I love this truck but GD!

[astrand1]

Rick….. I am fully capable of making sure I have enough charge at any given time on a PLANNED trip but 1 mile per1% no matter how you plan it is still unacceptable. I don’t look at the range. I look at the percent and that’s what I use. I know I need so much percent for so much. And as I’ve said multiple times now. This ain’t cold!!! We’re just scratching the surface here so I’m assuming that eventually it will be half a mile per one percent. And with the nearest town being 45 miles away from me, any kind of emergency situation this just will not work. And it would be moronic me to continue to try.

imagine after leaving home with a 100% charged battery and going to a hospital 45 miles away for an emergency room visit after getting stitched up and dealing with all the hassle of that you go “oh shoot I gotta hit a charger just to make it home” it’s not about it being the wrong truck for me. It’s the wrong truck for anybody that experiences what I would call a real winter.

Then what happens if a 40 mile an hour wind picks up halfway home all of a sudden what was enough charge to get home aint enough charge to get to the next turn.

I drove a brand new F150 ice while this was at the dealer super nice truck, but I did not like it….I love my lightning, but sometimes you gotta love them and leave them I guess

Well you could also get a cheap “beater” for winters and keep the lightning. It’s unfortunately not the right truck for all situations that’s for sure. My wife has a blazer ev and I have the lightning and we have an older escape hybrid as an extra car kind of a “just in case” but it’s nice insurance knowing it’s there.

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[TMND]

Really wanted this to be my last truck and drive a million miles on it

Do you have an OBD2 scanner? I'm curious of the pack temp as well as the battery coolant inlet/outlet temps and if it's functioning properly. I expected about 40% loss, from experience, but 60% is excessive.

no, the truck came with this, though I was hoping it was something to link up with a better route planner, but from looking up the numbers, all I can tell this is for is for tracking a vehicle previous owner must have not trusted his wife.

 

[inchman254]

TMND, I think you're right.

There's no single solution that will cover every situation and you have very specific needs. Given your climate and remoteness, an ICE or a hybrid might be the best solution. The RamCharger is a very nice hybrid truck with the hybrid engine only driving a 130kw generator, so you still get great electric performance and it gets rid of range/cold issues. It's not cheap, though.

I've just been working through similar issues with a buddy of mine. His weekly commute is just a bit too far in the winter to trust to an ER Lightning. He just has to be patient because the RamCharger won't be in Canada till next year.

 

[Firn]

@TMND

Sorry for your struggles, and they are real.

I cannot offer any fixes, because I don't think there are any "fixes". Between the cold, heating the battery, heating the cabin, and the increased air density the efficiency loos will be real. 1 m/kwh seems like an excessive drop for sure, but i don't think it's outside the realm of the real.

The only things that maybe could help.

Charge to 100%. Charge to 100% all the time. Use preconditioning. Keep it on the charger, etc. No reason to "save" the battery here, cold helps slow that down and you need the range.
Charge when you can, charge where you can. Where it doesn't impact you keep the truck at as high of a soc as you can.

I expect there is a LOT that could be done with insulation. It is one thing I have really wanted to try, but it's not cheap. I was looking into insulating the coolant pipes, the whole battery itself, even the interior. Heat takes energy and we are dumping huge amounts of BTUs into systems with ZERO insulation.
I have even thought of insulating the windows.
This would all be custom work though, and I expect the only usable insulation is neoprene foam, which is not cheap.

Drive slower. 75 in the winter has a fair bit more drag than 75 in the summer. Air density goes up as the air gets cold. Dry air at 0 is 20% more dense than humidity air at 80f. It has an effect.

 

[invertedspear]

Really wanted this to be my last truck and drive a million miles on it

no, the truck came with this, though I was hoping it was something to link up with a better route planner, but from looking up the numbers, all I can tell this is for is for tracking a vehicle previous owner must have not trusted his wife.

Dealers install this shit without telling you to make it easier to repo. I’m sure they have it in their paperwork, but no one reads all that.

good luck selling. The 23 XLT ER is the best option in my opinion. Hopefully someone in a warmer climate appreciates the deal.

