Reduced power - no warning lights

[mq019]

Any idea why I would have reduced power but no warning lights or messages?

I did shut the truck down and restart - no change.

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[TheWoo]

It's both 31 degrees and your state of charge is getting low. As you get to the bottom of the battery, power is reduced. In cold weather, especially if it's been sitting for a while, power is reduced.

There's no issue, no problem driving, etc. You would never notice that power differential unless you were really launching it.

 

[mq019]

Thanks - I thought it might be related to temp/SOC but figured they would give some kind of notification.

Definitely wasn't launching. Lol

Wouldn't have known if I hadn't just glanced down and noticed.

 

[TheWoo]

Thanks - I thought it might be related to temp/SOC but figured they would give some kind of notification.

Definitely wasn't launching. Lol

Wouldn't have known if I hadn't just glanced down and noticed.

There's no warning unless there's actually something malfunctioning that's causing the power reduction.

 

[mq019]

Makes sense - I guess they're just hoping no one notices, and maybe most folks wouldn't.

Would be nice to just see a notification that power is reduced due to temp/soc or something like that. Seems like they have messages for every single other thing!

 

[TaxmanHog]

You should have gotten the plug in to keep the battery conditioned / charged / warm etc message when you put the truck in park.

Otherwise, your only getting the power limiter warning as a subtle message that the "Performance" is reduced, wholy related to folks who like to do hole-shots and shame Vettes & Z28's

 

[mq019]

You should have gotten the plug in to keep the battery conditioned / charged / warm etc message when you put the truck in park.

Otherwise, your only getting the power limiter warning as a subtle message that the "Performance" is reduced, wholy related to folks who like to do hole-shots and shame Vettes & Z28's

No messages about plugging in or reduced power. It was on the charger all night so it had access to power for thermal management.

Next question will be why so low if on the charger all night? Well....

Truck was plugged in all night - charged to 35% (limit I set). I will only drive maybe 20 miles today, will set it to charge to 35% again overnight, and will charge it to 80% when I get to work tomorrow morning (free L2 charging at work).

I try to mostly charge at work since it's free, but I do plug in every night and top it off to the next 5% just so that it has access to power for keeping the battery warm and pre- heat in the morning without hitting the battery. I always charge it to at least 35% so it's not sitting low. On a normal week usually I charge to 80% on Monday at work, Tuesday, Wed, and Thursday, it goes down as I drive, with a slight charge over night just so it's on power for thermal management. Then Friday at work I charge to 80% for weekend driving.

 

[TaxmanHog]

Truck was plugged in all night - charged to 35% (limit I set).

How do you accomplish 35% limit?
The charging profile in Fordpass won't let you set below 50%
Do you set a short time frame that limits charging, ie 1 hour?

as in this example?

 

[Yellow Buddy]

No messages about plugging in or reduced power. It was on the charger all night so it had access to power for thermal management.

Next question will be why so low if on the charger all night? Well....

Truck was plugged in all night - charged to 35% (limit I set). I will only drive maybe 20 miles today, will set it to charge to 35% again overnight, and will charge it to 80% when I get to work tomorrow morning (free L2 charging at work).

I try to mostly charge at work since it's free, but I do plug in every night and top it off to the next 5% just so that it has access to power for keeping the battery warm and pre- heat in the morning without hitting the battery. I always charge it to at least 35% so it's not sitting low. On a normal week usually I charge to 80% on Monday at work, Tuesday, Wed, and Thursday, it goes down as I drive, with a slight charge over night just so it's on power for thermal management. Then Friday at work I charge to 80% for weekend driving.

It could’ve finished charging at say 3am and if you don’t precondition that is plenty of time for the battery to be cold again by 8am.

At 91% reduction and 31F it was likely cold enough to reduce power at start up but not cold enough to kick in heaters to warm the battery. The Lightning avoids vampire losses that other EVs experience because of this.

Set preconditioning schedules to avoid this and the truck will kick on to warm everything up.

If you see significant power reductions then something else may be wrong. We’re talking closer to half.

