Cold Cold Weather tips

[TMND]

Found this on [banned site] info is for Mach E’s, but I’m assuming pertains to us as well. For all I know this info might be on here somewhere, but I found it useful so figured I’d share.

 

[TaxmanHog]

This forum has winter tips

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

 

[TMND]

So purely out of curiosity, guessing it wasn’t gonna work, I tested the method of just heating the battery by turning cabin controls off in my departure time OFF plug to see if anything happened at all. Oddly enough, the cabin controls came on anyways and started heating the cabin to 74° although it was a brand new departure time I had created and double checked that indeed cabin temperature was off battery was cold as a stone.

 

[TaxmanHog]

I was going to experiment with strategy C, I have never done that, previously.

Normally I use strategy Z in the deep of winter, delayed charging to early am, then a remote start when I'm getting ready to go out, doing this 15 minutes prior to leave time.

In my personal use, the extra performance for a typical 10 miles of daily driving isn't worth the extra 5 to 6 kWh to warm the battery directly with departure timer.

 

[TMND]

I’m going with that one as well. My morning commute is ten blocks so my only reason for worrying about it at all is battery health.

 

[Pioneer74]

I’m going with that one as well. My morning commute is ten blocks so my only reason for worrying about it at all is battery health.

Cold doesn't affect battery health. Extreme heat does.

 

[Maybe Going EV]

Nice to see that while slow, 120 volts does heat the battery.

 

[TaxmanHog]

This morning I did a modified strategy C, I don't plan on driving it today, but wanted to measure the actual energy used to precondition just the battery, so I set the cabin conditioning to off and I did not use the remote start for cabin conditioning, charging was inhibited with a lowered SOC goal of 80%

The scheme required a departure time of 7:50 am.
The truck decided at 7:04 am to begin warming the battery, this phase ran for 16 minutes until 7:20 am. The truck did not take any additional energy from 7:45 to 8:00 am as would be normally seen if cabin conditioning were requested. I sent 2.59 kWh of energy to the truck to warm the battery. The FCSP insights log recorded a similar amount of energy, it's usually within 1% of Emporia. The PTC and pumps draw a hair above 9 KW.

It was a chilly 29 degrees this morning my garage is not heated, Ford pass indicated at the start of the process that it was "Preparing Cabin and Battery for Departure" given my settings only battery preparation was occuring.

When the task was complete, the message changed to "Charge Complete" though no charging actually occurred, and no historic charge record was created for this pre-conditioning activity.

I'm going to repeat this process on a deep freeze day to see how much energy is used in the worst of conditions.

Maybe someone with similar equipment {Emporia Vue2 or Vue3} in more severe climate could run a test or two.

A member with a 2024 model using the heat pump technology could do a test as well!!

 

[21st Century Truck]

Based on my 75,000 miles with the Mach E, including in the depth of two Winters in the Colorado Rockies, in northern New England and in northern Wisconsin, traction battery preconditioning on the Mach E in really cold weather helped a LOT for range if I was driving a long way that day.

Same goes for pre-setting a DC fast charging point on the Ford OEM NAV screen during Winter travels, which also preconditions the traction battery for DC fast charging in the final 30+ minutes of approaching a DC Fast charging point and thus makes DC energy charging sessions in cold weather significantly faster.

A related Winter juice-conserving hack I used often with the Mach E was to heat up the cabin every time while DC Fast charging... this used the DC Fast juice and not the traction battery juice to pump up cabin temperature. The trick was to set the GO departure cabin preheat time for about 5 minutes within the car's "...will reach XX% of battery" indicated time on the IPC right after the DC Fast charging session had begun. Then, the cabin heating off the DC Fast charging hose would usually start 20 - 25 minutes prior to this departure time. Then, while driving the Mach E I kept the fan on minimum and shut the cabin heat off while wearing a sweatshirt.

Obviously, these two points apply for longer trips and not so much for short commutes. And likely, they'll work for the Lightning in a similar fashion. This'll be my 1st Lightning Winter.

 

[rockhead]

'24 Flash with heatpump for @TaxmanHog ... -8°C overnight departure and cabin preheat using 5->6 kwh based on low precision monitoring from BC Hydro.

 

[Jseis]

I've laid down 85,000 BEV commute miles (‘21 MME, ‘23 LTE) in the last 3.5 years. Since I work an inside-outside job and commute on winding 2-lane blacktop I dress knowing I can be out of the car at anytime. What heat I need the most is for window de-fog as winter brings 35-45 degree mornings. I use 1 bar seat heat, fan auto 1 bar & temp set to 65 degrees. This keeps climate use to around 5%. The biggest variable then is speed & wind. pre-con to warm. Winter average is 2.3 midnight/kWh. Summer is 2.6. Long term average 2.4.

 

[rockhead]

Winter average is 2.3 midnight/kWh.

Oh come on MAN how many kilometers per midnight ?

 

[Adventureboy]

One important note on Departure Times/Preconditioning: It appears the truck prioritizes charging to SOC over preconditioning. Make sure you have enough time to get to your SOC before your preconditioning window hits or it may not precondition. The preconditioning window can be up to 2 hours before your departure time. This is most noticeable when charging to 100% since it does a cell/pack balance between 99%-->100% SOC. If you are unsure if you have the time for 100%, set SOC to 95% for more reliable preconditioning.

I take my truck to 100% at least once every couple of months. It had been about 2 months since I did this, but this weekend it took 3 hours to go from 99%-->100% due to the slow balancing process. I'm pretty sure this would have killed preconditioning had it been set in that 3 hour period. If you charge to 100% more frequently, it will take less time for the 99%-->100% balancing process.

 

[TaxmanHog]

One important note on Preconditioning: It appears the truck prioritizes charging to SOC over preconditioning. Make sure you have enough time to get to your SOC before your preconditioning window hits or it may not precondition. This is most noticeable when charging to 100% since it does a cell/pack balance between 99%-->100% SOC. If you are unsure if you have the time for 100%, set SOC to 95% for more reliable preconditioning.

I take my truck to 100% at least once every couple of months. This weekend it took 3 hours to go from 99%-->100% due to the slow balancing process. I'm pretty sure this would have killed preconditioning had it been set in that 3 hour period.

I've noticed the block off of battery warming and cabin pre-conditioning when at or near 99-100%, this why I'm now primarily going to 95% for long journeys, this allows the battery & cabin warming procedures to work in a timely fashion.

 

[TaxmanHog]

'24 Flash with heatpump for @TaxmanHog ... -8°C overnight departure and cabin preheat using 5->6 kwh based on low precision monitoring from BC Hydro.

Good information, I seem to remember similar maybe a little more kWh's in prior winters on my '22 truck with old style PTC.

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