Once you precondition battery - how long does it stay preconditioned?

BMT1071

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The whole "precondition while plugged in" thing is overstated, IMO. It's still electricity either way, whether it comes directly from the wall, or from the battery (that later gets refilled from the wall). Unless your drive that day is so long that you're pushing the range limits and really need to save battery power, of course.

If it's easy (i.e. you plug in overnight in your garage anyway), then sure, stay plugged in during remote/scheduled start. But otherwise, I just remote start the car about 5 minutes before I'm ready to drive it, whether [lugged in or not. If it uses 2 kWh from the battery to warm everything up, so be it. Just means it stays on the charger a bit longer at the next charge.
I'd say it depends on how cold it is outside. The car will prioritize heating the battery over heating the cabin. So if it's extremely cold out and the battery hasn't been preconditioned you may not get much if any heat in the cabin.
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He said the garage is above freezing. Charging from 90% to 100% well warm the battery. He well be fine when leaving.
 

dbsb3233

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I'd say it depends on how cold it is outside. The car will prioritize heating the battery over heating the cabin. So if it's extremely cold out and the battery hasn't been preconditioned you may not get much if any heat in the cabin.
So if you remote start when it's really cold, the cabin heat won't come on? Interesting. I've never run across that. Mine stays in a garage at home so it never gets super cold in there (~40F). We have done some hotel nights that got cold and snowy though. I'm thinking the worst was maybe 15F. Remote starting (not plugged in) did turn the cabin heat on then, but maybe that just wasn't cold enough?

It did take longer to warm up the cabin, of course, but I assumed that's just because it was colder outside. And there was 15F air rushing by the windows at 80 MPH when we got on the highway. Mileage takes a hit (like 1.9 MPK) for the first 20 minutes or so until the battery warms up too. But that's just a matter of putting electricity in now (precondition) or putting it in later. Pretty much a wash either way.
 

dbsb3233

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Definitely shouldn’t be charging to 100% unless a road trip. Remote start is not the same as the departure schedule, which preconditions the battery. A 120v outlet cannot precondition the battery. You would have to use your battery power.
But that still means the battery preconditions when plugged into 120V, right? Just that 120V isn't enough to handle that + the cabin combined, and has to pull extra from the battery?

I've always assumed that when the car in on a charger (whether 120V or 240V), that it's just pouring electricity into the battery, not diverting it directly to heaters and pumps for the BMS and cabin. Making it a simple matter of net power. If the heaters/pumps are using like (guessing) 3000 watts, and you're only pouring in 1250 watts from the EVSE at 120V, then you're pulling a net 1750 watts from the battery; but if pouring in 7000 watts from the EVSE at 240V, then you're adding a net 4000 watts to the battery?

That's just my guess though. Not sure if that's the way it really works. I assume the battery is going to start warming up no matter what you do or don't have plugged in, it's just a matter of whether it needs to supplement some juice from the battery or not?
 

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Preconditionning worth it in my opinion before long road trip. Especially here in Canada. I've done some extensive testing about preconditionning and just preheat. Preconditionning takes too much energy to use on a daily basis. Even at freezing temporature it can heat the battery to 55F. I've done. If you don't drive, your battery will just cool down. If you drive under freezing temperature, your battery will cool down but will always remains hotter than if you start without preconditionning. It dramatically improves the consumption. With a standard range AWD, I've been able to do the equivalent of 175 miles instead of 130-135. The outside temp was between 15-25F during my trip. It also charge must faster when the battery is hot. We must be able to activate the preconditionning before level 3 charging because it's very effective.
 


Kevin P

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If I precondition my battery on the L2 charger, drive back home, plug back in, leave the car on, and leave an hour later - will my battery stay preconditioned? Im thinking of doing this sunday AM when the weather will be about 30ish degrees and car will be put back into my garage after the precondition - so probably a bit warmer in the garage. My end goal is just to maximize range on my tripl

thanks all
If you REALLY need to absolutely maximize the range (this seems unlikely), your best bet would be to charge to 100% at home, remote start, then when you are ready to leave for your trip, go the the L2 charger and plug in for a short while to fully warm the battery, then leave on the trip. Again though, you are probably looking at something like a 1% difference in range, in the end. Its not worth it ;)
 

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Preconditionning worth it in my opinion before long road trip. Especially here in Canada. I've done some extensive testing about preconditionning and just preheat. Preconditionning takes too much energy to use on a daily basis. Even at freezing temporature it can heat the battery to 55F. I've done. If you don't drive, your battery will just cool down. If you drive under freezing temperature, your battery will cool down but will always remains hotter than if you start without preconditionning. It dramatically improves the consumption. With a standard range AWD, I've been able to do the equivalent of 175 miles instead of 130-135. The outside temp was between 15-25F during my trip. It also charge must faster when the battery is hot. We must be able to activate the preconditionning before level 3 charging because it's very effective.
One question is whether that improved consumption while driving was just the equal offset from the kWh you consumed during preconditioning? Or is there really a total net gain after adding that back in?
 
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Thanks all for the input. I'm just trying to get all the best practices down to use my MME as best u can. Sounds like shuffling back and forth is a bit pointless.

All the discussion here does raise some interesting questions. Though. @Ford Motor Company - any way you guys can be more specific as to what is going on when you precondition using a departure time? Can you let us know how it differs on L1 versus L2 plug?
 

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Thanks all for the input. I'm just trying to get all the best practices down to use my MME as best u can. Sounds like shuffling back and forth is a bit pointless.

All the discussion here does raise some interesting questions. Though. @Ford Motor Company - any way you guys can be more specific as to what is going on when you precondition using a departure time? Can you let us know how it differs on L1 versus L2 plug?
They're not going to answer that.

Here's my perspective. I had a Fusion Energi PHEV with a whopping ~7.4kWh to charge (the rest was hybrid). We only used 110 charging.

My wife drove this to work daily. I tried to set it up for departure times, and it barely got the cabin warm. In the summer, it barely got it cool. And, it depleted the battery even though plugged in. Car was garaged. It pulled 5kW for the heater.

Given the much higher power needs of the Mach-E, it's not feasible that much of anything is happening on 110, unless it also pulls from the battery. Heater is 40% more powerful, so it's going to pull even more. The 110 is only supplying a fraction of the power needed for the heater, like 20% of it.
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