Out of Spec: Kyle’s first long trip in the MME

Maric

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The charging in this car is a complete disaster. The fast charging is extremely flaky, and some people can't even L2 charge in their homes. Other EVs to my knowledge do not have these issues. Ford has had plenty of time to fix these issues...if their testing teams even drove to a few EA chargers and tried to charge they should have noticed these issues.
zero problems charging here.
If some of you also watch EV Dave, just remember he bought the car Kyle tested. Just trying to avoid people jumping to conclusions based on YouTube videos by two well known reviewers on the same physical car.

At first I was thinking EA was totally to blame for the MME's DC charging issues, but I'm wondering now seeing that other cars Kyle has tested on the same chargers charge well (VW ID4).

Could some owners on this forum report back on how the MME charges at EVGo and Chargepoint DC (not L2) chargers?

I know I know, what does a twice Tesla owner care... I'm an EV enthusiast first. I want all the manufacturers to succeed with their EVs. We'll need them all to transform to sustainable transportation.
I’ve had zero problems charging anywhere. I use ChargePoint in my garage, ChargePoint and EA when out and about. So far so good. Have had my car a month.

To me the charging curve is the biggest issue. It’s pretty embarrassing compared to the Model Y and ID4. Almost every review seems to mention this as well and Ford should be placing heavy focus on charging as a whole. Obviously one of the most important aspects of the car.

It would be nice if Ford acknowledged and put out a statement for those experiencing issues to alleviate stress on this matter.
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malba2366

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zero problems charging here.


I’ve had zero problems charging anywhere. I use ChargePoint in my garage, ChargePoint and EA when out and about. So far so good. Have had my car a month.

To me the charging curve is the biggest issue. It’s pretty embarrassing compared to the Model Y and ID4. Almost every review seems to mention this as well and Ford should be placing heavy focus on charging as a whole. Obviously one of the most important aspects of the car.

It would be nice if Ford acknowledged and put out a statement for those experiencing issues to alleviate stress on this matter.
I wouldn't count on them changing that charging curve...that is not a defect, it was intentionally programmed by Ford that way for some reason.
 

Njia

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Could some owners on this forum report back on how the MME charges at EVGo and Chargepoint DC (not L2) chargers?
I've used ChargePoint DC as recently as this past Wednesday. Much better experience than EA (which is a cruel joke). Plugged in the charger and it just worked.
 

EVS

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So it seems if Ford never came up with plug & charge, there won't be so many complaints? I never found it a problem to take out my chargepoint keycard and scan it at the station.
(I find it faster than any app, plus I hate installing zillion apps on my phone. They take up space and drain the battery, besides snooping on everything!)

But Ford tried to become like Tesla for charging. It should really focus on the charging curve instead.

As for Kyle's review: No doubt the road tripping reviews are important and good to know what to expect. But for most daily driving (95%?), it is not significant. Calling the car a failure because it's fast charging network isn't as seamless as Tesla's supercharger is a bit too much. A few thousand cars a month is hardly general public. As volume picks up with EV push by governments and Ford learns more, these issues should get sorted out. But Jim Farley should start tweeting "3 weeks maybe, 6 weeks definitely." to comfort people till then. ?

This is where it is differetn from panel gaps. The panel gaps won't be resolve with softwar eupdates. But these may.
 

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But Ford tried to become like Tesla for charging. It should really focus on the charging curve instead.

Calling the car a failure because it's fast charging network isn't as seamless as Tesla's supercharger is a bit too much.
THIS. ?
 


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So it seems if Ford never came up with plug & charge, there won't be so many complaints? I never found it a problem to take out my chargepoint keycard and scan it at the station.
(I find it faster than any app, plus I hate installing zillion apps on my phone. They take up space and drain the battery, besides snooping on everything!)
Ford does Plug and Charge with EA. When it works, it's great. But unless you live (or travel) in a place with a LOT of non-Tesla EVs, EA is just hot garbage.
 

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It's a wildly bad take. One of the main points people make when they proselytize EV ownership is that home charging covers 95% (or some other very high number) of your charging needs, so road trip charging shouldn't be a big deal. You can't have that both ways. The MME could use a better DC charge curve and (according to some posters, though I've never personally experienced it) better integration with the 3rd party fast chargers compared to the competition. But at the same time, even the best EV fast charging pales in comparison to filling an ICE or HEV with gas. I don't see a 30 minute charge stop as being that much worse than a 20 minute stop when you consider that a gas car can get double the miles in under 5. If DC fast charging is your number 1 buying priority that's fine, but I think it's not very high on the list for most people.

