Range degeneration?

[Mach-Lee]

To all, regarding the battery buffer capacity. Thanks for the feedback, but I am curious, has anyone actually driven their Mach e to 0 range? If so, did it just stop? Were there any warnings first? I admit I don't want to test it by driving it down to 0, it's to cold around here to be stranded on the road with a bricked EV.

PS: Someone mentioned "Turtle mode". Is that a real feature? How and when does it work?

I have. You will get multiple warnings on the nav about chargers being unreachable. If you keep driving, available power will continuously decrease until you get turtle mode, which means you have very limited power output. Around 0% you will get a warning "Stop safely now, depleted battery" and the car will slow to a crawl. So it's sort of a gradual slowdown but it's not going to be fun if you're still several miles short of your destination. I've said this before, but "zero means zero" needs to be your mentality with the range or else you'll be in trouble.

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[bbulkow]

This is my second winter with my 2023 mme GT. Last winter, my range at 80% charge was around 180 miles. Today, ambient weather in the mid 20s, I had a range of 160 at 80% when I left the house. I drove a 12 mile round trip and used 30 miles of range. Can someone suggest what's going on? Did the battery really deteriorate that much in one year?

If you would like to know the car's estimate of your battery degradation, get a 20 buck bluetooth obd2 dongle and the free app car scanner.

Even then the car is estimating a bit, doing occasional 100 pct change and leaving the charger in to let the battery balance is suggested once per month.

As others stated, attempting to use the gom to estimate degradation will drive you nuts. Too many variables.

 

[bbulkow]

This is our third winter with our 2021 and yes I see a range deterioration and yes I agree with the comments about the GOM. It makes calculations based on temperature, past driving habits etc. Our Mach e is always kept in a heated garage, about 50 degrees in Minnesota. As soon as we take it out for a drive, in our now-lower than 20 degree ambient temps it recalculates range and it will also change your range if you enter a trip address.

So, bottom line, your GOM range is a variable based on many factors. Currently, according my sync trip screen, roughly 25% of our battery power goes to heat the cabin and batteries. It has been like this since day one and I consider it normal.


Question; Does anyone out there now what the story is about the alleged reserve battery capability. I am under the impression that they Mach e has a reserve of 20%. My question is, does that mean if we drive the GOM range to 0, we will still have 20% left. If so does that mean you can keep on driving or does the vehicle stop at GOM 0 range?

If you get a bluetooth obd2 connector, and a simple phone app, you can see the actual kwh of your battery pack compared to the rating. You can also see the actual number of kwh you have left, which is not the percentage number strictly.my 23 ER seems to have about an extra 16 kwh of buffer but i could be mistemembering. Some buffer be on the top some will be on the bottom.

Charging above or use below damages the battery, so the software won't let you do it.

 

[bbulkow]

Wife drove the car 167 miles yesterday, and range went from 85% to 20%. Started with 224 on the GOM and arrived home with 48, so she used 176 off the GOM.
I actually think that that is about as accurate a guess as you could expect, especially since she was driving 75 mph for most of the trip. I am going to do this a couple more times to get a feel for the GOM's accuracy.

For a more accurate measure, use the current m per kwh out of the trips console app, and multiply by the percentage remaining, taking into account the battery size. Your doing the math yourself will bias toward this trip not the last trip and the prior temp. Generally my m per kwh goes up in winter during a single trip and stabilizes after about 15ish minutes, because of the battery warming effect, but you can add a few miles for that yourself.

I know, it feels primitive, but it's something to do with your brain while bluecruise is on. My estimates for pct.on arrival tend to be about as good as Google maps now. Which i am finding are good, very good, right on par with abrp.

 

[dbsb3233]

For a more accurate measure, use the current m per kwh out of the trips console app, and multiply by the percentage remaining, taking into account the battery size. Your doing the math yourself will bias toward this trip not the last trip and the prior temp. Generally my m per kwh goes up in winter in a single trip because of the battery warming effect, but you can add a few miles for that yourself.

I know, it feels primitive, but it's something to do with your brain while bluecruise is on. My estimates for pct.on arrival tend to be about as good as Google maps now. Which i am finding are good, very good, right on par with abrp.

For people with the big battery, one rough but simple baseline to use to do mental gymnastics along a road trip drive as a reasonably "safe" remaining range number is taking the Battery% and multiplying by 2. In my 2021 4x with the 88 kWh battery, that's 2 x 100 = 200 / 88 = 2.3 MPK. Unless there's significant elevation climb that leg, or extreme cold (like <20F), 2.3 MPK is rarely not achievable, even at 75 MPH. Probably more, but it's a pretty good failsafe point.

So let's say my nav says I have 105 miles to go with 45% battery left. 2 x 45% = 90 miles with 105 left, so I know to bump my thinking up to DEFCON 4 (get a little more vigilant monitoring/calculating and checking out closer chargers just in case).

But if I have 105 miles left and 60% battery, I'm within the 120 miles and feel pretty good. And as you say, also monitor the current trip meter MPK (knowing 2.3 is the basis for that calculation).

 

[bbulkow]

For people with the big battery, one rough but simple baseline to use to do mental gymnastics along a road trip drive as a reasonably "safe" remaining range number is taking the Battery% and multiplying by 2. In my 2021 4x with the 88 kWh battery, that's 2 x 100 = 200 / 88 = 2.3 MPK. Unless there's significant elevation climb that leg, or extreme cold (like <20F), 2.3 MPK is rarely not achievable, even at 75 MPH. Probably more, but it's a pretty good failsafe point.

So let's say my nav says I have 105 miles to go with 45% battery left. 2 x 45% = 90 miles with 105 left, so I know to bump my thinking up to DEFCON 4 (get a little more vigilant monitoring/calculating and checking out closer chargers just in case).

But if I have 105 miles left and 60% battery, I'm within the 120 miles and feel pretty good. And as you say, also monitor the current trip meter MPK (knowing 2.3 is the basis for that calculation).

For my ER RWD, I multiply by 3. Trips tends to show that I get 3.5m/kwh, and with a 91kwh battery, it's pretty close to multiply by 3. With modification for weather, speed, etc.

It's also worth mentioning that if the Android Auto / Google Maps / EV Routing feature is working, just plug in your destination and get Google's estimate of your arrival percentage. At some point it suggests stopping somewhere for a charge.

 

[dbsb3233]

It's also worth mentioning that if the Android Auto / Google Maps / EV Routing feature is working, just plug in your destination and get Google's estimate of your arrival percentage. At some point it suggests stopping somewhere for a charge.

Yeah I hope to get that eventually in my 2021. Android Auto is all I ever use for nav.

They don't seem to care much about us early adopters anymore. ?

 

[bbulkow]

Yeah I hope to get that eventually in my 2021. Android Auto is all I ever use for nav.

They don't seem to care much about us early adopters anymore. ?

It's the first update I've seen, in two years, (early '23 myself), where I was really like F YEAH so I feel your pain. Everything else seemed pretty minor.

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