Baffled and looking for advice, range vs plans

[LightingFast]

Hi forum members,

I have been poking around but so far I can't match reality to what I am reading. I will lean into the collective wisdom and support found here.

Background first. We have had our Lariat ER since late June and have put ~4200 miles so far. Actually my wife has had much more time in than me as she started taking some trips for business ranging in the 120-250 mile range. The trip2 log, which is still running from the dealership, shows us with a cumulative average of 2.1mi/kWh.

Using the CSP at home she will charge to 90% (or 100% recently due to the behavior I will describe). I was surprised to hear some of what she was experiencing and then saw it first hand the other day when returning from a trip to the beach.

Several times she has been dragged down to ~1% SoC in the truck with warnings starting to go off. These were on trips from Raleigh, NC to VA Beach which is a bit over 200 miles. Stopping for a partial fast charge in Emporia (110 miles) then another overnight lvl2 charge and/or some DCFC in VA Beach. She is just never getting the range that the dash says she should get. She is not an aggressive nor super speedy driver.

Then I had the chance to see some hard and fast numbers. We went to see some friends at Carolina Beach. This is 145 miles from our house. Leaving the house at 99% and 328 miles of range with highway driving in 70F air. The truck gets down there with 41% but has it only 112 miles of range. Chargers were hard to come by but we had time so just plugged it into a 120 outlet at lvl1. By Sunday we had it up to 61% and ~160 miles.

Now this should have gotten her home pretty easily (I was riding my motorcycle) but when putting in our home address it said it would need a charge! OK, not easy to find but we went together out of the way to a ChargePoint and got up to 68% @ ~190 miles. The calculated distance was only 124 miles and should have been 60 miles of margin.

Arriving home there was only 4% and 14 miles according to the truck. Less than 25% of the predicted margin!

How in the heck is it calculating some of these ranges?
Are we doing something wrong with the charging, nav, driving?
Why does it tell us to charge when we *should* have 40 miles of range margin (which we didn't I surmise later)?
Is there a remaining SoC (i.e. arrive with %) that it is calculating in? I looked in the settings and cannot find one.
We have no weight, camper etc. Mild weather, etc.

The range just seems abysmal and my wife has no confidence in how/when/where to charge since she is seldom getting anywhere close to the initial ranges being promoted. The 1% events have really scared her, as we just don't have stellar charging infra here in the NC/VA area.

OK, that is a lot to ask you to take in. I would really appreciate some things to watch out for and how to plan our drives for lower stress and better range.

Thank you!

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[Heliian]

Welcome to the forum. Take a search through the threads about the guess o meter.

The only reliable method is your mi/kwh and brain.

Also, the lightning, like most ev's, gets poorer range at highway speed. Your guess o meter is probably high from light city driving and then takes a hit on the highway.

 

[Revenge]

What is your trip kW/mi?

 

[luebri]

The only reliable method is your mi/kwh and brain.

Agreed*

*Terms and conditions apply based on quality of brain.

 

[Maquis]

Headwinds and elevation changes make significant differences in range. I did an approximate 200 mile round trip a couple weeks ago. Charged to 100%. Outbound, no wind, arrived at 58%. DCFC’d to 68% just for comfort margin. Return 30 degrees colder and 10-15 mph headwind. Arrived home at 10% SoC. So I used 42% outbound, 58% on the return. Same number of miles each way - same highway.

 

[LightingFast]

OK. Thank you. I have been reading about the GOM but wasn't 100% sure what I was reading. This starts to sound like what I am experiencing.

I will actually drive this coming weekend to VA Beach where I can plan/plot/watch and apply my Brain Quality (powered by bourbon just not when driving) to the experience.

Is Ford navigation still the best likely approach these days or are there better mapping apps to plot a course that work in Auto/Carplay?

I will update this thread after I have some more detailed long distance experience!

 

[Heliian]

mapping apps

Plugshare is great.

 

[The Weatherman]

I have learned to ignore the GOM and I use a rough guess of 260mi max range. My long trip monitor shows 2.1mi/kWh but it does actually vary based on weather and road conditions (particularly elevation changes/stop and go).

 

[Maquis]

OK. Thank you. I have been reading about the GOM but wasn't 100% sure what I was reading. This starts to sound like what I am experiencing.

I will actually drive this coming weekend to VA Beach where I can plan/plot/watch and apply my Brain Quality (powered by bourbon just not when driving) to the experience.

Is Ford navigation still the best likely approach these days or are there better mapping apps to plot a course that work in Auto/Carplay?

I will update this thread after I have some more detailed long distance experience!

You can’t go wrong on bourbon power!

I use A Better Route Planner, along with PlugSahre.

 

[H3IMDALL]

We averaged 2.1kwhr per mile on a 5k mile trip around the west in the winter .. crossing several mountain ranges (Seattle -> Santa Fe -> okc and back). Only dicey area was Moab -> Santa Fe , but plan for enough stops and its fine .. and try not to drive above 70mph.

