Turtle Mode (Cold Weather Warning)

[GarageWarrior2023]

Clarification: This applies to cold climates with temperature below 20°F/-6°C. You don’t need to worry about this in the southern states or if you’re not discharging the battery below 30%.

Warning: If your battery is cold, your car may unexpectedly enter turtle mode (power limit) with as much as 30% battery left. You will suddenly have a severe power limit and will not be able to maintain freeway speed, nor accelerate through intersections or on-ramps safely. This has happened to myself and several others in the cold during the past few days. It's a really severe power limit and is pretty scary when it happens.

Yellow Turtle:

Red Turtle:

The colder the battery, the sooner you will get turtle mode. The power limit will get progressively worse as you keep driving until you are no longer able to maintain speed. It will start with yellow turtle warning "Performance limited due to cold battery" then progress shortly after to the above red turtle mode "Severely limited performance due to cold battery". At this point you have almost no power.

To avoid this, you must precondition/set a departure time, and plan your charging stops for no less than 20% battery in the cold. The GOM will still say you have many miles to go, but your car will be at a crawl long before it gets to 0%. I preconditioned and got turtle mode at 9% because my battery had cooled off enough while driving. Cold battery + low % SoC charge triggers turtle mode.

If you get yellow turtle, you need to take action immediately and find the nearest Level 2 charger regardless of what the GOM says. Slow down 20 MPH and/or get off the freeway ASAP before you have no power left. Your car will only have about 50 horsepower to accelerate, wait for all traffic to pass at stop signs and do not pull out on anyone.

@MachLee I just had red turtle severe power limiting and the vehicle getting slowed down to a crawl at 40% SOC. at -29c outside. This seems to be even worse than before now. I had been at -34 and was able to go to 30% SOC before seeing yellow turtle and then red turtle shortly after, that was last year. Now this year this is our first time down to super cold temps and the behavior is different yet again.

I charged 120v all day at work like I normally do in the cold, total usage of battery was 86% to go 140km. I was at 69% arriving at work, and then after charging to 95% before leaving work I was down to 38% by the time I pulled into my driveway.....after driving very slowly on the highway for a short stint......luckily it was just a short stint of limiting.

Sponsored

 

[Wes8398]

@MachLee I just had red turtle severe power limiting and the vehicle getting slowed down to a crawl at 40% SOC. at -29c outside. This seems to be even worse than before now. I had been at -34 and was able to go to 30% SOC before seeing yellow turtle and then red turtle shortly after, that was last year. Now this year this is our first time down to super cold temps and the behavior is different yet again.

I charged 120v all day at work like I normally do in the cold, total usage of battery was 86% to go 140km. I was at 69% arriving at work, and then after charging to 95% before leaving work I was down to 38% by the time I pulled into my driveway.....after driving very slowly on the highway for a short stint......luckily it was just a short stint of limiting.

Downright dangerous and should be reported to proper channels. I wanted an MME for my wife's 110km (one-way) highway commute until I learned of these cold weather issues. Living in SW Ontario, we see these "danger zone" temps too many times a winter to take the risk of her being stuck in "turtle mode" on a 110km/h highway filled with big rigs doing at least that speed no matter the conditions.
Huge thank-you to those that have shone a light on this and even done some of their own investigating/testing.

 

[GarageWarrior2023]

Downright dangerous and should be reported to proper channels. I wanted an MME for my wife's 110km (one-way) highway commute until I learned of these cold weather issues. Living in SW Ontario, we see these "danger zone" temps too many times a winter to take the risk of her being stuck in "turtle mode" on a 110km/h highway filled with big rigs doing at least that speed no matter the conditions.
Huge thank-you to those that have shone a light on this and even done some of their own investigating/testing.

tell me about it, my drive to work I had to navigate while looking though a 6" viewport of unfrozen glass. my entire windshield froze over on the inside within 10 seconds of being on the highway and I could not get it unfrosted....even stopped for a couple of minutes and could barely get it to clear up.

it happens in seconds and is EXTREMELY dangerous. auto mode frosts over super fast and does not work at all, manual control is not much better.

then there's the dangerous speed limiting on highways.

