Expected highway range on a long trip?

[blue92lx]

Hey everyone,

I have a GT on order which has the 250 miles EPA range, but that's 100% charge and highway/city. What I'm concerned about is what is the expected range for 80% battery on the highway? I do long distance trips about 4 times a year and want to be sure I get hopefully close to 200mile at 80%. I'd say speed will be 75-80mph as well. I definitely don't want to buy the car and find out it can't make it to the charging stations, or that I have to hit like 5 charging stations just to drive through two states.

Thanks!

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[abr]

Hey everyone,

I have a GT on order which has the 250 miles EPA range, but that's 100% charge and highway/city. What I'm concerned about is what is the expected range for 80% battery on the highway? I do long distance trips about 4 times a year and want to be sure I get hopefully close to 200mile at 80%. I'd say speed will be 75-80mph as well. I definitely don't want to buy the car and find out it can't make it to the charging stations, or that I have to hit like 5 charging stations just to drive through two states.

Thanks!

I would expect you can get close to 200 miles on 80% of the battery. I have an FE and am averaging 3.3 miles / kWh. At the 75-80mph and the slightly less efficient GT, I would expect you can get around 2.7 miles / kWh or slightly under 200 miles on 80% of the ER battery.

 

[JCHLi]

Depends on the weather, but 200 miles going from 90% down to 10% isn't unreasonable except in the cold. My experience is at 65-70 mph average I'm getting the predicted range (so 75-80 average might be less).

 

[Mach-E VLOG]

Hey everyone,

I have a GT on order which has the 250 miles EPA range, but that's 100% charge and highway/city. What I'm concerned about is what is the expected range for 80% battery on the highway? I do long distance trips about 4 times a year and want to be sure I get hopefully close to 200mile at 80%. I'd say speed will be 75-80mph as well. I definitely don't want to buy the car and find out it can't make it to the charging stations, or that I have to hit like 5 charging stations just to drive through two states.

Thanks!

TBH, I wouldn't count on 200 with 80% on a GT if it is truly at 75 to 80 mph. I've been getting 3.1 miles per kWh with a mix of 65 and 75 mph speeds. 80% of 3.1 times 88 kWh battery is 218 miles for an AWD ER that has an EPA range of 270. I know forum members that have done long stretches of 75 to 80 mph and they report 2.8 miles per kWh. That would be 197 miles for an AWD ER.

 

[blue92lx]

TBH, I wouldn't count on 200 with 80% on a GT if it is truly at 75 to 80 mph. I've been getting 3.1 miles per kWh with a mix of 65 and 75 mph speeds. 80% of 3.1 times 88 kWh battery is 218 miles for an AWD ER that has an EPA range of 270. I know forum members that have done long stretches of 75 to 80 mph and they report 2.8 miles per kWh. That would be 197 miles for an AWD ER.

I think if I could manage 190 miles I'd be ok, that would be 2.7 miles per kWh. Do you think that's a reasonable expectation? I just hope reviewers start to get some GT's in hand so I can solidify my purchase, otherwsie I guess I'll wait for Mach E v2.

 

[Murse-In-Airy]

Your speed will absolutely kill your range. You can have one or the other. One must bear in mind that the EPA rating of 250 miles is calculated with 50% city driving (stop and go, 35-45 MPH) and 50% highway (which the EPA uses 65 MPH for).
if you’re planning on driving 100% highway, you’ll lose a bit of range. If you plan on driving at 80 MPH, you’ll lose significantly more range.
I did a comparison in my own premium AWD ER and I lost about 0.2 miles/kWh for each 5MPH I added to the speed.
So, if we’re going to say that EPA rated the 88kwh GT at 250 miles, they are planning 2.8 miles/kWh. You will be eliminating all the higher milage stop and go stuff on a long trip. Let’s say that only drops your efficiency to 2.6 miles/kWh. Then you drive 80 MPH instead of 65 MPH. This will probably cost you another 0.6 miles/kWh. You’re down to a flat 2 miles/kWh. If you’re charging to 80% of your 88 kWh battery then you only have 70 kWh available. Looks like you will get about 140 miles of range at those speeds.
I may be way off, but that would be my expectation.