 

[AZT9]

My regular drive to work is over 200 miles on the freeway spanning an empty desert with regular cross wind/ headwind and a posted speed of 75 mph. From day one even driving under those conditions, I would average 1.5-1.7 kwh/mi netting me about 200-240 miles of range on my ER. However, Driving the kids around and doing honeydews around town nets me 2.1-2.6 kwh/mi. As others have said, GOM is junk. I used to be great! Very accurate. Then for some reason ford decided to update it to default to the max theoretical range

 

[RickLightning]

Hi forum members,

I have been poking around but so far I can't match reality to what I am reading. I will lean into the collective wisdom and support found here.

Background first. We have had our Lariat ER since late June and have put ~4200 miles so far. Actually my wife has had much more time in than me as she started taking some trips for business ranging in the 120-250 mile range. The trip2 log, which is still running from the dealership, shows us with a cumulative average of 2.1mi/kWh.

Using the CSP at home she will charge to 90% (or 100% recently due to the behavior I will describe). I was surprised to hear some of what she was experiencing and then saw it first hand the other day when returning from a trip to the beach.

Several times she has been dragged down to ~1% SoC in the truck with warnings starting to go off. These were on trips from Raleigh, NC to VA Beach which is a bit over 200 miles. Stopping for a partial fast charge in Emporia (110 miles) then another overnight lvl2 charge and/or some DCFC in VA Beach. She is just never getting the range that the dash says she should get. She is not an aggressive nor super speedy driver.

Then I had the chance to see some hard and fast numbers. We went to see some friends at Carolina Beach. This is 145 miles from our house. Leaving the house at 99% and 328 miles of range with highway driving in 70F air. The truck gets down there with 41% but has it only 112 miles of range. Chargers were hard to come by but we had time so just plugged it into a 120 outlet at lvl1. By Sunday we had it up to 61% and ~160 miles.

Now this should have gotten her home pretty easily (I was riding my motorcycle) but when putting in our home address it said it would need a charge! OK, not easy to find but we went together out of the way to a ChargePoint and got up to 68% @ ~190 miles. The calculated distance was only 124 miles and should have been 60 miles of margin.

Arriving home there was only 4% and 14 miles according to the truck. Less than 25% of the predicted margin!

How in the heck is it calculating some of these ranges?
Are we doing something wrong with the charging, nav, driving?
Why does it tell us to charge when we *should* have 40 miles of range margin (which we didn't I surmise later)?
Is there a remaining SoC (i.e. arrive with %) that it is calculating in? I looked in the settings and cannot find one.
We have no weight, camper etc. Mild weather, etc.

The range just seems abysmal and my wife has no confidence in how/when/where to charge since she is seldom getting anywhere close to the initial ranges being promoted. The 1% events have really scared her, as we just don't have stellar charging infra here in the NC/VA area.

OK, that is a lot to ask you to take in. I would really appreciate some things to watch out for and how to plan our drives for lower stress and better range.

Thank you!

2.1 is the average. Some could be at 3.1, some at 1.1...

Know what miles per kilowatt hour you normally get driving at the speed you normally drive. Let's assume that is 2.1. Plan your trip at 1.9. In winter, subtract 20%, plan your trip at 1.5.

We get 2.8 to 2.9 on the highway with our Mach-E. On a long trip, we hit 20mph headwinds on a leg. Driving 75 is now 95 to the car. We dropped to 2.1 AVERAGE on that leg from 2.8. So we were getting like 1.6...

GOM didn't know you were planning a trip. Put in the destination and watch that 328 disappear. It would have changed to 75 or so. What's 2.1 x 131? 275. Same as 112/41٪. So you got exactly 2.1. Same as Trip 2...

Plan your trips with A Better Route Planner. It is very conservative, you can adjust it as you learn it. Plan on getting the numbers I gave you above, and see how that works.

Charge to 100% before any trip that is going to use more than 50٪ of your range. Set a departure time, plugged in, to warm the battery before you leave. This gets you better range on the first leg.

Scout high speed chargers ahead of time, looking each up in PlugShare when you plan AND again day of trip.

 

[LightingFast]

I gotta say a big thank you to all the hopped in and provided such great information! This forum is awesome. I was pretty confident that I would get myself sorted out here.

Now that I have read across these answers I can see exactly what has been happening. Great math there @RickLightning and it lines up with what I was suspicious of.

Bourbon and jokes aside, I am actually a computer engineer and not shabby with the proverbial abacus. What I lacked was enough practical first hand experience. My wife wants to, and deserves to, drive the vehicle like, well, a vehicle. Calculations are not what she tends to spend her time on. Smoothing out the anxiety and explaining in practical terms what to expect will start to regain some trust. She's watching that crappy GOM thinking that Ford would not guide her so poorly.

We are learning and I think it will just get better and easier pretty soon with these learnings.

Much appreciation!

 

[cal]

How fast you drive is far more important than you might realize. Just like ICE the faster you go the quicker your fuel runs out. Only more so in an EV of any make. If you did your trips averaging 80mph ... well we'd all be applauding you. If you did it at 50mph we'd all be pointing you to service. It really makes that much of a difference.

 

[WhipSticks]

Two other things that might help: 1) precondition the truck before leaving, while plugged in, and 2) understand that EVs get better range running errands around town and in traffic than they do on the highway. This is because of both the impact of regenerative breaking and the impact of wind resistance as was pointed out above. If you have 4200 miles and half of that is city based, your 2.1 mi/kWh partially reflects that better in town, stoplight range. Your highway range will be lower.

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