Ford's Important Tip For Driving Your Lightning in the Cold: Preconditioning / Pre-Heat Your Battery

[TaxmanHog]

Since his charge window closes at 5:00, and he departs at 5:45, he’ll need to set the departure time no later than 5:00 if he uses the Emporia to schedule. Because the EVSE will not make power available for preconditioning outside its charge window.

The starting point needs to be monitored if it's not early enough [1am] to get full charge and departure conditioning finished during winter conditions.

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[queuewho]

I just charge it before I go because I don't have a set schedule when I go somewhere. Obviously if you commute every day, the scheduled stuff seems fine. They just don't have a button to precondition like they should.

 

[Peddyr]

I would adjust the Ford charging profiles so that it charges anytime while plugged in, you can still have a max SOC = 85% or whatever works for your needs.

Then use the time restrictions programmed into the Emporia so that it provide the truck power according to your schedule, make power available past your departure time so that you can either use the remote start or departure timer to precondition to the last minute, if you use departure timer, remember to give a 30 minute buffer before leave time so that your heated wheel works during the morning drive.

Also if using the departure time, give additional time at the start so that battery warming and charging goals can be met, potentially 45-60 more minutes.

Wow it takes that long to precondition? Thank you for the advice sir

 

[TaxmanHog]

Wow it takes that long to precondition? Thank you for the advice sir

Preconditioning battery warming phase can run in the depth of winter 30-60 minutes, 9.5Kw of energy going to the PTC heater with the balance to charger inverter, which will slowly begin charging as the temps rise the balance of energy will shift to the inverter to ramp up the state of charge. So this phase would be at 1am to make sure it's safe to start the charging.

Then later in the morning if you want the battery and cabin ready for 5:45 the truck will compute when it needs to begin the battery warming phase for your leave time, and finally the cabin warming follows. be aware of the steering wheel warmer glitch, that's why I build a period of sleep time.

Using your requirements to be ready for 5:45, I'd actually tell it to be ready for 5:10 or 5:15, this gets the battery and cabin pre-warmed, and then when you're ready to actually depart, start the truck and your heated wheel should fire up quickly.

BTW, is your charging window tied to a Time of Use (TOU) requirement by the utility?

 

[Peddyr]

BTW, is your charging window tied to a Time of Use (TOU) requirement by the utility?

I wish Eversource used TOU but sadly they don't. Thanks again for the advice, I set my departure time for 5:15 tomorrow so we shall see how it goes.

 

[RickLightning]

Why set it for 5:15 if departure time is 5:45?

 

[Maquis]

Why set it for 5:15 if departure time is 5:45?

That’s a workaround for the heated steering wheel not working if you drive immediately after preconditioning.

If the preconditioning event ends sufficiently before you drive, the steering wheel heat works.

 

[TaxmanHog]

Wow it takes that long to precondition? Thank you for the advice sir

Expanding on this question, here is the results of my plugged in pre-conditioning test yesterday, at the time the outside temperature was ~30° I set the departure time for 8:00 am, the truck determined that it should begin the conditioning process at 7:14am at the time my SOC was 90% from Tuesday's charging session.

This is a screen grab at 7:15 am when peak energy was established at 11.9KW, soon after it slowed to apx. 9.8KW

The initial session reached a peak of 18KW then paused for a few minutes, then started up again, the battery got a tiny [1%] boost to 91% during this period while the majority of energy was used to by the PTC to warm the battery earlier.

These shots are from 7:45 when energy was flowing at the rate of 17.8KW, then 7:59 just before departure goal is to be reached, note for several minutes prior to this point the rate of energy consumption slowed to 3.8KW, basically idling the PTC and running the cabin fans. After idling for 15 minutes the pre-conditioning phase stopped and the truck shut off ~8:16 am

This is the total energy consumed to condition the pack & cabin include extra 15 minutes of idle time, 9.24 KWH, the SOC remained at 91% during this phase, but notice the extra range of 10 miles due to warmer battery.

Our actual plan was to leave at 8:50 am, so I let the truck sit for 15 minutes, then initiated the Remote Start @ 8:35 am, to do the last phase warming the cabin, seats and steering wheel. After I unplugged the truck at 8:45, it reported I had consumed 9.7 KWH of energy in total for a cost of $2.90

Our day of short trips, amounted to a whopping 16 miles on Wednesday, this was over 6 start/stop cycles as we made various visits, ending at 86% with a remaining range of 246 miles.

