What percentage should I charge my battery to daily using the Ford Charge Station Pro?

[Pioneer74]

I used to do 170 4x a week…it sucked!‍

100 miles, 6 days a week most of the time. Can't wait to leave the gas station in my rear view mirror.

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[Firestop]

100 miles, 6 days a week most of the time. Can't wait to leave the gas station in my rear view mirror.

My guess you’ll like it better when you can retire and leave that commute behind!

 

[Pioneer74]

My guess you’ll like it better when you can retire and leave that commute behind!

I will. But I'm too young to retire. Got about 10 years left.

 

[GDN]

Yes I know - my logic is that L2 charging is slow enough that 100% (equals 80-90% actual) is fine as I have personally seen in 4 years of no degradation at 100%.

For DCFC, I know that batteries heat up due to high voltage fast charge so 90% is reasonable for me.

What is your test vehicle that you speak of for 4 years at 100%?

The issue isn't just about heat, it isn't just about the speed you charge it. Very true that L2 is much slower and really doesn't even have a taper except at the very top (referencing a Tesla model 3 for that) however if you use that L2 nightly to 100% and don't drive within a short amount of time after reaching that 100% it isn't ideal by any means.

90% is my absolute maximum charge daily on L2 unless I'm going to set out on a trip and then I time is so I hit the 100% within just a short bit of time before I set out.

It will be interesting to see if you charge repeatedly to 100% if Ford gives you any warning. Likely someone has already tried, not sure if they tell you that is not a good thing or not. Tesla will warn you after 2 or 3 100% charges in a row that it is not good unless you require it for the upcoming travel.

 

[VTbuckeye]

How are the phev batteries holding up? Not just Ford, but across all makes. That is tough duty. Constantly charging and discharging at higher C rates. Using our Volvo and Chevy volt/bolt for example (Volvo 9.7 kWh battery 67kw max power, Chevy bolt 60kwh battery 150kw max power, Chevy volt 18ish kWh battery, 111kw power) and those phev cars spend much of their time at "100" percent. There is a larger buffer in the plug in cars (car scanner on my xc90 shows a top out at 89 percent and the car reads zero at around 18 percent. Even so, the car sits 89 percent for hours/days. With a battery only good for 16 miles you ALWAYS want to leave with it full, so it sits at full most of the time. I would be hunting for a charge station if the range on a bev got down to the full range on my phev. The BEV cars get longer charges, but don't need to stay at high states of charge as often. I plan to keep my lightning at 70 to 80 percent max most of of the time as I can charge at home overnight and will not go through more than 20 or 30 percent most days. I can always charge higher when I need to. To get recommendation to limit charge levels is not about the heat of charging, but the stress to the battery of being at the high state of charge.

 

[FirstF150InCasco]

$80,000 truck. Download from owner.ford.com to all your devices.

But it's still long and it's taking forever to get through it!!

 

[FirstF150InCasco]

DISAPPOINTING Thread – @ChrisCon thanks for asking the question that is on so many of our minds. Unfortunately, I found nearly all of the responses to not be helpful. I was hoping for fact-based answers to the question, not a lot of opinions.

But, given the Lightning is so new, there’s probably not much fact-based data available. So, at this point, I’ll rely on the opinions of experts. Seems like @MickeyAO may know the most, and he suggests 30% to 80% so that’s what I’m going to go with until MickeyAO finishes his cell-level testing.

 

[RickLightning]

It will be interesting to see if you charge repeatedly to 100% if Ford gives you any warning. Likely someone has already tried, not sure if they tell you that is not a good thing or not. Tesla will warn you after 2 or 3 100% charges in a row that it is not good unless you require it for the upcoming travel.

A comment on that. Ford's VP of EVs, Darren Palmer, has done many interviews. In one last year with EV Insider, he made a couple of statements regarding what Ford will be doing in the future. I'll paraphrase:

- Ford is "watching" how you use the vehicle, and that includes charging.
- They are focused on exceeding the EV battery warranty, which is at least 70% capacity at 8 years / 100,000 miles.
- On the Mach-E, they gave us 88kW of usable battery of a 98kW battery, and then 91kW for the 2022s, and an upgrade of the 2021s via OTA update to 91kW. They updated capacity, and charging curve, via OTA updates for 2021s this year and late last year.
- They will "reward" people who charge and drive in a manner that is conducive to long battery life by providing new features such as more capacity, faster charging curve, etc. Therefore, they will not reward, i.e. penalize, people who don't do this.

https://www.macheforum.com/site/thr...les-at-ford-motor-company-via-insideevs.9519/

 

[RickLightning]

DISAPPOINTING Thread – @ChrisCon thanks for asking the question that is on so many of our minds. Unfortunately, I found nearly all of the responses to not be helpful. I was hoping for fact-based answers to the question, not a lot of opinions.

But, given the Lightning is so new, there’s probably not much fact-based data available. So, at this point, I’ll rely on the opinions of experts. Seems like @MickeyAO may know the most, and he suggests 30% to 80% so that’s what I’m going to go with until MickeyAO finishes his cell-level testing.

