 outside, 36 in garage, and car hasn't been driven in days. The far right of the top graph shows the preconditioning, I suspect it wasn't cold that day, and all it did was prep cabin.

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[Bobcat17]

How long do yo precondition in garage? My garage is not heated so we have that.

 

[Twilloo]

For what its worth, I'm not convinced the battery preconditioning works unless the temp is low enough. Not exactly sure what that temp is, but thinking its <40F. I've drawn this conclusion by neurotically watching Fordpass (sketchy I know) and my charger for a few hours before my departure times. The cabin preheats 15-30min prior to departure, but I can only get indication the battery is preconditioning when its been very cold or the car is outside (<30F).

when you say under 40 degrees are you talking about in the garage temp or what you have to go out into, the out side temp?

 

[AKgrampy]

I found this thread an interesting read. I do not have my Mach yet so am gathering as much info as possible before it arrives. It is obvious to me that preconditioning did not take place in the OP initial graph. From what I have read batteries will not pre condition in a 50F garage. My understanding is preconditioning will commence one hourish prior to set departure time if you are plugged in. Cabin conditioning commences 15 min prior to departure. My Mach will be in a heated garage and I have come to understand that I will not need to precondition. From what I have read in this thread it does not answer the question as to whether preconditioning is really matters. I believe it would take a comparison of a Mach parked outside in say sub 30 degrees temps with and then without preconditioning. It does however confirm to me that I will not need to precondition when parked in my garage!

 

[Mach-e4x]

I found this thread an interesting read. I do not have my Mach yet so am gathering as much info as possible before it arrives. It is obvious to me that preconditioning did not take place in the OP initial graph. From what I have read batteries will not pre condition in a 50F garage. My understanding is preconditioning will commence one hourish prior to set departure time if you are plugged in. Cabin conditioning commences 15 min prior to departure. My Mach will be in a heated garage and I have come to understand that I will not need to precondition. From what I have read in this thread it does not answer the question as to whether preconditioning is really matters. I believe it would take a comparison of a Mach parked outside in say sub 30 degrees temps with and then without preconditioning. It does however confirm to me that I will not need to precondition when parked in my garage!

This thread is interesting and I agree that the preconditioning only happens if the batteries are cold enough to gain some benefits from it, in my experience if the garage temp is below freezing the preconditioning will start an hour before departure time and add another 10 miles of range.

 

[babgvant]

My take on the "should I precondition" question pivots mostly around two things: 1) what does the OEM recommend, 2) and what is best for the battery.

1) Ford is clearly down with preconditioning, it's baked into the app in two places and can be managed directly in Sync as well.

2) If you don't precondition, neither the battery or cabin will be at optimal temperature. The battery will protect itself, so besides performance loss it's probably a toss up. But on the cabin side of things, unless you're going to roll around without heat/AC that energy will come from the battery while you're driving. Using a battery degrades it. So the less in/out load on the battery, the better it is for the battery. We're not talking about huge numbers, but in concept it's better to pull the energy from the grid instead of the battery when possible.

 

[Murse-In-Airy]

I haven’t worried much about preconditioning. But now that I have the GT with the power meter I thought I do a comparison. Last night when I ran an errand it was 19° out. I hadn’t preconditioned. I had 11 little grey bars.
so I set a departure time for 0530.

I get up to go to work and FordPass says “Cabin Precondition in Progress.” Does that mean it didn’t warm the battery? because I’ve seen “Preparing for a drive” when it was super cold out. So I assumed that’s what it would say for preconditioning too. On the other hand, I go get in and there is no grey bars. So I guess that answers my own question. Battery must be warm.

 

[MachMachWhoThere]

Nice Work!

It definitely makes a difference in terms of available power. On the”powerbar” in the GT I get about 33% of gray bars in the power side until the system warms up. It Only get 1 if any at all if I precondition.

Exact same experience with my GT. I took off on a cold day without fully preconditioning recently. Never again. Not an exciting driving experience.

I thought I’d chime in and point out that I precondition on 110V, and I always wondered if it was effective. So given enough time, yes, it is truly effective. In the above case, I set the departure time just 15 minutes before I needed to go. The cabin was warm but the battery was not. Not sure how long it takes 110V to precondition the battery, but it’s more than 15 minutes!

 

[JoeDimwit]

This thread is interesting and I agree that the preconditioning only happens if the batteries are cold enough to gain some benefits from it, in my experience if the garage temp is below freezing the preconditioning will start an hour before departure time and add another 10 miles of range.

Point of order: The car will also precondition the batteries if they are too hot.

 

[MachMachWhoThere]

I haven’t worried much about preconditioning. But now that I have the GT with the power meter I thought I do a comparison. Last night when I ran an errand it was 19° out. I hadn’t preconditioned. I had 11 little grey bars.
so I set a departure time for 0530.

I get up to go to work and FordPass says “Cabin Precondition in Progress.” Does that mean it didn’t warm the battery? because I’ve seen “Preparing for a drive” when it was super cold out. So I assumed that’s what it would say for preconditioning too. On the other hand, I go get in and there is no grey bars. So I guess that answers my own question. Battery must be warm.

I used to wonder the exact same thing. My assumption at this point is that it just doesn’t bother to inform you about the battery precondition. It’s definitely happening, and it must be starting well before the cabin heating (see my post above).

