GarageWarrior2023
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Aug 18, 2023
- Threads
- 13
- Messages
- 238
- Reaction score
- 179
- Location
- Manitoba, Canada
- Vehicles
- 2023 Mustang Mach-E Premium x2
Yes you are correct. The problem is that Ford didn't put insulation under the cold plates in their batteries.In Sandy's battery tear down you can see the cooling plates under the batteries have no insulation between them and the battery tray on the bottom and they make contact with the plate. When it's super cold out I can only imagine the bottom of the battery tray is acting like a heatsink pulling heat away from the coolant so the coolant is having to deal with cold batteries above pulling out heat as well as a cold bottom battery tray pulling away heat. I think they should have insulated it.
The weber auto video "Mach E GT Battery and Cooling System Service" is another great clip (go to around the 19 minute mark), he lifts out a pair of cells and you can see clearly that when lifted there is nothing there underneath.
I had a 2022 Bolt EUV before my 2023 mach-e and it had about a half inch insulation pad under the cold plate (this can also be seen in a weber auto video). The bolt also used a 5kw heater (I think the exact same one as the Mach-E). It had separate coolant loops for the battery and climate though but they shared the same heater. The bolt worked flawlessly down to -40c and could CRANK heat at highway speeds. it was a warmer vehicle than any ICE vehicle I ever owned before.
The 2023.5 Mach-E has a 7kw heater in it. And I'm sure this will help. but the root issue is that they didn't insulate.
Software has nothing to do with this issue. Software can't do anything about an uninsulated battery with the cold plates basically being hyper cooled by winter weather.
My retroactive solution that I shared with Ford was to develop a "cold weather kit" for cold climates which would be an aluminum pan with 1" of closed cell foam blow molded to mate with the bottom of the battery. I've also expressed that they should insulate the 60 feet of coolant hoses in their system since this distance of coolant travel represents significant thermal inefficiency. Honestly how different would this be from the tried and true ICE method of blocking off part of your grill to reduce heat loss in cold weather......let's bring solutions to EVs the way we did to ICE vehicles......
Sponsored