 

[TaxmanHog]

Next question will be why so low if on the charger all night?

It's the low SOC and outside temps that cause your 91% available power, nothing to worry about as stated by others earlier in the thread.

Increase the temps or the SOC and that will return to 100%

 

[TaxmanHog]

If you're using a limited time frame third party EVSE or Ford's, once you restrict energy available for charging you're also restricting energy for battery conditioning, you won't get ANY battery warming in such a routine, that's why you continue to see limited power output.

 

[TaxmanHog]

Aside from the OP's concerns, I want to mention an interesting issue when a battery is charged to 100%, the truck will not draw substantial energy ie. ~9KW to warm the battery.

I noticed this phenomena yesterday morning while preparing for a long day trip at 8:32 am I finished bumping my battery from 95% to 100% it took 37 minutes to reach this max SOC, temps were in the mid 30's

I programmed a departure time for 11:20 am actual roll time 11:35 am to do the final pack warm up and cabin heating.

The truck decided it should begin the battery warming process at 10:48 am, but the truck only pulled a rate of ~20 watts of energy from the EVSE until 11:31 am, 43 minutes nets to 14 watt hours.

At 11:31 the PTC fired up and for about 3 minutes pulled ~3 KW until I unplugged and started it up

I had 100% available energy to the motors, but I don't think I benefitted as much as I could have if I had left the battery at 95% and let preconditioning and last minute charging work it's multifaceted magic, allowing some energy to the PTC and the balance to the battery SOC.

I'm planning a departure test Monday morning, looking to optimize this for another trip coming soon, I want to see how the strategy works.

BTW,
I get why you're doing what your doing to optimize free charging at work, totally understandable, just don't fret over the 91% output limitation.

 

[mq019]

How do you accomplish 35% limit?
The charging profile in Fordpass won't let you set below 50%
Do you set a short time frame that limits charging, ie 1 hour?

as in this example?

I manually set a one time charge limit in the truck at the end of the day (because they won't let you set it via the app which is dumb).

 

[mq019]

If you're using a limited time frame third party EVSE or Ford's, once you restrict energy available for charging you're also restricting energy for battery conditioning, you won't get ANY battery warming in such a routine, that's why you continue to see limited power output.

Yeah - I know

I'm manually setting the one time charge limit on the truck specifically to work around this - wish they'd let us set via the app.

 

[TaxmanHog]

On the theme of the OP about reduced power no alerts or wrenches thrown.................

In the past couple of months, I've experienced a reduced power output briefly after starting the truck, yesterday was the latest observation.

I was preparing the truck for a long drive day, hitting several club events on four wheels instead of two with the damp, foggy & rain forecast.

I charged to 95% Friday night, then programmed a departure time event for t-minus 10 minutes from actual leave time. FCSP logged about 6.3 kWh to prepare the battery under moderate conditions 50's, I got the alert that the truck was ready to drive, went out to start her up, SOC picked up a percentage point, rolling out of the garage with 96%

As I put truck in drive I noticed power output limited to 56%!?

I shut her down, opened the door to clear the accessory mode, waited 30 seconds, then fingers crossed ..... I restarted the Lightning, she is now showing 100% available power at 96% SOC.

The rest of the evening went perfectly, no additional power reductions, truck performed well the entire night over 185 miles, topped up the truck at Tesla Franklin MA, desolate at 0037 in the morning, completed a 31% to 90% charge I stayed longer because it was cheap rate of 29c/kWh compared to home charging, no one was waiting and I had plenty of time to catch up on emails and text messages from club members.

So, this has happened twice that I recall after doing departure conditioning, I wonder what the cause is?

BTW, I hit a peak rate of ~168 KW about 1 minute from charge startup, used the new adapter that I received last week, worked perfectly, smooth fit, locking mechanism was secure while engaged with the CC1 port on the truck. Rate was 27c (before sales tax) after sales tax 29c, which matched the published rate on the Tesla app which I used to activate the session.

BTW2: No recent OTA updates that would have caused this issue.

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