Fact-based answers? You have a direct Ford statement saying 90%.

The Mach-E manual says 90%. A version in-between (late 2021) said less than 100%, but that was revised back to 90% again. I expect the Lightning manual will get revised to 90% like the Mach-E did.

I charge to 90% every time I charge, which is after every usage. 100% before a trip.

 

[GDN]

DISAPPOINTING Thread – @ChrisCon thanks for asking the question that is on so many of our minds. Unfortunately, I found nearly all of the responses to not be helpful. I was hoping for fact-based answers to the question, not a lot of opinions.

But, given the Lightning is so new, there’s probably not much fact-based data available. So, at this point, I’ll rely on the opinions of experts. Seems like @MickeyAO may know the most, and he suggests 30% to 80% so that’s what I’m going to go with until MickeyAO finishes his cell-level testing.

So many of the answers point to about the same thing. If you can't come here and participate and learn and draw conclusions from history and other leading brands then maybe you should just go read your manual and drive your truck.

This truck has been on the road barely 6 weeks. There are no Ford engineers on this site (at least haven't identified themselves). So just what did you expect?

 

[Roy2001]

I am going to charge to 100% on L2 every week.
90% for L3 DCFC - very rare.

Strongly suggest you to charge to 90-95% for daily driving in order to mitigate capacity degradation.

I used to have a laptop on power supply 100% of the time and after 3 years the battery won't hold the charge. Since then I set laptops to charge to 55% (as they connect to PSU all the time) and after years capacities are still good, including a XPS 9560 which is 6 years old.

 

[metroshot]

Strongly suggest you to charge to 90-95% for daily driving in order to mitigate capacity degradation.

I used to have a laptop on power supply 100% of the time and after 3 years the battery won't hold the charge. Since then I set laptops to charge to 55% (as they connect to PSU all the time) and after years capacities are still good, including a XPS 9560 which is 6 years old.

Well everyone is different and situations are varied for each person's decisions.

I will be charging my Lightning up to 100% every weekend.
No, I don't charge everyday so 100% should not "hurt" the battery because of the buffers.

L2 charge at 100% once a week is safe IMO due to the SOC buffers in place.

Only time I will limit charge to 90% or less is when I drive distance to DCFC (L3) chargers.

BTW: my laptop is 7 years old and has been on a charger since day 1 and still works like a champ. I am typing this reply on it - 84% charge remaining after 7 years is good for me.

 

[beatle]

Looks like your MacBook has either a 15% buffer, 15% degradation, or a mixture of the two after 720 cycles. Seems pretty normal either way.

My Model S has 5% degradation and about 8% buffer after 7 years and 474 charge cycles. I charge to 90% daily and 100% on trips.

My Galaxy S20 has 1% degradation and a 9% buffer after 2 years and 330 charge cycles. I charge to 80 or 85% daily and rarely go above that.

A BMS without a full/empty buffer will boast longer battery life initially and then take its toll on longevity, often conking the battery out much sooner. A lot of consumer electronics are now building buffers into their software regardless of what the manufacturer does. My laptop now offers an option in BIOS to limit the max charge, and Android does the same.

With a sizable buffer you can probably charge the truck to 100% daily with no issues, but why bother maxing it out for daily use?

 

[Jerry The Cowboy]

I guess I was just thinking about minimizing overall charging cycles. The difference between 15 and 30% minimum is one days worth of commute, which defers the need to charge by 1 day between charges. Although TBH have not yet dug into the wealth of knowledge here re: EV batteries and best practices for longevity

Sorry if someone else already answered this.
1 (one) charge cycle is not counted each time you charge and discharge, but rather is the equivalent of one charge cycle per complete 100% depletion and replenishment of charge related to a given battery pack's capacity, regardless of how many times the battery was charged and discharged, assuming each charge/discharge cycle was not 100%
To use the waterglass analogy, if you fill an empty waterglass to the top, this is one complete fill (or charge) cycle. If you drink some and then fill again, then drink some more and fill again, a complete fill (or charge) is like drinking a little and filling a little until the overall amount is equal to a full glass, even though you drank and filled several times.

 

[metroshot]

.....

With a sizable buffer you can probably charge the truck to 100% daily with no issues, but why bother maxing it out for daily use?

Ford builds a SOC buffer onto the charger so that you can't really / truly charge to 100% capacity - I know that it really is less than 100% as the onboard chargers cut out well before then.

So after reading the owner's manual, I figured there was a reason why everyone was citing 80%, 90%, et al - found that Ford just says to charge just under 100% using L1/L2 overnight for longevity.

I knew Ford would never "allow" someone to charge to true 100% because they built in charge buffers for the on-board chargers.

The mysterious 80% figure seems to come from either Chevy/Bolt EV fires or the Ford recommendation for DCFC (L3).

So if it makes everyone happy, I'll charge at 99.9% on L2 - once a week.

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