Lightning's range in cold weather... not very good

[sotek2345]

So, took a quick drive to and from robotics this evening and decided to check how conservative the GOM was. Low 30's temp. No preconditioning.

GOM was showed the equivalent of about 210 miles at 100%. 35% reduction

Based on actual usage over the 28.8 mile round trip was 11%. works out to about 260 mile range at 100% or about 20% range loss.

GOM is very conservative.

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[neririn]

Expect 50% drop at 0F.

For me it has really been more my climate use. I am typically not a cold person but my wife absolutely is. I wear a coat to the car, and I am ok wearing it in the car. Therefore I use the climate very little. Heated seats for the first few minutes only, that thing gets HOT. I use the heated steering wheel when I am feeling rich. I keep the fan on low with the e-heat off to keep windows from fogging when I have more than me in the car. With just me, it doesn't fog up much. I do precondition in th morning, but I can't at the office so it is a cold start coming home. My range is down 10-15% on my Lariat since the weather turned. External temps are usually 35-40 degrees for the high, teens for the low.

Now my wife on the other hand uses the heater in her Mach-E like it is a mobile sauna. Her range is down less than 50% in the winter, but is probably pretty close to it.

 

[Lightning Rod]

my family typically prefers to take my truck when we leave town which isn't really an option until the charging network expands greatly.

I hear this a lot while reading thru some of these threads. When I was considering going electric with the Lightning, I thought long and hard about how an EV would affect my getting back and forth to where I need to go and I concluded that with the limited trips that I take, the Lightning and it's range would fit for me. I read on these forums all the time about how disappointed Lightning owners are because they drive 3,000 miles a month. If I had to commute 3k miles per month, I probably would not have chosen the Lightning to make those trips.

Until the charging stations are installed for an EV world, you have to look at the 1st gen Lightning in a more practical light.

 

[lightspeed]

I don't know, if I had to drive 3K miles per month, the Lightning would save a LOT of money vs another truck and I have zero interest in driving a prius.

 

[sotek2345]

I don't know, if I had to drive 3K miles per month, the Lightning would save a LOT of money vs another truck and I have zero interest in driving a prius.

Absolutely! My Lightning costs me around 10c per mile (varies based on electric rate, efficiency, etc.), while my previous trucks were closer to 30c per mile (~15mpg avg).

3000 mi/month would mean a savings of $600/mo.

 

[Mark Fox]

I've solved the intermittent problem with sync/android auto connecting to my phone.

Prior to owning the Lightning, my phone never had a problem connecting to my former 2012 F250 blue tooth system & sync-1, even while I had my phones WIFI connected to the home router with auto-reconnect when ever I was in range of the house.

The Sync4 system uses a combination of blue tooth and secondary WIFI network within the truck to establish a wireless android auto connection.

When my phone was connected to the house network, it would ignore the sync4 network attempting to connect AA wirelessly, the bypass to this problem was to use the USB connection then all was well.

My solution, is to disable auto-connect of my phone to the house WIFI, I only manually connect when there is a need, then when done with the house network, I briefly turn phone WIFI off then on to disconnect, then proceed to the truck, on startup of the Lightning the phone ignores the house and automatically connects to the truck, once connected, I set the AA projection SSID to auto-reconnect.

Now I rarely have problems with Sync, AA and my phone, but when it happens I just reboot the sync system (volume down & track forward buttons)

Thank you for this information. I will be trying it on my Lightning/phone this week as I am having the same issues. Oakland County MI.

 

[Vithar]

Figure this is a spot to chime in on some experience in moderate temps.

Yesterday evening, I had a 198 mile drive to do across Minnesota. I started with a 100% charge, I stopped at a charger at around 155 miles and had 2% left on my battery. When I started driving it was 8F, when I got to the charger it was around 4F. My display told me 1.4 mi/kWh, my math says it was more like 1.2 mi/kWh.

Not sure if it was a good strategy but I toggled the defroster on and off, it was mostly off, but I would turn it on to periodically clear the fog for visibility purposes. I make this drive once a month, have done it 6 times since June, and this is the first time I had to stop midway to get a charge.

 

[metroshot]

Has anyone noticed a GOM improvement after receiving OTA 3.5.5 ?

 

[Just-another-guy]

Figure this is a spot to chime in on some experience in moderate temps.

Yesterday evening, I had a 198 mile drive to do across Minnesota. I started with a 100% charge, I stopped at a charger at around 155 miles and had 2% left on my battery. When I started driving it was 8F, when I got to the charger it was around 4F. My display told me 1.4 mi/kWh, my math says it was more like 1.2 mi/kWh.

Not sure if it was a good strategy but I toggled the defroster on and off, it was mostly off, but I would turn it on to periodically clear the fog for visibility purposes. I make this drive once a month, have done it 6 times since June, and this is the first time I had to stop midway to get a charge.

How does this compare to your trip in summer when temps were moderate?

 

[sotek2345]

Figure this is a spot to chime in on some experience in moderate temps.

Yesterday evening, I had a 198 mile drive to do across Minnesota. I started with a 100% charge, I stopped at a charger at around 155 miles and had 2% left on my battery. When I started driving it was 8F, when I got to the charger it was around 4F. My display told me 1.4 mi/kWh, my math says it was more like 1.2 mi/kWh.

Not sure if it was a good strategy but I toggled the defroster on and off, it was mostly off, but I would turn it on to periodically clear the fog for visibility purposes. I make this drive once a month, have done it 6 times since June, and this is the first time I had to stop midway to get a charge.

Did you precondition before you left?

 

[Beaux]

I thought the GOM was very conservative also and pushed my truck to the limit not meaning to. I ran out of juice as I was half way into the garage. I had to plug it up and charge before I could get it all the way in. So I would say it's not that conservative honestly.

 

[Vithar]

How does this compare to your trip in summer when temps were moderate?

In summer I was arriving with 100 miles of range to spare.

 

[Vithar]

Did you precondition before you left?

I did, put it on the charger for 30min, in a heated garage. Pre conditioned the cab to so everything was warm when I set out.

 

[Vithar]

I thought the GOM was very conservative also and pushed my truck to the limit not meaning to. I ran out of juice as I was half way into the garage. I had to plug it up and charge before I could get it all the way in. So I would say it's not that conservative honestly.

My experience in the summer, the GOM was always under estimating. When I would make a long drive the circle of range in the direction of my target would gradually get further away. Yesterday I was watching the circle of range shrink. So in cool weather not conservative, in warm weather conservative.

I'm interested how it is when it gets cold. Most of my winter is below 0, -30 to -50 are normal. Going to be interesting.

 

[Roy2001]

Now my wife on the other hand uses the heater in her Mach-E like it is a mobile sauna. Her range is down less than 50% in the winter, but is probably pretty close to it.

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