Top battery off to 90% every day?

[Traconesu]

I agree it's good to keep in mind that Ford's main concern is not whether your battery is in real good shape at nine years but mainly that the capacity doesn't dip below 70% in 8 years or 100,000 miles. Tom Moloughney on his State of Charge YT channel had an interview with Darren Palmer, VP of the electric division of Ford, who said that the warranty was designed to hold up and not have Ford replacing batteries even if an owner charged to 100% every day with an L2 charger for 8 years or 100K miles (https://www.f150lightningforum.com/...rging-healthier-for-battery.13085/post-298448). Given that, perhaps the charge to 90% every day also assures them that they won't have to rescue anyone who doesn't charge the battery enough and kills their truck somewhere out in the middle of nowhere from unexpectedly running out of juice. If your battery only has 70% of its capacity in 8 years and you're in a really cold environment where the cold zaps 70% of that remaining capacity in an 8-year-old battery, you'll only have 50% of the range (0.7 x 0.7 = 0.49) you had with a new truck in warm weather. And, yeah, if you buy a new $60K to $80K vehicle every 3 years, what's to worry about what you do...

P.S. If you want to know where Ford's recommendation of charging to 90% comes from, starting at about 29:08 in the YouTube video, VP Palmer states that most customers do charge at home every day to 100%. He wants to help them out by recommending that they only charge to 90% max instead. So based on that direct utterance from a Ford exec, the 90% recommendation is purely because it's better than 100% for battery longevity (and, hey!, helps insure even more that Ford won't have to fork out warranty compensation). And recommending only going to 80% was probably a dead horse because of customer range anxiety concerns (ain't gonna buy another Ford if you're not happy with range...).

The point where Palmer explains the 90% recommendation:

I love my one pedal driving. I've never noticed any jerking or momentary delays. Always very smooth. Maybe because I'm so used to the one pedal driving, I can always come to a smooth stop at any stop sign or light without touching the brake pedal.

Sponsored