Condition Battery While Traveling - Does it Matter

[TaxmanHog]

The problem with the sync nav is that the Tesla Superchargers don't show up. I live in Canada and drive into Minnesota a lot - often in the winter and its COLD COLD here - so I have NO WAY to precondition my battery when I am planning to stop at to my favorite Tesla Supercharger in Tofte, MN on my way to Minneapolis.

You could join @RaspPiDude in an experiment with tow/haul mode, being in the great white north you guys will have first crack at conditions to determine if this works with warming the battery as much as it does with cooling the battery.

https://www.f150lightningforum.com/...perature-faster-using-tow-haul-mode-🌡️.21558/

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[FirstF150InCasco]

Just need a precondition button - the nav thing is nearly unusable

I agree -- Ford Nav (by itself) is unusable. It makes crazy suggestions on how to get from A to B. It shows the road my camp is on in Maine going through the woods (when the path of the road was changed back when Truman was president.) It doesn't have so many of the features that Waze has. Etc.

That said, I'm happy that at some point between June 2022 when I got my 2022 ER Lariat and now, something changed (in Ford Nav? in Waze? In AirPlay?) that allows the Lightning to run both Waze and Ford Nav simultaneously. This was not possible back in the summer of 2022; when I started the second app, the Lightning would cancel the first app. I only recently discovered that both apps can run at the same time.

Now, with Nav silenced, I am using Waze / AirPlay for all navigation, speed traps, etc., and only using Ford Nav to tell me my percentage charge at my destination.

 

[thunderbayterry]

My NAV shows some Tesla Superchargers but a very limited set of them... nowhere near their true available number. Supposedly, from discussions on the sister Mach E forum, Ford Corporate is "working on this and aware of the issue"... NFI.

Really?!? This is the very first time I'm hearing this that SOME Tesla Superchargers show up on the factory FORD NAV!! Has anyone ELSE witnessed this yet?
This gives me hope - maybe they will "trickle in" to ALL of our NAVs over time?

 

[21st Century Truck]

Really?!? This is the very first time I'm hearing this that SOME Tesla Superchargers show up on the factory FORD NAV!! Has anyone ELSE witnessed this yet?
This gives me hope - maybe they will "trickle in" to ALL of our NAVs over time?

See my post #12 here.

 

[CavRider]

The problem with the sync nav is that the Tesla Superchargers don't show up. I live in Canada and drive into Minnesota a lot - often in the winter and its COLD COLD here - so I have NO WAY to precondition my battery when I am planning to stop at to my favorite Tesla Supercharger in Tofte, MN on my way to Minneapolis. What I plan to do is use the sync nav to navigate to a charger in Lutsen, MN - which is 9 miles away. Its just not an eloquent solution.

Just curious, do you also need an additional charging stop after Tofte before getting to the TC suburbs in the dead of winter?

 

[astrand1]

The problem with the sync nav is that the Tesla Superchargers don't show up. I live in Canada and drive into Minnesota a lot - often in the winter and its COLD COLD here - so I have NO WAY to precondition my battery when I am planning to stop at to my favorite Tesla Supercharger in Tofte, MN on my way to Minneapolis.

Copy that. Yes I agree there is no reason they could not have updated our maps to show superchargers. In the meantime what I do is find the closest fast charger to the supercharger that I can find and tell the nav to take me there then just go to the supercharger. It’s a workaround but better than nothing.

 

[TomB985]

I’ve been beating the drum about how useless preconditioning is, and it sounds like the OP has seen one or two of my posts about it.

To my thinking, the truck is preconditioning the battery when the coolant inlet temp changes after engaging the navigation. That shows the cooling system is altering its behavior to adjust the battery’s condition for charging. I’ve tried navigating to DC chargers at least 40-50 times, and I can count on one hand how many times I’ve seen the battery inlet temp respond.

I tried last February after an overnight cold soak at ~10º F and saw no change. I also tried during cross-country trips in May and September and only saw a change when the battery temp was above 93º F. Throttling starts to happen at 95-97º, so there’s precious little headroom after the charge starts before the cooling system gets overwhelmed and throttles down to 95-105 kW.

After the first DCFC of the day, I roll into the rest of my charging stops with a >90º battery that doesn’t hold full speed for very long. I get the 10-minute boost, then a minute of 140 kW, then down to 95-105 for the remainder. It’s a constant frustration of mine, but we’re far from the worst-charging EV on the road.