I have reported this to transport canada multiple times. so have others. and transport canada has done nothing.

I'm almost ready to look for others who are pissed off enough to try starting a class action lawsuit against ford. The proper channels are doing nothing...

Is anyone on this Forum a Lawyer from Canada? I have heard many people in Canada utter the words "class action lawsuit" already in regards to these specific issues in the last 2 years......

 

[Wes8398]

tell me about it, my drive to work I had to navigate while looking though a 6" viewport of unfrozen glass. my entire windshield froze over on the inside within 10 seconds of being on the highway and I could not get it unfrosted....even stopped for a couple of minutes and could barely get it to clear up.

it happens in seconds and is EXTREMELY dangerous. auto mode frosts over super fast and does not work at all, manual control is not much better.

then there's the dangerous speed limiting on highways.

I have reported this to transport canada multiple times. so have others. and transport canada has done nothing.

I'm ready to look for others who are pissed off enough to try starting a class action lawsuit against ford. The proper channels are doing nothing, and the only language Ford understands is being sued.....

Is anyone on this Forum a Lawyer from Canada? I have heard many people in Canada utter the words "class action lawsuit" already in regards to these specific issues in the last 2 years......

Much to my 43 year-old chagrin, forums aren't very popular anymore. For this reason, I'd direct you to Reddit if you want to seriously look into such a thing. There's a pretty large MME sub, as well as a few smaller niche MME subs that are Canada/Ontario specific (although I find them redundant to the major one). There are also subs like "ask a lawyer" and such... Also with Canadian versions.

 

[GarageWarrior2023]

Much to my 43 year-old chagrin, forums aren't very popular anymore. For this reason, I'd direct you to Reddit if you want to seriously look into such a thing. There's a pretty large MME sub, as well as a few smaller niche MME subs that are Canada/Ontario specific (although I find them redundant to the major one). There are also subs like "ask a lawyer" and such... Also with Canadian versions.

You are absolutely right. I haven't frequented reddit since this forum is GOLD for the mach-e (much to do with the efforts of @Mach-Lee and many others). Honestly this Forum is more valuable than the dealerships and Ford themselves.

 

[GreaseMonkey]

Much to my 43 year-old chagrin, forums aren't very popular anymore. For this reason, I'd direct you to Reddit if you want to seriously look into such a thing. There's a pretty large MME sub, as well as a few smaller niche MME subs that are Canada/Ontario specific (although I find them redundant to the major one). There are also subs like "ask a lawyer" and such... Also with Canadian versions.

What a fucked up thing to say. If you like Reddit more, why are you here? Too bad there’s not a thumbs down button here like there is on Reddit. I would have given you one.

 

[Wes8398]

What a fucked up thing to say. If you like Reddit more, why are you here? Too bad there’s not a thumbs down button here like there is on Reddit. I would have given you one.

Take a pill, bud. "Fucked up thing to say" to direct the person to a more populated site to help him get in touch with a lawyer or someone with insight into his idea of a class action? A little dramatic, don't you think?
I've been a prominent contributor (and also admin) to dozens of automotive forums for literally decades. The fact that they've dropped off a cliff in popularity since the advent of anti-social media is just that - a fact. Wasn't directing him elsewhere for his MME information needs in general... This forum is clearly great. But if he wants to get more eyeballs on a potential class-action suit - or have a greater chance of finding a lawyer interested in such a thing - then the fact of the matter is that he'd be wise to branch out from forums. Take a breath, now... It's going to be ok.

 

[Shayne]

I am not a big cold weather traveler. Not in a EV or a 4x4 ice off road truck. I do run around in the winter and the EV is my obvious choice. Love the torque in this car. I have not seen turtle mode to date as it rarely goes below 50% before back up to 80%. Plugged to L2 it auto conditions itself. Set departures and all warm/conditioned before leaving. Dress and be prepared for the conditions.

