Turtle Mode (Cold Weather Warning)

[GarageWarrior2023]

A lot cheaper and easier is to buy a 12V heated blanked at Canadian Tire and drape it over the laps of the driver and passenger. Buy another one for the back seat if you have passengers back there. They are $Cad49 each at Canadian Tire. Plus, you can use them as a regular blanket outside of the car.

If you put the insulation over the battery, instead of over the passengers, you can't take that insulation into the ski cabin, or take it with you when your friend is driving a different car and you're a passenger. Plus the Can Tire one is a really nice red plaid that looks pretty sweet with the GT interior trim. I doubt they make a battery insulation plate in red plaid.

On a side note, I've seen a lot of ICE cars this last week with cardboard in front of the rad! That takes me back.

Good old cardboard!! Haha those were the days!

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[the golden eel]

I'll put cardboard on the front of my MME on the drive home from work today. I'll report back if it helps.

 

[ArthurDOB]

A lot cheaper and easier is to buy a 12V heated blanked at Canadian Tire and drape it over the laps of the driver and passenger. Buy another one for the back seat if you have passengers back there. They are $Cad49 each at Canadian Tire. Plus, you can use them as a regular blanket outside of the car.

If you put the insulation over the battery, instead of over the passengers, you can't take that insulation into the ski cabin, or take it with you when your friend is driving a different car and you're a passenger. Plus the Can Tire one is a really nice red plaid that looks pretty sweet with the GT interior trim. I doubt they make a battery insulation plate in red plaid.

On a side note, I've seen a lot of ICE cars this last week with cardboard in front of the rad! That takes me back.

Oh, if we only had Canadian Tire! I'll try Fleet Farm (our version of CT!)

 

[Shayne]

This sort of thing makes me wonder what in the heck the engineers are testing when they do their "cold weather testing" on a frozen arctic track?

I am pretty well versed in QA scenarios, and this seems like an immediately obvious test case. Or did the folks at Ford only "cold weather test", after preconditioning, and coming off of a 90% charge??

Kept in a heated garage when not in use and tested the rear bias and how cool it is sliding the ass end out on an oval track?

Pretty rude to install this on peoples cars with no transparency or heads up they are doing it. But that is the status quo for Ford now a days. They appear to have come to the conclusion that they are going to just F#@k their early adopters and back out of EV's for a bit. I can see resale value and sales going up again with this new software. They just keep making our cars better.

Someone needs to put on a toque, crack a window so you don't frost up and turn off hvac to see if the turtle will go away. Pull off and do it is an option. 30% is 25KW and should run the heater for a good 5 hours. Should not take that long to heat the pack back up.

 

[Monke]

Dude, you live in Texas. You'll likely never have to worry about this!

Haha. Could a MME owner move to the northern part of the continent? It is not that I would want to live through -10F again.

Things are different in TX for sure. We have faucets sticking out from the side of the house and the control valves are just right outside and frozen. No crawlspace here to have the valves 3 feet behind the wall. I did not have to worry about frozen pipes until I moved to TX!!! Temperatures have been in the single digits for several nights now and I'm about four hours south of the northern border. We do not have a heater in a garage and most houses here do not have insulation above the garage.

 

[ArthurDOB]

Haha. Could a MME owner move to the northern part of the continent? It is not that I would want to live through -10F again.

Things are different in TX for sure. We have faucets sticking out from the side of the house and the control valves are just right outside and frozen. No crawlspace here to have the valves 3 feet behind the wall. I did not have to worry about frozen pipes until I moved to TX!!! Temperatures have been in the single digits for several nights now and I'm about four hours south of the northern border. We do not have a heater in a garage and most houses here do not have insulation above the garage.

I still think you have nothing to worry about. Look at Lee's clarification he added to his OP. That's for you and a few others here. Your single-digit temps are transitory and will be over soon. Not so much up here. While they last, plug in your car at night.