 

[blitzlinger]

Really wanted this to be my last truck and drive a million miles on it

no, the truck came with this, though I was hoping it was something to link up with a better route planner, but from looking up the numbers, all I can tell this is for is for tracking a vehicle previous owner must have not trusted his wife.

That's super interesting. It's a GPS tracker, specifically a PHILLIPS CONNECT Arrow-QG Vehicle Tracking Device.

Where was this located?

 

[TMND]

Someone had already unplugged it, but it was zip tied up underneath by the odb port

 

[astrand1]

Someone had already unplugged it, but it was zip tied up underneath by the odb port

Side note. Take the SIM card out of that thing. You can use the data for awhile. I found one of those in a car I paid cash for last year. Took it out and it had a T-Mobile SIM card. Put it in my iPad and it worked with unlimited data for 7 months before it stopped working.

 

[XENOILPHOBE]

Someone had already unplugged it, but it was zip tied up underneath by the odb port

Probably an employer tracking an employee, most fleets have these today.

 

[TaxmanHog]

How can you precondition from a parking lot? I was out. Also, if you look at the first picture, the temperature on the battery isn’t bad. I also hit a fast charger to heat it up a little before we left.

If there is a DCFC within 20 minutes drive of the location you're parked at:

• Start the truck
• Disable the 30 minute timer
• use Ford navigation to locate the >100KW charge station select it
• Start the navigation guidance.
• Allow the truck to idle ~15 to 20 minutes
• Start your trip home or to the next available DCFC station, ideally the one you plotted.

Obviously you'll burn some energy {~5 kWh} from the pack, but having it warmed will improve performance and make additional energy usable.

 

[TMND]

If there is a DCFC within 20 minutes drive of the location you're parked at:

• Start the truck
• Disable the 30 minute timer
• use Ford navigation to locate the >100KW charge station select it
• Start the navigation guidance.
• Allow the truck to idle ~15 to 20 minutes
• Start your trip home or to the next available DCFC station, ideally the one you plotted.

Obviously you'll burn some energy {~5 kWh} from the pack, but having it warmed will improve performance and make additional energy usable.

Great tip! Thx

 

[MADequipment]

I live in MN. I’m seeing efficiency at about 1.5 mi/kwh as well for a range of about 205 miles. We’re at 8F, so certainly warmer .

The key difference of course is that at most I’ll hit 150 miles of driving roundtrip. No hospital where I am is 50 miles away.

 

[Scorpio3d]

Here is an interesting article that was very recently posted on insideevs.com:

https://insideevs.com/features/703378/how-cold-affects-electric-vehicles/

 

[Henry Ford]

I thought I had done all my homework. Watched hours and hours of videos and read everything available to me. Nothing indicted anywhere I would get my range cut to less than 1/3 in cold.

The photo you posted showed 1.2 m/kWh. With an extended range battery (131 kWh) that's a full charge range of 157 miles. That's about a 50% range loss from best case scenario.

If you set a Departure time the battery will be pre-warmed and the cabin will be heated using shore power rather than battery power. You should also leave your house at 100% if range is in question at all.

Do you set a Departure Time? Do you charge to 100%? What speed do you drive?

This all matters. I'm not saying a Lightning is right for you but maybe try optimizing it before you get rid of it.

 

[TMND]

The photo you posted showed 1.2 m/kWh. With an extended range battery (131 kWh) that's a full charge range of 157 miles. That's about a 50% range loss from best case scenario.

If you set a Departure time the battery will be pre-warmed and the cabin will be heated using shore power rather than battery power. You should also leave your house at 100% if range is in question at all.

Do you set a Departure Time? Do you charge to 100%? What speed do you drive?

This all matters. I'm not saying a Lightning is right for you but maybe try optimizing it before you get rid of it.

I know it showed 1.2 but with 21% charge and 22 miles of range there’s no way it was actually 1.2. (131x.21x1.2=33 still pretty terrible) I wish the kilowatt per mile was a live number, but it’s some average that doesn’t read real time. And I’ve said it multiple times in this thread. I could not be on shore power I was in a parking lot. Thankfully, taxman had an actual tip to get your battery to precondition off plug. But if you look at the picture from my first post, the battery temperature is not bad. Battery temp was almost right at temp and I still got this horrible horrible range.

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