Anyway, the MME seems to succeed on a lot of other bases, like meeting EPA range in real world, build quality, and performance\driving experience.
 

SeattleMachE

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So it seems if Ford never came up with plug & charge, there won't be so many complaints? I never found it a problem to take out my chargepoint keycard and scan it at the station.
(I find it faster than any app, plus I hate installing zillion apps on my phone. They take up space and drain the battery, besides snooping on everything!)

But Ford tried to become like Tesla for charging. It should really focus on the charging curve instead.

As for Kyle's review: No doubt the road tripping reviews are important and good to know what to expect. But for most daily driving (95%?), it is not significant. Calling the car a failure because it's fast charging network isn't as seamless as Tesla's supercharger is a bit too much. A few thousand cars a month is hardly general public. As volume picks up with EV push by governments and Ford learns more, these issues should get sorted out. But Jim Farley should start tweeting "3 weeks maybe, 6 weeks definitely." to comfort people till then. ?

This is where it is differetn from panel gaps. The panel gaps won't be resolve with softwar eupdates. But these may.
Ford didn’t come up with Plug and Charge. You can look up ISO 15118 for more information. We’re seeing growing pains as all these manufacturers work through the initial implementation.
 

bluestarct

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When I picked my Rapid Red FE on February 13th and drove it over 500 miles home in 5' weather, I had multiple charge fails and charge faults on Francis, Electrify America and Charge Point. That was a horrible trip where I actually had to call a tow truck to come pick up the car and take it to chargers that would work.

I found that having the app already pulled up and the charger selected on my phone before I plug the charger in resulted in fewer initial fault charge errors.

However, I've not had any problems charging since mid March. I always have the vendor app open and selected before charging. It goes much smoother.
 

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A dumb question but do we know if the problem is Ford or the chargers? I suspect many of these chargers are almost never used and they are silently falling apart.

Regarding charging, the other day I got low on gas. A place I'd have stopped at was full so I drove past it. A couple of days later I wound up having to drive 30+ minutes to fill up. Even quick gas stops can be 10 minutes. EV's completely eliminate this in exchange for some pain on a road trip. It's still a time savings if you really think about it, but most of you know that.
 

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Thank goodness Kyle found the workaround. Starting at time stamp 12:30 he goes through 3 attempts to get Plug and Charge to work and keeps getting a charge rate of 30 kW. Then at 20:30, he plugs in using his own app and gets 160 kW.
 

BradCA

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If some of you also watch EV Dave, just remember he bought the car Kyle tested. Just trying to avoid people jumping to conclusions based on YouTube videos by two well known reviewers on the same physical car.

At first I was thinking EA was totally to blame for the MME's DC charging issues, but I'm wondering now seeing that other cars Kyle has tested on the same chargers charge well (VW ID4).

Could some owners on this forum report back on how the MME charges at EVGo and Chargepoint DC (not L2) chargers?

I know I know, what does a twice Tesla owner care... I'm an EV enthusiast first. I want all the manufacturers to succeed with their EVs. We'll need them all to transform to sustainable transportation.
I have set up accounts with ElectrifyAmerica, ChargePoint, and EVGo. I did this in anticipation of a road trip I took this past weekend in my new Mustang Mach-E, and I planned to use only DC fast charging. Based on the reviews I have seen regarding people having trouble with public charging, I thought I would set up the accounts and work through any bugs I might encounter before I hit the road. I did this by visiting charging stations in those networks located close to me. I’m glad I did.

None of these three networks worked for me on the first charge. I had to call the help number for each of them to get them to work. After the first charge with each network, I had no more problems.

With respect to a Electrify America, it turned out the first machine I went to was a dud. There was another available machine in the parking lot, and the Electrify America representative just had me move my car to that machine and everything worked fine.

The next time I went to an ElectrifyAmerica station, I also had trouble getting the machine to start charging. It turned out this time, it was my fault. After I plugged the charger in and my payment was authorized, nothing happened. As it turns out, there is a “continue“ button in the bottom right hand corner of the screen that you are supposed to push to start the charging process. I can be such an airhead. Once I hit the “continue“ button, the charging proceeded without a hitch. Since that time, I have probably charged 8 to 10 times at Electrify America stations without any trouble. And actually, Plug and Charge has worked for me at each of those stations except for one. With the respect to the station where Plug and Charge did not work, it was very easy to start charging using the FordPass app. Actually, Plug and Charge and the FordPass app are the easiest way to use ElectrifyAmerica stations for me. Every Electrify America charger I used delivered at least 100 kW per hour with the exception of one.

