Terrible Highway mileage!

[Scc18603]

The reality is, whether you like it or not, that regardless of the brand, driving on the highway from PA to Florida is going to involve multiple stops of 30 - 40 minutes. And that's assuming you're on major highways with Electrify America available, battery warm, chargers not too cold, ... It wouldn't matter what the car was called.

We are planning a trip that might go through a dozen states. If we take the Mach-E, over a period of less than 2 weeks, we would need to fuel up about 25 times. The total driving would be roughly 43 hours, and we'd need to spend 9+ additional hours charging over that period. Sounds crazy - but if you're doing this is increments, with each leg of the trip involving 3 - 4 charges, it's not too bad. Our dilemma is a charging desert in one state IF we go near it depending on whether a relative is up for a visit or not.

Did you complain when your ICE vehicles didn't get the EPA mileage on the highway? Or, when your DTE based on your local driving was so different than your highway driving?

You should have insisted the dealer 100% charge before taking the car, they are required to, just like a full tank of gas is required - you paid for it.

In the winter, you will never see a high range.

Highway driving is between 20 and 80% for most people, using 60% of the battery. I go to 10%, using 70%. That's 63kW or 189 miles between stops in the summer, 150 between stops in the winter. My bladder can barely make the 150 miles.

We have driven thousands of highway miles, including from Michigan to Florida (9 charging stops over 2 days, including free one at hotel). If you don't want to waste valuable vacation time charging, there's no EV made that you should buy. But that was all known, if you looked, prior to you buying the car.

A good rule of thumb is to take the GoogleMaps route, see it's time, and add 20% for charging, which includes nights in hotels with free charging. If you then lay out the trip and can't do it for that overhead, don't take the EV. And if driving 1,000 miles in a day is important to you, forgetaboutit.

Much of range anxiety can be eliminated by learning about the car. Problem is, many don't want to learn, and many learn but their spouses don't learn, and then they have anxiety. My wife would never plan a trip in detail, ICE or EV, she has me do it. She doesn't get range anxiety because she knows I know what I'm doing.

Maybe my point wasn’t as clear.
1st love the car.
2 nd. We should expect better. And better from ford and better from a charging infrastructure.
As to your comment did I complain about my ice vehicles? Yes I did I hated how much it costs. But to that point my Silverado does well for what it is 18/21, our Jeep Cherokee L is a pig but may be the coolest vehicle with its night vision. My Equinox does a solid 28/30, and my forty-foot Newmar motor home gets 5 to 8 on a good day. But all of them go farther on a tank and are pretty easy to guage how far they will go.

So from the motor home perspective
speed = bad
wind = bad (Big square box)
special fuel stations (have to accommodate big vehicles 40 foot + 20 foot toad and no backing up)
no low overhead roads.

So the 26000 GVW Ford v10 setup can cover PA to FL with 4 stops of 40 to 60 gallons, and I can run the HVAC, and 65-70 mph

SO I THINK I UNDERSTAND THE TRIP PLANNING CONCEPT.

BTW if you have to go that much you should see your doctor.

Just to be clear the grip is putting a number on the Dash that is supposed to mean something and wildly missing the mark is insane.
Again my only road-trip 265 mile round trip road trip in-which I charged on the last leg which was 90 miles to home . I charged to 80% at the plymouth meeting mall ea station and the car said I had 186. Only to have 9 left when I got home and the holy crap your not going to make it alert.

route was PA turnpike Plymouth Meeting to WhiteHaven PA. 70 mph hands free cruise HVAC on 1 @70

That was my real world experience. Essentially half of the GOM. BTW Route planner says the car should have done better.

Be honest not a Homer for the car.

Sponsored

 

[Space Ghost GT]

The Mach-E has terrible highway mileage! I was in Quartzite,AZ heading to Glendale,AZ which is about 120 miles. I charged up with 220 miles of range but when I got home I ended up with 30 instead of 100 left and from Palm Springs,CA to Quartzite,CA was the same way, Ialmost ran out of charge! I should of got to Quartzite with 15 miles of range left but had to U-turn and goto a Hampton to charge up enough to get ust to Quartzite. What is the driving logic on the highway?

You got the wrong battery. Take it back to the dealer or sell it.

 

[Space Ghost GT]

Perhaps, but it's no excuse for people to be jerks. Much better to just ignore the thread. But invariably a few people have to jump in with snarky comments belittling the one posting about surprisingly poor range and efficiency.

It's so unhelpful and bad form for an otherwise great forum.

This forum is like every other forum. A free for all hell scape of super stans and grumpy old men.

 

[npgeorgeuw]

Thanks for pointing out an EV has less miles on the highway!!!! You’re a genius! You lose range in the winter time too!!!!! Do your homework before buying an any EV!!!!

Congrats on the least helpful post yet.

 

[mkhuffman]

Maybe my point wasn’t as clear.
1st love the car.
2 nd. We should expect better. And better from ford and better from a charging infrastructure.
As to your comment did I complain about my ice vehicles? Yes I did I hated how much it costs. But to that point my Silverado does well for what it is 18/21, our Jeep Cherokee L is a pig but may be the coolest vehicle with its night vision. My Equinox does a solid 28/30, and my forty-foot Newmar motor home gets 5 to 8 on a good day. But all of them go farther on a tank and are pretty easy to guage how far they will go.

