More emphasis on 120V charging

[Mach Turtle]

For the first time I tried to charge at 120 volts using the Ford supplied charger. It works fine at 220v, but I was visiting my daughter. We could not get it to charge at all. The light would go from green to orange almost immediately. Does this indicate something wrong with the charger?

When the mobile charger flashes the orange light, it's usually a sign that something isn't right. No idea what that could be on 120V, though! Hard to overheat the unit with so little power flowing...there must be something else that's borked in there.

If your truck is still under the 3-year warranty, a dealer (if a decent one) will be able to diagnose and probably replace the charger. I had a 2021 Ford mobile charger which intermittently flashed orange while charging from 240V, probably due to overheating; it took two trips to the dealer and a graph I made from a home energy use monitoring system before they understood the problem. The darned thing wouldn't overheat until it had been charging for 20 minutes or so, and they tested it for about 15 minutes. As soon as the problem was understood, they ordered a replacement and I got it the next day.

Here's hoping the problem is in the easily replaced charging cable and not the charger in the car! If it charges OK from 240V, that should be the case.

Edit: My Ford portable chargers have blue and amber (yellow? gold? Pilsner?) lights, but since different people sometimes see colors a bit differently and manufacturers often change the colors of indicator lights between model years, I'm assuming that we're looking at lights that indicate the same situation. It could be that something else is happening, YMMV, BYOC, etc.

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[ryun]

For the first time I tried to charge at 120 volts using the Ford supplied charger. It works fine at 220v, but I was visiting my daughter. We could not get it to charge at all. The light would go from green to orange almost immediately. Does this indicate something wrong with the charger?

I don't know what the orange light means but check maybe the outlets you were using weren't grounded properly? I've seen other 120V chargers (not Ford) freak out when that happens.

 

[Maquis]

For the first time I tried to charge at 120 volts using the Ford supplied charger. It works fine at 220v, but I was visiting my daughter. We could not get it to charge at all. The light would go from green to orange almost immediately. Does this indicate something wrong with the charger?

Unless they changed something, the Ford Mobile Charger has only red, blue and amber LEDs. There is no orange or green.
If it was red you saw, that’s usually a missing ground connection.

 

[SpaceEVDriver]

I do road trips in our EVs a lot.

Several of our common long stops only have 120V outlets, so we charge via Level 1 at those stops.

Despite the fact that it is less efficient, it works just fine for a 2- or 3-day visit to charge on L1. We typically take the EV out while running around town. We never get up to 100% in these cases, but we only need to replace what we're using during the day and we always do that plus a bit of gain. By the time we leave, we usually have enough charge to get a couple hours drive toward home before needing to stop at a DCFC.

We moved a couple of years ago and brought our ChargePoint L2 charger with us, but I didn't have time to install it for about 18 months. We were on L1 through two winters. We never went to a DCFC or L2 charger to catch up. Level 1 charging was good enough for our regular commuting, our run-around-town weekend errands, and for charging to 100% before road trips. This time period included about 15,000 miles worth of road tripping as well as however many miles of around-town driving.

When we got the Ford Charge Station Pro installed, several months after getting the truck, that was nice, but having shared the ChargePoint between the Mustang and the Lightning I didn't feel it was necessary.

Today we have two L2 chargers, a ChargePoint Home Flex on a 60A circuit running at 48A and a Ford Charge Station Pro on a 100A circuit, usually set at around 70A.

It's especially nice to have L2 charging, but I don't think it's a necessity or even all that difficult to live with Level 1.

 

[htobin]

When I returned home I tried to charge on 120 volts. Again it failed but worked fine on 220. I’ll check with the dealer

 

[GarageMahal]

Level 1 charging would bring me back to 90% overnight most of the time for me. Not really thinking about it (and being a subscriber to bigger is better) I installed an Emporia level 2 before I brought the truck home. I have since updated that to only charge at 32 amps since it still completes in under an hour.

I would think anyone who drives under 50 miles per day and can charge overnight would really be fine with level 1.

 

[htobin]

I finally decided it wasn't really worth bringing the unit to the dealer. We've had it over a year and I doubt that it would be covered by any type of warranty and I surely didn't want to leave it with the dealer. Decided instead to just buy a Lectron level 1 charger. Cost about $135 and I'll just leave it in the truck. That way I'll have an alternate just in case my regular level two charger fails.

 

[RickLightning]

I finally decided it wasn't really worth bringing the unit to the dealer. We've had it over a year and I doubt that it would be covered by any type of warranty and I surely didn't want to leave it with the dealer. Decided instead to just buy a Lectron level 1 charger. Cost about $135 and I'll just leave it in the truck. That way I'll have an alternate just in case my regular level two charger fails.

It is covered by the 3 year warranty. Your money.

 

[htobin]

Still worth having a spare, just in case. We live on a ranch about 35 miles from the nearest public charging. Still may bring it in when we get the new charger, depending on how much charge we can get overnight

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