With respect to ChargePoint, again, I was unable to charge on my first try. I called the help number and it turns out that there was a glitch with my account setup. The ChargePoint representative fixed it on his end and started the charger for me remotely. The next time I tried charging at a ChargePoint station, I had no problems. I have since charged twice at ChargePoint stations without any problems. The cost of charging at ChargePoint stations in my area is almost half the cost of Electrify America, by the way. I have used more Electrify America stations because those stations were the most easily accessible on my road trip. The ChargePoint stations I used charged at a rate of about 75 kW per hour.

With respect to EVGo, I also was not able to charge on my first try. This time it was my fault. I connected to the charger and selected the charging station in the app. The app instructed me to “connect & swipe to start.“ I brought my iPhone over to the charging station and kept swiping it over the RFID symbol. Nothing happened. As it turns out, what you are supposed to do is use your finger to swipe the iPhone screen from left to right, and not physically wave your iPhone in front of the RFID symbol as if it were ApplePay. So dumb of me, but maybe since Apple Pay is so common, the app developer could improve the app by using an animation to indicate that you are supposed to swipe the iPhone screen with your finger and not wave your phone in front of the RFID symbol on the machine. Since then, I have charged twice using EVGo and had no trouble. Charging rates I had were about 50 to 75 kW per hour.

Long story short: these friction points need to be eliminated. The first charge needs to be dummy proof. Otherwise I fear that EV sales are going to be suppressed, especially with all the reviews out there showing how difficult it is to get the chargers to work. It is true that it is difficult to get the chargers to work the first time, but at least in my experience, when you get a charger in a given network to work once, you probably won’t have much trouble from that point forward.

Probably the easiest way to eliminate this friction point is to have all of the charging networks take Apple Pay/Google Pay. Also, I noticed that stations charge you more to use a credit card than to pay with the app. It should cost the same regardless of whether you use the app, a credit card, or Apple Pay.
 

BradCA

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Initially I was annoyed with Kyle repeatedly talking about 'charging profile'. I didn't understand why he kept bringing it up.
Now I get it. Just as important as range, is how much time are you going to spend in charging stations. It would be nice to have a standard measure. Ford suggests on their web site that 'number of minutes spent getting from 10% to 80%,' is important. This gives us a 'real world' idea of what to expect, and also a way to compare electric cars that is meaningful.
I understand that not all electric car owners care about fast charging, but for those that do, this number along with range would both give you a reasonable expectation and a means to compare.
Currently my expectation for the Mach E is 45 minutes. That is what it says on the Ford web site. Are people achieving it? I don't know, maybe they are. It would be nice if it were a standard, or at least if one of the reviewers would do a comparison. How does a Model Y do? Kyle, I am suggesting it would be more meaningful to have a standard and compare, than just watch results of random charge attempts.

Secondly, I am with those on the forum that wish Ford did a better job of communicating. The more they communicate, the better it would be. Do they really think we are early adapters and should just suck it up? What is in the OTA update? Do they know about PAAK issues and are working to get them fixed? Do they know about Plug and Charge issues? Are there build issues and delays, or is this business as usual? What do they think about anything really?
Last year they had a series of video calls and took questions. It was great. Now, I am not really hearing much from Ford, just the odd person on here that purports to know what Ford is doing or thinking. It would be nice to have regular communication about Mach E from Ford. I recognize this is not what car companies do, but I think it would really help them build a base of people that love their cars, just like many of us on this forum.
On the road trip I took this past weekend, it typically took about 20 minutes to get from 10% to 80% charge using ElectrifyAmerica stations. The chargers I used were in California and Arizona.
 

eastern refugee

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I drove form SoCal to Houston. I went I-10 there and came back through I-40. I used EA exclusively. I had a problem at first because it was me. I had other issues on the way back because the app updated but there was a Ford Pass issue they told me. In short I called and they immediately started the charge. the call itself maybe added an extra 3-4 minutes to my charging time. If I had an issue I moved to a different charger in the same parking lot. When I had to do that they gave me a FREE charge for my inconvenience. I love EA and I have ZERO issues about taking a road trip. What I did learn is that when Ford gives you 3 routes that you need to take the time and explore the chargers along the route. Some of the routes have trickle chargers that are free but are like plugging into a 110 outlet.

In short the fastest route is not always the best route. that is not the car's fault but yours for not doing the research.
 

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On the road trip I took this past weekend, it typically took about 20 minutes to get from 10% to 80% charge using ElectrifyAmerica stations. The chargers I used were in California and Arizona.
20 minutes? That doesn't sound right. You sure about that?
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