If you shut HVAC down it will heat the battery and turtle should go away. Crack a window so you do not fog. On my version of the software right now I can have fan without heat or a/c. One version I could not. Plan not to run it down to low %? It is so rare that work arounds will do.

Nothing is perfect that is why we develop work arounds. Early tech. They should go back to the original logic and put up with the people complaining that they can not take their jacket off in the car when -20C outside. There would be a law suit on that. I would prefer knowing the battery was OK to run and be a bit cooler in the cabin. With heat seats the original was no problem and comfortable. Having to manually toggle it off and on is not the best.

 

[GreaseMonkey]

Take a pill, bud. "Fucked up thing to say" to direct the person to a more populated site to help him get in touch with a lawyer or someone with insight into his idea of a class action? A little dramatic, don't you think?
I've been a prominent contributor (and also admin) to dozens of automotive forums for literally decades. The fact that they've dropped off a cliff in popularity since the advent of anti-social media is just that - a fact. Wasn't directing him elsewhere for his MME information needs in general... This forum is clearly great. But if he wants to get more eyeballs on a potential class-action suit - or have a greater chance of finding a lawyer interested in such a thing - then the fact of the matter is that he'd be wise to branch out from forums. Take a breath, now... It's going to be ok.

Yes, because the best legal advice comes from some stranger on Reddit.

I have a problem with you, coming here with 4 posts crapping all over this site. Which versions of the Mach-E do you have? You have none. You are here to create chaos and troll people and I don’t appreciate it.

Now go get some legal advice from your Reddit buddies on whether you should sue me too. Or report me to the police for hurting your tender feelings.

 

[Gungrave223]

Clarification: This applies to cold climates with temperature below 20°F/-6°C. You don’t need to worry about this in the southern states or if you’re not discharging the battery below 30%.

Also the southern state of Georgia

 

[Shayne]

Also the southern state of Georgia

Warming up to -20F here today. Good day for snowshoeing it is sunny, white and everything is sparkling. The car can sit today out but departure is set for tomorrow and it will be just as cold. 4 complete winters come Feb 3 and I have to say the car has worked fine in the cold.

 

[MrFord]

I experienced this over the weekend in -27C (-17F).

Usually we plan carefully and precondition and even charge to 100% for long trips rather than just 90%......but a family emergency made us take off with limited preheat and only 85% charge on a long highway commute. within 45km of a 50kw DC charger we dropped below 30% and got the amber turtle...followed by the red turtle at 25% at which point the car took over and for every 30 seconds of driving it seemed to drop by 1km/h in speed until I was doing 50km/h and on a highway.....made it to the charger with 7%SOC and charged to 70% and then booted home no problem at 100km/h...

I wasn't expecting the performance and speed reduction at that SOC. I could see acceleration being cut...the speed being cut was an unsettling surprise. (though I understand the methodology behind the forced restrictions)

From what others have posted....is this new behavior to aggressively control speed and acceleration at 30%SOC (rather than lower than that) in the cold or has it always been this way? I was surprised because I had seen so many people brag about getting down to 10% or less and never mentioning their speed getting so badly clipped. But they might be in nice warm climates too...

Curious what others can speak to for common cold weather operation (this is my first winter with mine).

Late answer, but I just drove back home last Monday, starting at -40c (Northern Quebec), ending in Montreal at around -20c, and we had the turtle mode issue happened to us. We left my mom's house at around 90%, after being on 110V all night and warming up the car before leaving. We had no issues getting going, which was even a bit surprising for me (not my first time doing this, but first time with an electric car). We had about 170km to our first stop, with 20% estimated on arrival, which was in line with what ABRP was calculating. After the first 100km, we past the one town in between with fast charger, with just under 50% battery left, and no indication we would need to charge there, so I continued. Not too long after, the SoC started dropping faster; I assumed it was trying to precondition for the next charger. We didn't make it 20km when we got the yellow turtle mode, followed a minute after by the red turtle mode, and the car started slowing down. Luckily, we were passing the only Level 2 charger along that road, and were able to get there safely with 22% left, but it was very startling.