The most aggravating part for me is how easy this is to fix. Mom’s EV9 has a preconditioning button in the energy menu, along with a message on the battery’s temperature for fast charging. I’m not a software engineer, but this doesn’t seem like a hard problem to solve ~2.5 years after launch.

 

[thunderbayterry]

Just curious, do you also need an additional charging stop after Tofte before getting to the TC suburbs in the dead of winter?

Yes. There are two really good fast chargers in Pine City - one at the Circle K and an EA also. I think I could make it all the way to Minneapolis with one charge stop - in the summer time - if I used the Tesla Superchargers in Two Harbours, MN - but the SuperCharger in Tofte is by a nice little restaurant we like - and its a nice place to just walk around whereas the SuperCharger in Two Harbours is in the parking lot of a tractor store or something! LOL. So I do the two charging stops. We also have a favorite hotel we stay at now that has 6 EV chargers for free, so we always LEAVE for the trip home with a 100% charge - at no extra cost.

 

[EvanM]

Fortuitously, there is a completely useless |P| button directly beneath our screens. Ford could use that to precondition.

 

[21st Century Truck]

Really?!? This is the very first time I'm hearing this that SOME Tesla Superchargers show up on the factory FORD NAV!! Has anyone ELSE witnessed this yet?
This gives me hope - maybe they will "trickle in" to ALL of our NAVs over time?

Here is a screen of my 12-inch NAV with a CHARGERS search, filtered for the fastest DC Fast ones (yes, NAV can filter for charging speed). See the #10 selection - a Tesla Supercharger point at a Harris Teeter across town.

Of course, this fails to find the eight or nine Tesla Supercharger points closer to my location in my urban agglomeration.

 

[CavRider]

Yes. There are two really good fast chargers in Pine City - one at the Circle K and an EA also. I think I could make it all the way to Minneapolis with one charge stop - in the summer time - if I used the Tesla Superchargers in Two Harbours, MN - but the SuperCharger in Tofte is by a nice little restaurant we like - and its a nice place to just walk around whereas the SuperCharger in Two Harbours is in the parking lot of a tractor store or something! LOL. So I do the two charging stops. We also have a favorite hotel we stay at now that has 6 EV chargers for free, so we always LEAVE for the trip home with a 100% charge - at no extra cost.

Yes that Two Harbors location is in a hardware store parking lot. If you ever do use that one then take a short hike north on the bike path until you just get to the tree line there. You will find a combo bike/coffee shop that might be worth a try. Full disclosure - I have not ever stopped in there myself.

Spokengear Bike Shop

Cedar Coffee Co

 

[NeuroDawg]

You could join @RaspPiDude in an experiment with tow/haul mode, being in the great white north you guys will have first crack at conditions to determine if this works with warming the battery as much as it does with cooling the battery.

https://www.f150lightningforum.com/forum/threads/cool-down-high-battery-temperature-faster-using-tow-haul-mode-.21558/

I'm not sure we get cold enough here in the PNW. We only have lows below 40°F for a few weeks in the middle of winter.

 

[NeuroDawg]

I agree -- Ford Nav (by itself) is unusable. It makes crazy suggestions on how to get from A to B. It shows the road my camp is on in Maine going through the woods (when the path of the road was changed back when Truman was president.) It doesn't have so many of the features that Waze has. Etc.

That said, I'm happy that at some point between June 2022 when I got my 2022 ER Lariat and now, something changed (in Ford Nav? in Waze? In AirPlay?) that allows the Lightning to run both Waze and Ford Nav simultaneously. This was not possible back in the summer of 2022; when I started the second app, the Lightning would cancel the first app. I only recently discovered that both apps can run at the same time.

Now, with Nav silenced, I am using Waze / AirPlay for all navigation, speed traps, etc., and only using Ford Nav to tell me my percentage charge at my destination.

Are you aware that Apple Maps now communicates with the truck in CarPlay to show SOC at destination?

 

[TomB985]

Here is a screen of my 12-inch NAV with a CHARGERS search, filtered for the fastest DC Fast ones (yes, NAV can filter for charging speed). See the #10 selection - a Tesla Supercharger point at a Harris Teeter across town.

Of course, this fails to find the eight or nine Tesla Supercharger points closer to my location in my urban agglomeration.

The truck navigation will show Superchargers with built-in CCS adapters that are open to all EVs. No NACS adapter required, which is why they show up in the CCS filter in PlugShare.

Google “magic dock” to learn more. They’ve been around for a couple years.

 

[FirstF150InCasco]

Are you aware that Apple Maps now communicates with the truck in CarPlay to show SOC at destination?

Yes, but I much prefer Waze to Apple Maps.

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