 

[DaMeatMan]

Hey everyone,

I have a GT on order which has the 250 miles EPA range, but that's 100% charge and highway/city. What I'm concerned about is what is the expected range for 80% battery on the highway? I do long distance trips about 4 times a year and want to be sure I get hopefully close to 200mile at 80%. I'd say speed will be 75-80mph as well. I definitely don't want to buy the car and find out it can't make it to the charging stations, or that I have to hit like 5 charging stations just to drive through two states.

Thanks!

At this point it's really anyone's guess since we don't really have any real world data with the GT yet.

But if Ford is consistent in the way that they underrate their EPA figures, you will likely do better than the 250 mile range that they rate for the GT.

With that said though let's do some math here to figure out what's needed to actually achieve what your looking for to determine if your expectations are realistic.

But first let's determine the efficiency of the 250 mile range rated GT with an 88 (usable) kWhr battery pack.

250 miles ÷ 88 = 2.84 miles / kWhr

So 2.84 miles/kWhr is the efficiency we would be expecting to hit if we meet the EPA rating of 250 miles.

So you say you want to hit 200 miles with 80% battery, and I'm assuming your not going to take it down to 0%, so let's say we are using 70% of the battery for the trip to give you a 10% buffer on arrival.

That would be 88kwh x 0.70 = 61.6 kwh that we have to work with.

200 miles ÷ 61.6kwh = 3.24 miles/kWhr

Which means you would need to hit an efficiency of 3.24 miles/kWhr to make that trip with only 70% of your battery.

Given that most AWD extended range MME's are achieving 3.5 miles per kw, it's probably possible, but to be honest your probably pushing it since we know the GT will be less efficient, but don't know much less efficient it will be yet.

You likely have a better chance at hitting the 200 mile range figure using 75% of the battery, meaning you arrive with 5% left.

In which case you then only need to hit an efficiency of 3 miles/kWhr to hit 200 miles which is likely more of a reasonable expectation.

But of course you could always charge to 85% for some added buffer which would add an additional 30 min to your charge time past 80%.

Or alternatively if range is really that important to you, then ditch the GT for a MME Premium AWDX, which we already know for sure would meet your requirements.

At the end of the day it really comes down to a determining what is most important to you? Power or efficiency?

No one buys a GT version of any ICE or electric vehicle for efficiency or range, they buy it for power and acceleration. How often do they actually realistically get to use that 0-60 time in the real world, who knows... but they have it.

The Premium MME AWDX is a pretty decent middle ground between power, range and efficiency and the 0 to 60 times are still plenty impressive for most except those that are actually racing.

 

[blue92lx]

Thanks for all of the replies, I guess like some of you have said it's just a guessing game. I'd assume we'll be getting reviews before the deliveries, so I'll just have to stop "planning" and hold off for the long range reviews.

 

[Theamurican]

I just did a road trip from Seattle to Montana this past week in my premium awd extended range so 270 miles on a full charge. Most of the driving was at 75-80 mph like you said. The trip required five stops each way after about 120-160 miles, mostly because of the frequency of fast chargers. I would usually get about 200 miles on an 80% charge. What I realized is that the navigation will plan for you to go the speed limit and calculate range based on that. Going 5mph over and I’d burn through battery much faster, going 5 mph under and I could save an extra 10% of battery by the time I got to the next charger. The GT has lower range so you’ll probably need to do the stops where ever they are on a road trip. I think ElectrifyAmerica has them every 100 or so miles in most places. You probably don’t want to get to a charger with an estimated 1% battery as that’s risky so you’ll probably stop more frequently than the max range. Also attaching a photo of the massacre of bugs that was my road trip.

