Preconditioning by L2 Battery Charging Overnight, and MachLee I took your advice!

[Misterrobot]

@MachLee What have I done!!! I took your advice and started L2 charging the car at night in order to reduce the amount of energy needed to precondition the battery prior to my morning departure on these cold Iowa mornings. It worked and still works, but now there's a charger error on the app even though the car charges and preconditions properly..

Check out these settings to get the battery to charge only overnight using the warmth to reduce energy needed to precondition prior to my morning departure:
- 2023, early build, std. range
- L2 Wallbox 40a with no schedule parameters set
- Max charge 90%
- Preferred charging time 3AM to noon (I leave at 7AM. The "noon" time is just an arbitrary value)
- Departure time 7AM

Check out what happens:
- It really works, (worked) thanks @MachLee
- Plugging in after work the L2 charger starts to charge immediately and stops after little less than half an hour
- Battery starts charging again usually, based on the battery charge, about 9PM with the message CHARGING TO 90% BY 6AM
- I am happy it charges overnight and ENDS charging very close to my departure time. Even though it charges outside of the preferred charging time
- Pretty cool eh??

Now here's what's been happening for the last week. Did Ford's algorithms change? Other users are having similar results with different L2 chargers.
- Once plugged in the vehicle starts charging continues until 9PM or 10PM or roughly 56%. The last two times it charges EXACTLY 56%. The timing is different than before.
- Charging stops late evening with the Ford Pass reporting a charging error The vehicle reports dash reports "no charger detected". White light making lazy circles in the charger port of the vehicle.
- With out resetting any error messages, the charging continues in the middle of the night and finishes charging to 90% in time for my 7AM departure time.

@MachLee is this a foreshadowing of the new 2025 charging features? I don't mind it charging outside the prescribed charging times, someone with off peak rates may find it undesirable.

See You Next Time!
Ron

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[Mach-Lee]

FYI I have a hyphen in my username.

There have been a few people with Wallboxes reporting charge faults after departure times. I would assume there's some sort of incompatibility in the Wallbox software causing it.

The Mach-E will start charging early if it believes it can't finish charging before your departure time. You're not saying how low you are when you plug in, but since you are only leaving about 4 hours, if the battery is less than 40% when plugging in, it may start charging early and finish later.

If the Wallbox software has a glitch and isn't maintaining the charge pilot correctly, then that will cause problems with the charging.

 

[Misterrobot]

Thank you for the feedback and helping all us EV owners out here!

 

[mg_gti]

I occasionally get a charge error when charging with a departure time set using a FMC, so I'm not sure it is specific to Wallboxes.

 

[Misterrobot]

Thanks for the feedback. I’ve had the Wallbox for 6 months and only recently started this overnight charging with these charging errors.

 

[kodiakng]

There have been a few people with Wallboxes reporting charge faults after departure times. I would assume there's some sort of incompatibility in the Wallbox software causing it.

[snip...]

If the Wallbox software has a glitch and isn't maintaining the charge pilot correctly, then that will cause problems with the charging.

wallbox pulsar plus user here and i haven't had any issues recently with charging or departure times that can be attributed to the wallbox itself. i did early on and since a software update on it about a year ago it has been rock solid. i don't use any scheduling on the wallbox side though, only schedule on the mach-e.

the more common issue i have seen is on the ford side with correct interpretation of the configured charge/departure times. somewhere between the mach-e, ford's back end, or the fordpass app it appears to get confused about timezone offsets. up until mid-2024 almost any time i made a change from fordpass (usually changes in the charge/departure time but also in setting the charge limit before a trip) something happened between fordpass and the mach-e to get the configured charge/departure time off kilter and charging wouldn't start at the correct time or departure window didn't work correctly. the fix was always to delete all of the charge+departure times from the mach-e and redo it.

this has gotten better over time but even last night when i checked fordpass it told me the charge window would start 2 hours in the past (at the time i looked) when it actually did start correctly at 11pm (1 hr in the future). fordpass did show the correct settings for the charge window so this issue appears to be down to just the status of the upcoming scheduled charge session.

my mach-e and fordpass are up-to-date on firmware/software.

it doesn't inspire confidence in ford's software but it has been improving. i've been able to change charge/departure times while traveling for the last 6 months and had fewer issues.

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