 

[jamelski]

Why would anyone let their battery get below 10% shit 20% in the cold anyways ??‍

 

[Tampamike]

Ya, for the 1/2" foam, this is where an official Ford part would be ideal, it could be contour molded foam to make a full contact fit. Again ideally bolt on. The after market kit for the model 3 makes me nervous haha...if I recall, it was just like adhesive or double sided tape or something.

I envision a new “Mayhem“ commercial.

 

[MellowJohnny]

Admittedly I know zero about Teslas, but this caught my eye reading a USAToday report on the Chicago Tesla Apocolypse:

...a blue snowflake icon may appear on the vehicle's touchscreen and in the app if the battery is too cold for full power and ideal range, and drivers may notice "reduced regenerative braking and acceleration." Once the battery is warmed, the snowflake will disappear.

Sounds pretty similar, no?

 

[GarageWarrior2023]

Admittedly I know zero about Teslas, but this caught my eye reading a USAToday report on the Chicago Tesla Apocolypse:

...a blue snowflake icon may appear on the vehicle's touchscreen and in the app if the battery is too cold for full power and ideal range, and drivers may notice "reduced regenerative braking and acceleration." Once the battery is warmed, the snowflake will disappear.

Sounds pretty similar, no?

Only with a tesla, I'm pretty sure this is when cold soaked before warming up. it will restore power after a short warm up and allow you to drive at highway speeds continuously down to 2%SOC no issues at -21c or colder. I saw TFL do a test with an overnight cold soaked model 3 in -21c and on their range test after a (off grid....not plugged in) short remote start warm up they drove it and got it down to 2%SOC and rolled into the tesla super charger station like nothing.....seeing that got me pretty mad about the limits Ford setup on the Mach-E.

 

[MellowJohnny]

Only with a tesla, I'm pretty sure this is when cold soaked before warming up. it will restore power after a short warm up and allow you to drive at highway speeds continuously down to 2%SOC no issues at -21c or colder. I saw TFL do a test with an overnight cold soaked model 3 in -21c and on their range test after a (off grid....not plugged in) short remote start warm up they drove it and got it down to 2%SOC and rolled into the tesla super charger station like nothing.....seeing that got me pretty mad about the limits Ford setup on the Mach-E.

Ah yes! I actually watched a similar Out Of Spec video - thanks for that.

 

[Mach-Lee]

Admittedly I know zero about Teslas, but this caught my eye reading a USAToday report on the Chicago Tesla Apocolypse:

...a blue snowflake icon may appear on the vehicle's touchscreen and in the app if the battery is too cold for full power and ideal range, and drivers may notice "reduced regenerative braking and acceleration." Once the battery is warmed, the snowflake will disappear.

Sounds pretty similar, no?

Not really because Teslas have properly specced battery heaters that actually warm up the pack even in extreme cold. So it’s a temporary condition and they get full use of the pack after a few minutes of warming up.

 

[the golden eel]

Question for @Mach-Lee or anyone else who may have specifics...

Does the Mach-E ever warm the battery outside of a scheduled departure time (while plugged in) or while navigating to a DCFC?

If it does, what are the parameters (battery temp, etc) that this happens?

 

[heisnuts]

I think this really points out the need to have the right vehicle for the conditions. We have been below freezing for several days now with snow on the roads. While I am a huge fan of EVs, and will always have one in our family of vehicles, for the past few days I have been taking our Subaru ICE vehicle with snow tires to work. I can remote start the car from the Subaru App, get into a warm vehicle for the drive, and not have to worry about the freezing temps affecting range or refilling capabilities due to the weather.

 

[helium89]

Between this change and whatever Ford did recently that made L1 charging useless in freezing temperatures (no, it’s not the runaway battery heating issue; it still charges, just even more slowly), I am really regretting buying this piece of garbage car. The other bugs were irritating, but I could live with them. Making the car essentially require access to a L2 charger in the cold two years after I bought it is completely unacceptable.

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