The replenishment charge at the end of the day was 5.5 KWH, grand total energy of 15.192 KWH or $4.53 to travel 16 miles at a rate of 28.3 cents a mile, about what it was costing me in the old PSD F250, so for SHORT HAUL trips, the battery condition effort is a huge waste of energy. A simple remote start 10-15 prior to leaving will get your cabin comfortable at a minimal hit to energy if unplugged and if plugged in preserving the minor range impact.

Battery preconditioning yields its benefits when you're traveling long distances and want that extra energy for more range and addition on the road cabin conditioning, otherwise use the remote start.

 

[TaxmanHog]

Today I was hoping to do a comparison test with the use of departure time while unplugged, I set a leave time for actual leave time at 8:45, but the process only kicks off at 5 minutes prior to leave time, my wife was anxious to get to her dentist appointment earlier than I planned, so when we went out to the truck at 8:39, it hadn't even started the process yet, I was anticipating it would already be started 15 minutes prior, as I approached the truck it just clicked on to preconditioning phase at 8:40, so the whole tested was scuttled. I hit he push to start button, backed out, then shut down the truck while the wife got in, then restarted the truck, hoping I would get the heated wheel to work.

Cabin was chilly, overnight temps were milder and about 40 degrees so by about 3 minutes into the trip things were beginning to warm up, seats and wheel were fine.

After letting her out for the dental visit, I remained in the parking lot, programmed a new departure time for 9:10 to observe minute by minute what is happening while sitting there, shut down the truck and patiently waited, 8:55 & 9:00 no activity, then at 9:05 the dash lit up with the orange information box advising to press start when ready to drive, I left it alone, the blower motor, seat warmer and steering wheel did not run or warm-up through the goal time of 9:10. I let it continue until 9:15 when the wife was ready to leave, no appreciable warming at all, I pressed to start, then shut down, open/closed driver door, dash slept, then started normally.

BTW, I left a recorded report for @Ford Motor Company to analyze, stating my earlier results (before I understood how short the departure run cycle of 5 minutes is prior to leave time).

IMHO, this is still an issue that others [ @sotek2345 or @Maquis ?? ]studied and reported about extensively last year!!

 

[Maquis]

Today I was hoping to do a comparison test with the use of departure time while unplugged, I set a leave time for actual leave time at 8:45, but the process only kicks off at 5 minutes prior to leave time, my wife was anxious to get to her dentist appointment earlier than I planned, so when we went out to the truck at 8:39, it hadn't even started the process yet, I was anticipating it would already be started 15 minutes prior, as I approached the truck it just clicked on to preconditioning phase at 8:40, so the whole tested was scuttled. I hit he push to start button, backed out, then shut down the truck while the wife got in, then restarted the truck, hoping I would get the heated wheel to work.

Cabin was chilly, overnight temps were milder and about 40 degrees so by about 3 minutes into the trip things were beginning to warm up, seats and wheel were fine.

After letting her out for the dental visit, I remained in the parking lot, programmed a new departure time for 9:10 to observe minute by minute what is happening while sitting there, shut down the truck and patiently waited, 8:55 & 9:00 no activity, then at 9:05 the dash lit up with the orange information box advising to press start when ready to drive, I left it alone, the blower motor, seat warmer and steering wheel did not run or warm-up through the goal time of 9:10. I let it continue until 9:15 when the wife was ready to leave, no appreciable warming at all, I pressed to start, then shut down, open/closed driver door, dash slept, then started normally.

BTW, I left a recorded report for @Ford Motor Company to analyze, stating my earlier results (before I understood how short the departure run cycle of 5 minutes is prior to leave time).

IMHO, this is still an issue that others [ @sotek2345 or @Maquis ?? ]studied and reported about extensively last year!!

That sounds really messed up. I’d expect the truck to behave exactly as if you remote started at T-minus 5 minutes.

For the record, I don’t think I’ve ever tried using a departure time when not plugged in.