 

[MONDO]

Exact same experience with my GT. I took off on a cold day without fully preconditioning recently. Never again. Not an exciting driving experience.

I thought I’d chime in and point out that I precondition on 110V, and I always wondered if it was effective. So given enough time, yes, it is truly effective. In the above case, I set the departure time just 15 minutes before I needed to go. The cabin was warm but the battery was not. Not sure how long it takes 110V to precondition the battery, but it’s more than 15 minutes!

I also noticed that the preconditioning consumes some of the battery even though it’s plugged in on 110v.

 

[RickMachE]

Exact same experience with my GT. I took off on a cold day without fully preconditioning recently. Never again. Not an exciting driving experience.

I thought I’d chime in and point out that I precondition on 110V, and I always wondered if it was effective. So given enough time, yes, it is truly effective. In the above case, I set the departure time just 15 minutes before I needed to go. The cabin was warm but the battery was not. Not sure how long it takes 110V to precondition the battery, but it’s more than 15 minutes!

I also noticed that the preconditioning consumes some of the battery even though it’s plugged in on 110v.

Using 110v instead of 240v is clearly not as optimal. Yes, it will consume some of the battery. An unknown is whether the battery ends up at the same temperature as if it was plugged into 240v.

I can tell you from experience with our PHEV that 110v results in a vehicle that is not as optimal temperature-wise in the cabin. Of course that makes sense given that the heater pulls more juice that the 110v supplies, and it can't heat the battery and the cabin both in the time alloted via departure times.

The real question is whether conditioning on 110v is worth it. The main purpose of setting a departure time is preconditioning the battery to extend your range (and get optimum battery performance for example in acceleration). With 110v having so little impact, what's the difference in range with preconditioning on 110v vs. not preconditioning at all, just doing a remote start (on 110v) to warm the cabin? I suspect the impact on range is very minimal, i.e. setting a departure time while on 110v may be any different than just doing a remote start on 110v, the same range remains.

 

[MachMachWhoThere]

Using 110v instead of 240v is clearly not as optimal. Yes, it will consume some of the battery. An unknown is whether the battery ends up at the same temperature as if it was plugged into 240v.

I can tell you from experience with our PHEV that 110v results in a vehicle that is not as optimal temperature-wise in the cabin. Of course that makes sense given that the heater pulls more juice that the 110 supplies, and it can't heat the battery and the cabin both in the time alloted via departure times.

I think, when my departure time is set well in advance, my battery and cabin are fully optimized. But I don’t have a 240V for comparison. Some notes:
-I set my cabin to medium only, so I don’t know if it could keep up with the warm setting.
-I will get the notification that my cabin temperature is ready.
-I will lose a percentage before I’ve even left my driveway, and I seem to lose the next battery notch pretty quickly too. It settles in after that.
-But I will only have 1 gray bar on my power meter. I’m not sure if that’s truly a gray bar, or if it just marks the end of the power meter. Pretty sure it’s always been there any time I’ve driven.

Interestingly, I tried to cheat the system one day. I clicked “charge to 100%” about an hour before my set departure time when I was at my 90% set point. Thought maybe that would start heating my battery some. I have no gadgets setup to monitor anything, but when I got in my car to leave, I had like 87%. Major fail.

 

[Kitten]

I preconditioned back in November. Here's my JuiceBox graphs. I just found out I'm leaving in 18 minutes to go somewhere, so I set a departure time. Vehicle immediately activated, and said it was "cabin preconditioning in progress". It's 22 outside, 36 in garage, and car hasn't been driven in days. The far right of the top graph shows the preconditioning, I suspect it wasn't cold that day, and all it did was prep cabin.

So departure times will either precondition the cabin and the battery; or the cabin only (if car determines battery is sufficiently optimized temperature-wise)?

Does anyone have any ideas of temperature parameters that would indicate battery preconditioning? Specifically - today I set my departure time at 6 am (parked in a heated garage overnight, plugged in). Around departure time, FordPass told me my "Cabin temperature is now ready." Assume this means battery didn't need preconditioning. Returned home around 6:30 am, parked in the driveway (not plugged in) and am wondering if I should set a new departure time for 8:30 am (will the battery need preconditioning?) or just remote start the car at 8:20 to warm up my cabin. Currently mid 30s here.

 

[Av8tor]

So departure times will either precondition the cabin and the battery; or the cabin only (if car determines battery is sufficiently optimized temperature-wise)?

Does anyone have any ideas of temperature parameters that would indicate battery preconditioning? Specifically - today I set my departure time at 6 am (parked in a heated garage overnight, plugged in). Around departure time, FordPass told me my "Cabin temperature is now ready." Assume this means battery didn't need preconditioning. Returned home around 6:30 am, parked in the driveway (not plugged in) and am wondering if I should set a new departure time for 8:30 am (will the battery need preconditioning?) or just remote start the car at 8:20 to warm up my cabin. Currently mid 30s here.

• The preconditioning of the battery will only be effective while it's plugged in. The system will look at the current temperature and then determine how much in advance it has to start to precondition the battery. The cabin is the last to precondition.
• Setting a departure time when it's NOT plugged will act like a remote start and just concentrate on the cabin.
• You only really need to precondition when you need max range, or extremely cold temps, and it should be plugged in anyway.

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