At that point, after plugging in, I went on CarScanner, and saw that the battery was around -17c, which was colder but not much more than what it had been the past couple days. There were no abnormal indications beside that, and that the HVB battery SoC was about 2% lower than the displayed battery SoC. We ended up spending a hour and half just to be able to warm up the battery and gain an extra 3% charge to make it to the charger, which the car did without issue; at that point, the battery was now up to maybe 5-10c.

I understand how lithium batteries do not perform in the cold, and that this was a bit of an extreme case; but I agree that this is very dangerous behavior. If the car knew it couldn't access that remaining energy due to cold temperature, they should do like Tesla and mark it as blue, cold soaked, or just lower the SoC appropriately. That would have also triggered the navigation and prompt me to charge earlier; better that than dying on you out of nowhere, especially when you still have 20-30% SoC showing. I cannot imagine for the life of me having to deal with this without CarScanner at least giving me some stats and helping us understand what happened; if I can access the data, they should be able to inform the driver in a way.

After that point, we had CarScanner running the whole trip home (took us 11 hours for a 700km trip), and after the battery was warmed up, it never gave us any issues, as it hovered between -5c and 20c during the trip. One thing I noted was that, unless we were charging and we had the car off, or at least the heat off, at no point the car could warm up the battery; it all went to the cabin heat, even when the cabin heating was not requesting the full 5.6kW from the heating system. You would think that they would have a split system similar to Tesla and maybe others, where it could use the excess heating capacity and divert it to the battery as needed. I agree that heating the cabin is a priority, but at no point the car preheated for any chargers we navigated to, even at higher SoC, and only stated the heating process once plugged in. We never saw anything higher than 90kW, even on 180-200kW chargers that can give 140-160kW usually.

Burning question for me: has anyone been highway driving with a high SOC like above 50-60% in extreme cold (-37c to -45c) and had the heater not keep up and end up with their speed clipped due to cold battery? I have heard these heaters have trouble keeping up when you combine highway speeds and extreme cold.

Regarding the second part: We didn't freeze in the car, but you could tell the car was struggling to keep up, and was blowing cooler air out of the defrost vents than the foot well. Had it in Auto, level 3 fan; after manually setting it to bi-level and lower the fan speed, it felt better inside the car. CarScanner had the heating core pegged at 5.6kW most of the time, until we lowered the fan speed, and with the sun out, it had a chance to catch up after a couple hours on the road.

To be honest, I had the same issue with my Focus at those temperatures; most cars can't keep temperatures up on the highway. At least in the Mach-E, once we would slow down in town, it had a chance to warm up again; it also had no issue warming up in the morning, which was great; however, I wish the climate logic would take care of that itself, as it clearly knows it can't keep up with the coolant temperature.

 

[kltye]

I don't understand how the vehicle is allowing the battery pack to drop below 0c. Charging any lithium chemistry below freezing is immediately bad for the pack (and certainly at -17c), so either what we're seeing in CarScanner is wrong, or Ford is royally screwing things up.

 

[redgrandam]

Late answer, but I just drove back home last Monday, starting at -40c (Northern Quebec), ending in Montreal at around -20c, and we had the turtle mode issue happened to us. We left my mom's house at around 90%, after being on 110V all night and warming up the car before leaving. We had no issues getting going, which was even a bit surprising for me (not my first time doing this, but first time with an electric car). We had about 170km to our first stop, with 20% estimated on arrival, which was in line with what ABRP was calculating. After the first 100km, we past the one town in between with fast charger, with just under 50% battery left, and no indication we would need to charge there, so I continued. Not too long after, the SoC started dropping faster; I assumed it was trying to precondition for the next charger. We didn't make it 20km when we got the yellow turtle mode, followed a minute after by the red turtle mode, and the car started slowing down. Luckily, we were passing the only Level 2 charger along that road, and were able to get there safely with 22% left, but it was very startling.

