Why does my Mach-E keep starting a charge outside the preferred times?

[933233311602]

I'm interested to see @jamesphw try a test.

If you keep your desired 11pm - 7am charging times but set your desired battery level to 50% (the lowest setting possible) does your car obey the 11pm - 7am schedule?

I'm curious to learn if the car is giving the battery level target a higher priority than the charging schedule, like others have suggested. That would be smart because, from the car's PoV, a battery charged to the owner's desired fill is more important than the charging schedule.

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[And-E]

Maybe check the clock on the car. My dealer had set mine as PM when it should have been AM. It threw off my charge time calculations when I first got my car and was charging with level 1.

 

[Jhonka]

Necro-ing here, but I think I figured it out.

If you set your preferred times for, say, 9 pm to 7 am, the system will try to hit the target charge by the end of that window.

So in essence, your 7 am stop becomes your departure time.

Basically, for each "window," the car tries to reach the target by the end of the window. If it can't, it ignores preferred times entirely.

Really shitty situation for anyone without L2.

 

[Space_Pony]

Couldn't you set your evse so that it is only available to charge at your scheduled times? I believe my evse allows that. I don't use a schedule because my electric is the same price 24/7.

 

[jamesphw]

@Jhonka I am aware of that feature, and in my case that's not it (I have an L2 that can charge the battery fully within the set schedule).

@Space_Pony Yes, most EVSEs have that. But I prefer to let the car control the schedule because a few times a year I need to charge outside the normal "off-peak" times, and I don't want to adjust the EVSE since that's much harder.

The good news is that this issue hasn't happened to me recently. I was never 100% sure about the issue, it could have been silently fixed in one of the software updates. I suspected it had to do with PAAK connecting to the car, and I also reset my PAAK.

 

[DarkHorseRunning]

Resurrecting the zombie thread. I’ve been seeing this problem for about two months now (where the car starts charging as soon as it’s plugged in), even with no active departure times. I usually end up hitting “stop charging” in the app, but then I have to remember to turn it back on before I go to bed. My cheap electric rate is 2300-0700 (which is long enough that my 30A L2 charger can add 50% SOC overnight). The app used to show a multi-day charge (e.g. “finish charging by 0130 on Thursday” if I plugged it in Tuesday night on a low battery) — it would charge 2300 Tuesday night to 0700 Wednesday morning, then stop again until 2300 Wednesday and finish on Thursday morning, exactly as desired. Somewhere a few months ago, it just decided to start immediately charging as soon as I plug it in if it’s under about 60% SOC.

I don’t want to limit the charger — my wife drives a PHEV and frequently needs to top up in the middle of the day.

 

[RickMachE]

Resurrecting the zombie thread. I’ve been seeing this problem for about two months now (where the car starts charging as soon as it’s plugged in), even with no active departure times. I usually end up hitting “stop charging” in the app, but then I have to remember to turn it back on before I go to bed. My cheap electric rate is 2300-0700 (which is long enough that my 30A L2 charger can add 50% SOC overnight). The app used to show a multi-day charge (e.g. “finish charging by 0130 on Thursday” if I plugged it in Tuesday night on a low battery) — it would charge 2300 Tuesday night to 0700 Wednesday morning, then stop again until 2300 Wednesday and finish on Thursday morning, exactly as desired. Somewhere a few months ago, it just decided to start immediately charging as soon as I plug it in if it’s under about 60% SOC.

I don’t want to limit the charger — my wife drives a PHEV and frequently needs to top up in the middle of the day.

The answer has not changed. The car looks at your 8 hour window, and calculates if it THINKS it can hit your target charge by the end of the window. If it cannot, then it starts immediately. It will then stop before your window once it thinks the window is adequate, or if it doesn't it will hit the window and keep going.

Therefore, do the math. 8 hours at 30amps x 90% (10% loss) = 51.8kW delivered. That's 57% of the battery.

In addition, it's math isn't perfect. So, assume that you can get maybe 50% in 8 hours and see if that works for you. If you want to charge to 90%, then you can't be below 40%.

If that doesn't work, you need to verify what actual kW are being delivered, by opening the Ford app while charging is taking place and looking. Then, use that math.

 

[AZBill]

I posted this on another thread, but there is a bug in the charging software. Mine results in Charging error messages in the app any time I plug in outside of the schedule. Very repeatable, does not matter how many kwh I need and I have no departure time set.

The car always starts the charge at plug in, then cycles off. It does this in a loop of 3-4 times then finally gives up. The blue lights on the port turn on flashing then off, then repeats ... The Ford app shows Starting Charge, then Wating to Charge, and that repeats ...

My car does charge properly when the charging schedule time comes, even though the Ford app is full of charging error messages. This bug showed up at least 6 months ago.

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