 

[JSW]

I drive almost exclusively highway miles and generally set the cruise at 77 mph. I set the climate control at 70 degrees. I go faster when passing.

Depending on the weather, I get around 2.7 mi/kWh.

 

[Timelessblur]

TBH, I wouldn't count on 200 with 80% on a GT if it is truly at 75 to 80 mph. I've been getting 3.1 miles per kWh with a mix of 65 and 75 mph speeds. 80% of 3.1 times 88 kWh battery is 218 miles for an AWD ER that has an EPA range of 270. I know forum members that have done long stretches of 75 to 80 mph and they report 2.8 miles per kWh. That would be 197 miles for an AWD ER.

Add to that the the GT will get an even lower number of miles per kWH. Doing the rough math given that the EPA range of the GT is 92.5% of the range of the premium that puts the GT at 75-80 mph at 2.6ish range. That works out to be at 80% battery at around 181 miles.
I can add that the 75-80 mph kills the range. My AWD premium dropped down to the 2.6-2.8 range at those speed. Mind you I was going from near sea of Houston back to Austin at nearly 1000 ft so that sure as hell was not helping. Going to Houston I got over 3 at roughly the same speeds but going back it was little hotter and used around 80% of my battery for the 200 mile drive.

 

[idkhow]

I just did a road trip from Seattle to Montana this past week in my premium awd extended range so 270 miles on a full charge. Most of the driving was at 75-80 mph like you said. The trip required five stops each way after about 120-160 miles, mostly because of the frequency of fast chargers. I would usually get about 200 miles on an 80% charge. What I realized is that the navigation will plan for you to go the speed limit and calculate range based on that. Going 5mph over and I’d burn through battery much faster, going 5 mph under and I could save an extra 10% of battery by the time I got to the next charger. The GT has lower range so you’ll probably need to do the stops where ever they are on a road trip. I think ElectrifyAmerica has them every 100 or so miles in most places. You probably don’t want to get to a charger with an estimated 1% battery as that’s risky so you’ll probably stop more frequently than the max range. Also attaching a photo of the massacre of bugs that was my road trip.

As a car detailer, this is beautiful.

Also keep some Meguiar's waterless car wash and wax, it's how I keep up as even 50-60 miles becomes a canvas for bugs.


Get the gallon size and put it into bottles, keep a bag of microfibers in the frunk. Trust me on this.

 

[idkhow]

They're actually doing pretty good.

Add the fact I have sciatica with full heat on the seat + AC and it's a little less, but it's beating EPA estimates

https://www.edmunds.com/car-news/te...rd-range-rwd-beats-epa-range-by-34-miles.html

 

[OH2AZ2OH]

You’re not going to get 200 miles at those speeds. Even if you got the 250 miles on a full charge, realistically you’re going to stop charging at 80% and not run it below 10%. So, 70% of full range is 175 miles. Less at 80 mph or at temps below 50F. If Ford updates the charging curve to soften the 80% cliff, allowing reasonable charging rates to 90%, then 200 becomes realistic in the right conditions.

 

[RedStallion]

Hey everyone,

I have a GT on order which has the 250 miles EPA range, but that's 100% charge and highway/city. What I'm concerned about is what is the expected range for 80% battery on the highway? I do long distance trips about 4 times a year and want to be sure I get hopefully close to 200mile at 80%. I'd say speed will be 75-80mph as well. I definitely don't want to buy the car and find out it can't make it to the charging stations, or that I have to hit like 5 charging stations just to drive through two states.

Thanks!

There isn't really a definitive answer. My last 800 mile trip showed an average 2.8 mi/kWh, but some long stretches between chargers had a range from 2.1 to 3.3 mi/kWh. I have AWD Premium, GT numbers are likely lower by 10% or so.
The speed, tire pressure, weather, elevation, wind, even car in front of you may make a big difference. If you haven't travelled the road before then I would go with the most pessimistic expectations evaluating the range, my rule of thumb for pessimistic range is 1/2 of EPA rating.

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