At that point, after plugging in, I went on CarScanner, and saw that the battery was around -17c, which was colder but not much more than what it had been the past couple days. There were no abnormal indications beside that, and that the HVB battery SoC was about 2% lower than the displayed battery SoC. We ended up spending a hour and half just to be able to warm up the battery and gain an extra 3% charge to make it to the charger, which the car did without issue; at that point, the battery was now up to maybe 5-10c.

I understand how lithium batteries do not perform in the cold, and that this was a bit of an extreme case; but I agree that this is very dangerous behavior. If the car knew it couldn't access that remaining energy due to cold temperature, they should do like Tesla and mark it as blue, cold soaked, or just lower the SoC appropriately. That would have also triggered the navigation and prompt me to charge earlier; better that than dying on you out of nowhere, especially when you still have 20-30% SoC showing. I cannot imagine for the life of me having to deal with this without CarScanner at least giving me some stats and helping us understand what happened; if I can access the data, they should be able to inform the driver in a way.

After that point, we had CarScanner running the whole trip home (took us 11 hours for a 700km trip), and after the battery was warmed up, it never gave us any issues, as it hovered between -5c and 20c during the trip. One thing I noted was that, unless we were charging and we had the car off, or at least the heat off, at no point the car could warm up the battery; it all went to the cabin heat, even when the cabin heating was not requesting the full 5.6kW from the heating system. You would think that they would have a split system similar to Tesla and maybe others, where it could use the excess heating capacity and divert it to the battery as needed. I agree that heating the cabin is a priority, but at no point the car preheated for any chargers we navigated to, even at higher SoC, and only stated the heating process once plugged in. We never saw anything higher than 90kW, even on 180-200kW chargers that can give 140-160kW usually.



Regarding the second part: We didn't freeze in the car, but you could tell the car was struggling to keep up, and was blowing cooler air out of the defrost vents than the foot well. Had it in Auto, level 3 fan; after manually setting it to bi-level and lower the fan speed, it felt better inside the car. CarScanner had the heating core pegged at 5.6kW most of the time, until we lowered the fan speed, and with the sun out, it had a chance to catch up after a couple hours on the road.

To be honest, I had the same issue with my Focus at those temperatures; most cars can't keep temperatures up on the highway. At least in the Mach-E, once we would slow down in town, it had a chance to warm up again; it also had no issue warming up in the morning, which was great; however, I wish the climate logic would take care of that itself, as it clearly knows it can't keep up with the coolant temperature.

It would have been interesting to know what the battery temp was when you left. My guess is the battery wasn’t that warm when you left in the first place. Not that it should have had a huge power loss on you though, clearly that isn’t good.
2023.5 and up cars all have the split heating/cooling system so it can harvest excess heat from the motor and inverter and put it to the battery, or use the coolant heater. The coolant heater is also larger. So seems they have addressed your comments already, but it’s too bad they didn’t correct it before they released the car initially.

 

[Mach-Lee]

Late answer, but I just drove back home last Monday, starting at -40c (Northern Quebec), ending in Montreal at around -20c, and we had the turtle mode issue happened to us. We left my mom's house at around 90%, after being on 110V all night and warming up the car before leaving. We had no issues getting going, which was even a bit surprising for me (not my first time doing this, but first time with an electric car). We had about 170km to our first stop, with 20% estimated on arrival, which was in line with what ABRP was calculating. After the first 100km, we past the one town in between with fast charger, with just under 50% battery left, and no indication we would need to charge there, so I continued. Not too long after, the SoC started dropping faster; I assumed it was trying to precondition for the next charger. We didn't make it 20km when we got the yellow turtle mode, followed a minute after by the red turtle mode, and the car started slowing down. Luckily, we were passing the only Level 2 charger along that road, and were able to get there safely with 22% left, but it was very startling.

