Extreme Heat and EVs

[macchiaz-o]

Losing drive modes doesn't seem right. I don't see how losing drive modes protects the battery or is due to a limit of the battery.

It coincides with a reduction in available power. I immediately noticed acceleration reduce while I was passing someone on the L101. And I observed the instrument cluster revert from Unbridled to Engage appearance, and a brief message appeared at the top of the SYNC display stating Drives Modes not available.

Just to be clear, does the FCCS supply power to the vehicle outside of the charging schedule?

Yes. FCCS doesn't support charge schedules. The only lockout it has is access authorizations, which I didn't enable. The car is determining what to do based on its own schedule and current state.

I normally only want the vehicle to recharge from 11pm to 5am due to the rate plan I've subscribed to. But I'd be okay with it doing some health/longevity management outside of those hours.

Besides that, the IC says "Outside Air Temperature High Plug in Vehicle" but plugging it in does nothing except during its normal charge schedule. ?‍

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[BMT1071]

It coincides with a reduction in available power. I immediately noticed acceleration reduce while I was passing someone on the L101. And I observed the instrument cluster revert from Unbridled to Engage appearance, and a brief message appeared at the top of the SYNC display stating Drives Modes not available.



Yes. FCCS doesn't support charge schedules. The only lockout it has is access authorizations, which I didn't enable. The car is determining what to do based on its own schedule and current state.

I normally only want the vehicle to recharge from 11pm to 5am due to the rate plan I've subscribed to. But I'd be okay with it doing some health/longevity management outside of those hours.

Besides that, the IC says "Outside Air Temperature High Plug in Vehicle" but plugging it in does nothing except during its normal charge schedule. ?‍

That is peculiar.

 

[TruWrecks]

While charging?

What about when unplugged and Off, or while plugged in but outside of your charge schedule?

It is not charging but it is plugged in and the car is powered off..

 

[Kamuelaflyer]

I might have to put some foil and a portable grill on the glass roof and toss a few burgers on it tonight.

High temperature was 66 F in upcountry Hawaii today. It’s brutally mild.

 

[TruWrecks]

We cooled down to 104F at 10 PM Should get down to mid 80's or low 90's tonight. If I didn't have a heatpump in my house I would be sleeping in the car.

 

[RW Journey]

Losing drive modes doesn't seem right. I don't see how losing drive modes protects the battery or is due to a limit of the battery.

I have lost drive modes when I first start driving after sitting in a garage plugged in and outside temps around 75. I suspect the drive mode loss is due to a software glitch/bug, since I can select a different screen like android auto and then back to modes and they are there. Over the past 4 months I have lost drive modes only a few times.

 

[EELinneman]

You need to look at the original pdf file referenced in the article for details.
They didn't implement any cooling for the batteries, you can see the temperature rising to 60C while charging. They also disassembled the batteries for postmortem examination to see the impact, it's not obvious, not every battery cracks or explodes. You may have hundreds of bad batteries in your pack and not know.
Ford doesn't publish any numbers on battery degradation. In fact, they designed MME with some 10% reserve that can go bad and still preserve the original capacity. So when Ford warrants batteries, they specify 70% of the stated capacity, which is about 60% of the capacity of the cells. That is far below 80% which is a typical threshold for bad battery.

P.S. I wouldn't take anything Tesla fanboys post seriously.

So, they have a methodology that is not tied to what any manufacturer is doing? Seems like a waste of research money. I guess the lesson is don't charge and run a BEV without battery management and cooling. It's still a good find on your part, thanks for bringing this to everybody's attention.

 

[SnBGC]

Decided to try an experiment... I arrived home an hour ago. Car parked in garage, plugged in, not scheduled to recharge for several more hours.

Silent for that hour.

Then I used FordPass to modify the charge settings so it would have no reason to charge but would be allowed to. (I reduced target percent and added a lot more hours to the allowable times.)

As soon as the car got its allowance upgrade, it whirred to life. Radiator fan, pump(s), the works. It was loud.

I let it run this way for four minutes and then changed my settings back to normal and it went back to sleep. According to the Insights page for Ford Connected Charge Station, 200 watt hours were consumed for those four minutes of heat management.

That's 3 kWh if stretched to a full hour... Pretty significant!

Makes me wonder some things:

1. How badly are the batteries being damaged from not receiving any heat management while the car is parked outside on a hot day?

2. Am I causing further damage to the vehicle by driving it beyond its ability to cool down, like this afternoon when I lost access to Drive Modes again while I was passing other traffic on the freeway? Do I need to baby the vehicle for 6 months each year?

By the way, running this experiment allowed me to see this status message for the first time ever:

Interesting.
My FFE would run for 10-15 minutes when it was drawing shore power to cool the battery. It ran for 10-15 minutes every few hours during the peak summer months if I remember correctly.

Today I arrived back at the office with 36% SOC so I decided to charge at work. I opened FordPass and it said "Waiting to Charge" which would be correct since I have a schedule set at work location. I pressed "Details" and was presented with another screen that had a choice to "Charge to 100%" so I made that choice.

After a lot of spinning circles....I got a screen that showed the car should be charging. Actually, several screens had that info. The Charge Session Screen and the home Screen both said the car was now charging.

A couple of hours later I went near my car (without the phone or the fob) and it was dead silent. The EVSE was in the "Ready to Charge" state and the ring of lights at the charge port door were off. I went back inside to get my fob and when I got near the car it woke up and started charging.

Weird. I lost a couple of hours of good L2 charging time because the car didn't start charging when I requested it via FordPass. Maybe someday I will figure this EV stuff out..... ?

 

[RedStallion]

So, they have a methodology that is not tied to what any manufacturer is doing? Seems like a waste of research money. I guess the lesson is don't charge and run a BEV without battery management and cooling. It's still a good find on your part, thanks for bringing this to everybody's attention.

They couldn't implement cooling, not only because it would add another variable, but also because they wouldn't be able to finish experiment in 25-50 cycles. But they did study the dependencies of the cell resistance, temperature, and degradation.
It would be interesting, of course, if they could use the production battery with real cooling, etc. and run it through 1000 cycles, then did disassembly and repeated that 100 times with different batteries to achieve an acceptable margin of error. But I doubt anybody would have sufficient resources to do that.

 

[mr_raider]

My car makes weird robot noises when unplugged sometimes, I don’t know if that’s the pump or something else.

As long as it doesn't stand up and yell out autobots attack you are good.

I also hear noises if I walk by with my phone in my pocket.

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