Mach-E Decides To Charge Itself At Random

[bryan_m]

I have my settings to charge when plugged in to a max of 85% while at home. When I plug it in to charge Fordpass tells me that it's waiting for the scheduled start time and that time seems totally random. The other night charging kicked off shortly after 4am after being plugged in for several hours. Another time, it didn't charge at all. I have no scheduled departures set as I go into the office on random days each week.

As a possible workaround I set charging to begin at 11pm. I plugged it in and the app said it would begin charging when scheduled but it didn't start until 1am.

I'm using a Chargepoint Home Flex that is hardwired 30A. I don't think the charger is bad because it does charge and it charges at the level I'd expect it to when it's working, but it charges on my Mache-E's totally random schedule.

It seems as if the scheduled charging feature may have some bugs?

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[MYOUTH]

I think the ChargePoint is smart and knows your location and electric company rates and will charge during those low rate times unless you set it up to charge on on different schedule

 

[bryan_m]

The Chargepoint is set to charge anytime. Our local utility does not change rates based off time of day.

 

[bryan_m]

Update .. still having this issue. It's so random I can't figure out the pattern at all. I have my home location set (in Sync directly) to charge when plugged in and charge to 80%. Sometimes it does just that, which is great. Sometimes though I plug it in and it doesn't start charging at all. One time it decided to start charging itself at like 3am. Ok, then. Last night though it never charged at all.

My rules for charging are very simple. Charge anytime it's plugged in, to 80%.

I know it's not the Chargepoint or an electrical problem. This morning after noticing it didn't charge in the Fordpass app I set it to "Charge when plugged in" instead of "Use preferred settings" and as soon as I made that change the vehicle started charging. The problem is doing that now it doesn't respect my 80% rule and it's trying to get to 100% so I have to babysit it and stop it manually. Ugh.


I got an OTA update last night but the update didn't fix this issue.

 

[hybrid2bev]

Update .. still having this issue. It's so random I can't figure out the pattern at all. I have my home location set (in Sync directly) to charge when plugged in and charge to 80%. Sometimes it does just that, which is great. Sometimes though I plug it in and it doesn't start charging at all. One time it decided to start charging itself at like 3am. Ok, then. Last night though it never charged at all.

My rules for charging are very simple. Charge anytime it's plugged in, to 80%.

I know it's not the Chargepoint or an electrical problem. This morning after noticing it didn't charge in the Fordpass app I set it to "Charge when plugged in" instead of "Use preferred settings" and as soon as I made that change the vehicle started charging. The problem is doing that now it doesn't respect my 80% rule and it's trying to get to 100% so I have to babysit it and stop it manually. Ugh.


I got an OTA update last night but the update didn't fix this issue.

I've had weird behavior too whenever I have a charge schedule set to 'anytime'.

Try making sure both the weekday and weekend schedule set in the car (not using Ford Pass app) to have at least a one hour gap (23 hours a day max). This is what works for me. I have my weekday schedule from 11 PM to 9 AM and weekends from 12 am to 11 pm.

 

[TheVirtualTim]

I do have a time-of-use rate plan. My plan gives me a lower rate for off-peak charging which is 11pm-9am on weekdays but "anytime" on weekends.

The weekday charge schedule works perfectly. The "anytime" on weekends confuses the car. My work-around was to program 23 hours a day on weekends rather than let it charge "anytime".

I did get some feedback from Ford but I'm not sure it's right. I originally scheduled the car charging using Ford Pass by selecting my DTE Energy time-of-use plan ... which programs the hours for me based on that plan schedule. The explanation was that the weekend schedule was improperly flagged as "peak" usage instead of "off-peak" and that caused the car to delay charging instead of charging when it should. (In other words it was believed to be incorrect data in their database of rate plans and not a bug in the software logic.)

They explained that there is some logic that says that if the car is plugged in and needs a charge (it's not at the charging level you set ... e.g. 80%) then it *must* start charging within 24 hours of being plugged in ... even if it is during "peak" period.

Basically the logic is supposed to say:

1) Can I charge now?
1a - if 'yes' then start charging now.
1b - if 'no' then ...
2) Is the next charging opportunity within 24 hours?
2a - if 'yes' then wait for the next scheduled window
2b - if 'no' then start charging now

My original feedback to Ford was that my car refuses to charge on Sundays ... but will charge any other day following the schedule. To me, it seemed that "anytime" worked on Saturday but not Sunday. Based on their explanation it only *appeared* to work Saturday because Saturday was more than 24 hours from the next scheduled charge window on Monday ... so it started charging despite being flagged as peak. But Sunday is within 24 hours of Monday ... so it waited to charge. Hence it charged "anytime" I plugged it in on Saturday, but never on Sunday.

BUT... the error, I am told, was ONLY because the charge-schedule was loaded via picking my utility's rate plan using the Ford Pass app (e.g. the database that stores the rate plan on-peak/off-peak schedule had an error in It) but that if I programmed the schedule in the car it would work.

My feedback to Ford is that it still does not work correctly on weekends EVEN if the schedule is programmed in the car. I have to use the work-around (schedule 23 of the hours instead of telling it to charge "anytime").

 

[bryan_m]

Thanks for the replies. I'll go ahead and schedule a 23 hour window and see how it starts working as that seems like an easy enough work around.

 

[bryan_m]

So I deleted the location, added it again and set it to charge between 8am to 7am each day. I also set the location to 80%.

I drove around quiet a bit today so when I got home I plugged in and wouldn't you know, it started charging right away. The problem is now the app is telling me it's charging to 100% and totally ignoring the 80% limit. C'mon!

I called Fordpass help but the rep on the line was totally at a loss. They bounced me to another team that handles the charging network but they were also at a loss and said since their focus is the network and not home charging stations there wasn't much they could do. They bounced me back to Fordpass who wanted to send me back.

How are people speaking to engineers or reps at Ford who may know a thing or two. It's obvious this stuff is buggy so all I'm looking to do is submit a bug report or at least speak with someone at Ford who may know it's already a known issue.

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