So from the motor home perspective
speed = bad
wind = bad (Big square box)
special fuel stations (have to accommodate big vehicles 40 foot + 20 foot toad and no backing up)
no low overhead roads.

So the 26000 GVW Ford v10 setup can cover PA to FL with 4 stops of 40 to 60 gallons, and I can run the HVAC, and 65-70 mph

SO I THINK I UNDERSTAND THE TRIP PLANNING CONCEPT.

BTW if you have to go that much you should see your doctor.

Just to be clear the grip is putting a number on the Dash that is supposed to mean something and wildly missing the mark is insane.
Again my only road-trip 265 mile round trip road trip in-which I charged on the last leg which was 90 miles to home . I charged to 80% at the plymouth meeting mall ea station and the car said I had 186. Only to have 9 left when I got home and the holy crap your not going to make it alert.

route was PA turnpike Plymouth Meeting to WhiteHaven PA. 70 mph hands free cruise HVAC on 1 @70

That was my real world experience. Essentially half of the GOM. BTW Route planner says the car should have done better.

Be honest not a Homer for the car.

Ford and all BEV manufacturers are in a bad spot. Do they provide a pessimist estimate or an optimist estimate? Tesla provides a very optimistic estimate which leads to complaints like yours. The MME has historically provided a pessimist estimate which leads to people thinking there is something wrong with their car because the GOM is so much lower than the EPA range. No matter how they choose to do it, people will not like it and complain.

I feel like the GOM on my car has been very realistic because I do a lot of highway driving, and the car is using that driving history to give me a pessimist estimate for all the around town driving I do. But when I go on a trip, it gives me a very realistic estimate. However, if I drive faster than expected, or it is cold, or windy, I lose range as I drive. But that is only because my MME hasn't figured out how to predict the future yet.

If your complaint is mainly that the range should be better, I agree. Unfortunately the technology required to produce a decent range on the highway is very expensive. If you want a long range (highway) BEV, you will have to get the $180,000 Lucid. Ford didn't want to build a $180k BEV, so they compromised.

One day we will have 500 mile range BEVs that do not cost $180k. But today is not that day.

 

[SpaceEVDriver]

Late autumn of 2022, we drove our Mustang from Palm Springs to the Quartzsite EA charging stations and arrived with plenty of charge (about 45% SOC). We went on to the Anthem EA charging stations and had 50% charge remaining.

On that trip we set cruise at 75 mph. We were enjoying our audiobook and stayed in the right lane for most of the trip, at about 70 mph.

I always set the cruise and only pass if the vehicle in front of me is slowing well below my speed setting.

Averaging 70 mph instead of 75 only cost me about 8 minutes over the 139 miles, and saved me about 14 kWh of charge, or about 42 miles of range. That speed also saved me almost exactly the same amount of time at the DCFC, 8 minutes, at 100 kW charge rate.

My experience is that going faster doesn't always save me time and often adds to the stress of the trip.

 

[dbsb3233]

Ford and all BEV manufacturers are in a bad spot. Do they provide a pessimist estimate or an optimist estimate? Tesla provides a very optimistic estimate which leads to complaints like yours. The MME has historically provided a pessimist estimate which leads to people thinking there is something wrong with their car because the GOM is so much lower than the EPA range. No matter how they choose to do it, people will not like it and complain.

I feel like the GOM on my car has been very realistic because I do a lot of highway driving, and the car is using that driving history to give me a pessimist estimate for all the around town driving I do. But when I go on a trip, it gives me a very realistic estimate. However, if I drive faster than expected, or it is cold, or windy, I lose range as I drive. But that is only because my MME hasn't figured out how to predict the future yet.

Mine used to be like that too (pessimistic). Which I found to be a good thing since the only time I care about range is on road trips (70-80 MPH speeds) where mileage is lower anyway. I would often track the difference between the nav miles-to-go and the GOM. That gap (buffer) would still usually shrink slightly, but it was pretty close. I might leave a DCFC with a 50 mile gap, and arrive at 35, being "off" by only ~15 miles. Pretty good.

But one of the updates over the last 3-4 months screwed that all up. The GOM went from pessimistic to optimistic. And it wasn't just in the first few weeks with little new driving history. For instance, on one of the last legs of a 1700 mile road trip last month we left a charger at 100% showing ~100 mile buffer and arrived with only a 30 mile buffer. Off by a whopping 70 miles.

If that keeps up, it's gonna be really hard to use that buffer as a semi-reliable tracker anymore.

In essence, the old GOM seemed to assume high-speed highway driving, while the new one seems to assume low-speed city driving. Which sucks.

 

[mkhuffman]

Mine used to be like that too (pessimistic). Which I found to be a good thing since the only time I care about range is on road trips (70-80 MPH speeds) where mileage is lower anyway. I would often track the difference between the nav miles-to-go and the GOM. That gap (buffer) would still usually shrink slightly, but it was pretty close. I might leave a DCFC with a 50 mile gap, and arrive at 35, being "off" by only ~15 miles. Pretty good.