At that point, after plugging in, I went on CarScanner, and saw that the battery was around -17c, which was colder but not much more than what it had been the past couple days. There were no abnormal indications beside that, and that the HVB battery SoC was about 2% lower than the displayed battery SoC. We ended up spending a hour and half just to be able to warm up the battery and gain an extra 3% charge to make it to the charger, which the car did without issue; at that point, the battery was now up to maybe 5-10c.

I understand how lithium batteries do not perform in the cold, and that this was a bit of an extreme case; but I agree that this is very dangerous behavior. If the car knew it couldn't access that remaining energy due to cold temperature, they should do like Tesla and mark it as blue, cold soaked, or just lower the SoC appropriately. That would have also triggered the navigation and prompt me to charge earlier; better that than dying on you out of nowhere, especially when you still have 20-30% SoC showing. I cannot imagine for the life of me having to deal with this without CarScanner at least giving me some stats and helping us understand what happened; if I can access the data, they should be able to inform the driver in a way.

After that point, we had CarScanner running the whole trip home (took us 11 hours for a 700km trip), and after the battery was warmed up, it never gave us any issues, as it hovered between -5c and 20c during the trip. One thing I noted was that, unless we were charging and we had the car off, or at least the heat off, at no point the car could warm up the battery; it all went to the cabin heat, even when the cabin heating was not requesting the full 5.6kW from the heating system. You would think that they would have a split system similar to Tesla and maybe others, where it could use the excess heating capacity and divert it to the battery as needed. I agree that heating the cabin is a priority, but at no point the car preheated for any chargers we navigated to, even at higher SoC, and only stated the heating process once plugged in. We never saw anything higher than 90kW, even on 180-200kW chargers that can give 140-160kW usually.



Regarding the second part: We didn't freeze in the car, but you could tell the car was struggling to keep up, and was blowing cooler air out of the defrost vents than the foot well. Had it in Auto, level 3 fan; after manually setting it to bi-level and lower the fan speed, it felt better inside the car. CarScanner had the heating core pegged at 5.6kW most of the time, until we lowered the fan speed, and with the sun out, it had a chance to catch up after a couple hours on the road.

To be honest, I had the same issue with my Focus at those temperatures; most cars can't keep temperatures up on the highway. At least in the Mach-E, once we would slow down in town, it had a chance to warm up again; it also had no issue warming up in the morning, which was great; however, I wish the climate logic would take care of that itself, as it clearly knows it can't keep up with the coolant temperature.

Thank you for your account. I'm guessing what happened was the battery didn't heat on Level 1 charging, so it was very cold around ambient temp when you left. This means Turtle mode will happen sooner. The battery can be heated while driving, but often there is not enough heater power available to heat both the battery and cabin at the same time. If the battery is really cold, it won't even try to heat it while driving because you would lose all your cabin heat. I just finished a test at -25ºC, starting with a +12ºC battery it still cooled off to 0ºC despite the battery being switched in and heated while driving. That's the best it could do.

If you can only Level 1 change in very cold temps, it's probably wise not to go below 30% charge unless you've verified the battery temp has warmed up above 0ºC.

I don't understand how the vehicle is allowing the battery pack to drop below 0c. Charging any lithium chemistry below freezing is immediately bad for the pack (and certainly at -17c), so either what we're seeing in CarScanner is wrong, or Ford is royally screwing things up.

Agree. The car either doesn't have enough available power to heat the battery above 0ºC during charging, or there could be a software issue preventing battery heating in some cases.

I have a request, if you're in the cold north and have Car Scanner, can you check on battery temps while AC charging? Specifically, if the battery is below freezing to start with, does it get heated above freezing immediately during AC charging or not (give it about 15 minutes to try)? Leave the car off, wait for charging to start, then connect Car Scanner. It would be good to get data from both Level 1 and 2 charging, and different model years.

Sponsored