 

[Peddyr]

Today I was hoping to do a comparison test with the use of departure time while unplugged, I set a leave time for actual leave time at 8:45, but the process only kicks off at 5 minutes prior to leave time, my wife was anxious to get to her dentist appointment earlier than I planned, so when we went out to the truck at 8:39, it hadn't even started the process yet, I was anticipating it would already be started 15 minutes prior, as I approached the truck it just clicked on to preconditioning phase at 8:40, so the whole tested was scuttled. I hit he push to start button, backed out, then shut down the truck while the wife got in, then restarted the truck, hoping I would get the heated wheel to work.

Cabin was chilly, overnight temps were milder and about 40 degrees so by about 3 minutes into the trip things were beginning to warm up, seats and wheel were fine.

After letting her out for the dental visit, I remained in the parking lot, programmed a new departure time for 9:10 to observe minute by minute what is happening while sitting there, shut down the truck and patiently waited, 8:55 & 9:00 no activity, then at 9:05 the dash lit up with the orange information box advising to press start when ready to drive, I left it alone, the blower motor, seat warmer and steering wheel did not run or warm-up through the goal time of 9:10. I let it continue until 9:15 when the wife was ready to leave, no appreciable warming at all, I pressed to start, then shut down, open/closed driver door, dash slept, then started normally.

BTW, I left a recorded report for @Ford Motor Company to analyze, stating my earlier results (before I understood how short the departure run cycle of 5 minutes is prior to leave time).

IMHO, this is still an issue that others [ @sotek2345 or @Maquis ?? ]studied and reported about extensively last year!!

I was cursing your name this morning. Did you hear me down in MA? LOL...I'm kidding of course. I noticed this as well. I actually pushed my charging time back about an hour to leave time for my truck to fully precondition per your advice. When I came out this morning, nothing. I looked at the Ford app and it just showed the charging had completed. Mentioned nothing about pre-conditioning like it had in the past. I knew something wasn't kosher. Is this a wide spread issue maybe? Definitely not good for my battery consumption on the way in.

 

[TaxmanHog]

For the record, I don’t think I’ve ever tried using a departure time when not plugged in.

OK, must have been another user, now that I think of it might be our member that works in Dearborn, he has a longish commute in the cold @Pioneer74

 

[TaxmanHog]

I was cursing your name this morning. Did you hear me down in MA? LOL...I'm kidding of course. I noticed this as well. I actually pushed my charging time back about an hour to leave time for my truck to fully precondition per your advice. When I came out this morning, nothing. I looked at the Ford app and it just showed the charging had completed. Mentioned nothing about pre-conditioning like it had in the past. I knew something wasn't kosher. Is this a wide spread issue maybe? Definitely not good for my battery consumption on the way in.

Sorry about that, my ears were indeed ringing .... dispensing advice with sure confidence only to have the MOCO fall on it's IT face and leave us all in the dust.

Likely another bug in the system, no idea if it's server or truck side issues.

 

[Peddyr]

Sorry about that, my ears were indeed ringing .... dispensing advice with sure confidence only to have the MOCO fall on it's IT face and leave us all in the dust.

Likely another bug in the system, no idea if it's server or truck side issues.

Please don't apologize. I've learned more about my Lightning from you and a few others than I ever could scouring the interwebs. The weird thing is that it worked perfectly the first day I set it up. I set up my charging time and departure time in the app, so I'm going to delete them both and try to configure it in the truck and see if it makes a different. I'm WFH tomorrow so no commute in, but that just means I have more time to monkey around with it.

 

[TaxmanHog]

I set up my charging time and departure time in the app, so I'm going to delete them both and try to configure it in the truck and see if it makes a different. I'm WFH tomorrow so no commute in, but that just means I have more time to monkey around with it.

At the end of todays travels, I completely deleted the Thursday morning setting and built a new one for Friday morning in the truck, IIRC some folks have had better experiences creating it in the truck and not trying to edit it with Fordpass, technically we should be able to do that without issue, but I suspect something get's lost in the transmission, so I'm not touching it in Fordpass now that it's set.

While tinkering with the parameters for Friday (in truck) I noticed that once it's created and saved, if you try tweaking it (I forgot to set the WARM setting) that the save button remains disabled, so I cleared the settings and re input the time and condition values I wanted, saved and will leave it alone.

FIngers crossed for a good result Friday morning!!

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