But one of the updates over the last 3-4 months screwed that all up. The GOM went from pessimistic to optimistic. And it wasn't just in the first few weeks with little new driving history. For instance, on one of the last legs of a 1700 mile road trip last month we left a charger at 100% showing ~100 mile buffer and arrived with only a 30 mile buffer. Off by a whopping 70 miles.

If that keeps up, it's gonna be really hard to use that buffer as a semi-reliable tracker anymore.

In essence, the old GOM seemed to assume high-speed highway driving, while the new one seems to assume low-speed city driving. Which sucks.

I don't think I have that update yet. I think it was in 3.6.2? My last update was 3.6.1.

As others have posted previously, it appears the complaints about defective batteries because of a pessimistic GOM have resulted in Ford copying Tesla's approach. I wonder if GOM complaints have gone up or down since the update? Like you, I prefer pessimistic and realistic over an overly optimistic GOM.

 

[mkhuffman]

My experience is that going faster doesn't always save me time and often adds to the stress of the trip.

Yeah but driving slowly is boring and I hate it when people pass me. I like to pass people.

 

[dbsb3233]

I don't think I have that update yet. I think it was in 3.6.2? My last update was 3.6.1.

As others have posted previously, it appears the complaints about defective batteries because of a pessimistic GOM have resulted in Ford copying Tesla's approach. I wonder if GOM complaints have gone up or down since the update? Like you, I prefer pessimistic and realistic over an overly optimistic GOM.

I know this will never happen, but it would be nice if they put an option in Settings to choose Highway or City for the GOM calculation assumptions.

 

[HuntingPudel]

I just ignore the GOM and rely on the fuel gauge like in all of my ICE vehicles. If I am low and know where there is fuel, I stop for fuel. None of them have a GOM so it’s a paradigm I am used to that doesn’t fail.

 

[bcaceres]

Most posters here have AWD and less efficient wheels. I get that on flat ground. I did a trip Phoenix to Grand Canyon, which involves a 6000 ft climb and got 3 mile/kwh.

That makes sense. I ordered AWD myself. My understanding is that the Mach-E will reduce or shut off power to the front wheels during freeway driving to safe battery charge, but when you accelerate or begin to turn into a curve or if traction gets lost for another reason, then the power to the front wheels is restored. That won't help in city driving, but should help the range on road trips.

 

[dbsb3233]

I just ignore the GOM and rely on the fuel gauge like in all of my ICE vehicles. If I am low and know where there is fuel, I stop for fuel. None of them have a GOM so it’s a paradigm I am used to that doesn’t fail.

That's fine around the city where there's more chargers, and of course with a home charger. That's exactly what I do when deciding which nights to charge at home. I usually just plug in any day I get home below 50%.

But it's a whole different story when on a road trip where the only DCFC might be 50... 80... 120 miles apart. The gas model only works when there's stations to refuel all over the place. But road trip DCFC is usually quite sparse. The fueling situation is really more like flying an airplane between airports than driving an ICE car.

I do look forward to the day when DCFC is every 10-20 miles instead of every 50-120 miles though. Then we'll be able to "wing it" more.

 

[dbsb3233]

That makes sense. I ordered AWD myself. My understanding is that the Mach-E will reduce or shut off power to the front wheels during freeway driving to safe battery charge, but when you accelerate or begin to turn into a curve or if traction gets lost for another reason, then the power to the front wheels is restored. That won't help in city driving, but should help the range on road trips.

That's not my understanding, at least in the way I think you're implying. The Mach-E motors are permanently engaged, so there is no actual coasting. Without being able to disengage them from the axle, there is no efficiency gain in the way I think your suggesting.

Now, I'm sure the power delivered to each motor is tuned to the most effective combination they could find. But it's not like how the Tesla Semi does it where 2 of the 3 motors fully disengage from the axle when cruising at a constant speed, to be more efficient.

 

[HuntingPudel]

That's fine around the city where there's more chargers, and of course with a home charger. That's exactly what I do when deciding which nights to charge at home. I usually just plug in any day I get home below 50%.

But it's a whole different story when on a road trip where the only DCFC might be 50... 80... 120 miles apart. The gas model only works when there's stations to refuel all over the place. But road trip DCFC is usually quite sparse. The fueling situation is really more like flying an airplane between airports than driving an ICE car.

I do look forward to the day when DCFC is every 10-20 miles instead of every 50-120 miles though. Then we'll be able to "wing it" more.

On a road trip I figure it out all ahead of time based on what I think my consumption is going to be based on speed, elevation changes, etc. I familiarize myself with the DCFC stations along the route and plan where I am going to stop. I also plan for alternate stops in case the stations are out of service.

I still completely ignore the GOM regardless of whether I am planning or winging it. Since I have never had a GOM before, I don’t worry about the one I have. I actually wish I could remove it from the display and add something useful in its place.

Sponsored