Truck died 5 miles from home

[Yellow Buddy]

What I'm hearing in the past 12 hours:

Don't charge to 100% in heat.
DCFC will cause the BMS to go out of whack, so don't trust how much charge you have(?).
Don't be surprised if it dies when you get to 10%.

It all boils down to "sell the truck" if you want to drive it over 170 miles in South Texas. An electric truck is not for the open roads in Texas.

The heat recommendation is general. I don’t believe it has an impact on the current situation, mine has died in the cold and the warm, and it is not TX specific.

I don’t think it’s a EV thing, or a location thing, I’ve never had this happen in any other brand of EV I’ve owned and I beat the daylights out of my EVs. I have a Tesla that does 98% of its charging at Superchargers for example, it doesn’t get any worse than that, and it has not died or gotten inaccurate.

This is unfortunately a problem that affects the Lightning and its a problem Ford needs to solve.

Sponsored

 

[paulcusick3]

Middle USA should not be early adopters of EVs. Let the coasts work it out.

 

[TheBigBezo]

So what's the scoop on this weird BMS issue? This is the 2nd thread I've read with the battery SOC tanking below 10%. I'm doing a ton of DCFC crossing the country and today I'm heading out from Austin to remote east New Mexico to see friends, I'm going to need all of the battery. Once I start DCFC am I safe if I hold it over 10%? I can do that, aim for 13-15% pulling into my next stop. I wish I had an obd so I could try and record some data for y'all. Definitely now what you want to read on a long trip, trucks rolling back to 0% because the indicator is off. I'd hate to get stranded out in the sticks.

 

[RickLightning]

I picked it up at Houston Intercontinental Friday with 33% charge; charged twice DCFC on the way to my to my daughter's (arrived with 73%). Level 1 there until Sunday morning to 100%; Charged DCFC in Columbus from 60% to 90%. .9 x 131 is 118 kWh. I averaged 1.7 mi/kWh which should have used 105 kWh leaving me 13 kWh or 10% in reserve.

Nope.

Go look at Energy while at 100%. Mine has not broken 127.xx since I started monitoring it.

I use 125kWh to plan.

 

[02Reaper]

This happened to Out Of Spec also on two occasions on their loaned out F150 lightning from Ford.

@Ford Motor Company This needs to be fixed yesterday!

 

[MM in SouthTX]

This happened to Out Of Spec also on two occasions on their loaned out F150 lightning from Ford.

@Ford Motor Company This needs to be fixed yesterday!

Multiple casualties!

 

[MM in SouthTX]

I think it goes out of whack on that DCFC

From your daughters to Columbus, what was your efficiency and how much did you take in at the charger?

Since you used 40% (52.4kWh) if you got 1.7mi/kWh then Columbus should be 89 miles from your daughter. Does that seem right?

Then charging 60->90% You should have been charged for 39kWh of energy - assuming zero losses. So realistically even more than that.

Are your actuals vastly different than that?

I charged approximately 33->80% near the airport then stopped in Madisonville (80 mile trip at 2 mi/kWh) to go from about 50 to 75%. Arrived at her house with 73%. About 35 hours level one charging to get to 100%.

Daughter’s to Alleyton, TX EA charger is 108 miles. I got 1.9 or so on that leg. The worst mileage comes in south of there.

 

[MM in SouthTX]

Nope.

Go look at Energy while at 100%. Mine has not broken 127.xx since I started monitoring it.

I use 125kWh to plan.

There are a couple of things that I respectfully don’t agree with on this post.

1. Very few people have an OBD reader. We should use the 131 that Ford publishes, not 127.
2. I have made this run at least 6 times. Every time I have used 131 and every time the rate of energy usage has been linear and in accordance with my expected calculations. I keep the trip meter on the dash for the average and I continuously reset trip 1 and recalculate to make sure I know how much energy remains. Energy usage has always been linear down to sometimes below 5% with the exception of the time before this when in the last 2-3 miles I saw the % drop unexpectedly. This time the displayed percent charge started dropping in a fashion that did not correlate with the mi/kWh at somewhere around 15%. Below 10% I watched it drop to 3% over about 2 miles. That’s when I lost power.
(Edited to add #3)
3. 125 x .9 is 112.5 kWh. I averaged 1.7 over 178 miles (actually 175.6 because I came up 4.4 miles short), which is 104.7 kWh. So I should have had about 8 kWh in reserve even using your 125 when I made it home.
Please don’t tell me that this was my problem because I should have known better. This is a Ford problem.

 

[Newton]

I think it is a Ford thing, or maybe a truck thing. No problems like this reported for Kia or Tesla that I know of. The F-150 is very inefficient, anybody who has the ICE version knows that from experience. Put it in the wind, at high speed, in hot temps and it gets worse. Ford wanted to have a certain range at a certain price at a time when batteries were expensive so I suspect they did not leave as much room for error as other vehicles - which had to be reliable from the get-go or they would never have caught on. If 10 Teslas did this in the first year, there would have been no Tesla.

 

[Newton]

How many times have you charged to 100% and taken it below 20%? At what temperatures?

There is a state of health estimate in one of the menus on the pro version of car scanner, what does it report?

The Ford battery tech is kind of old school now, LFP might work better for you. You might also be finding the limits of Ford's thermal management techniques. Remember this is their second EV and their first truck.

 

[MM in SouthTX]

How many times have you charged to 100% and taken it below 20%? At what temperatures?

There is a state of health estimate in one of the menus on the pro version of car scanner, what does it report?

The Ford battery tech is kind of old school now, LFP might work better for you. You might also be finding the limits of Ford's thermal management techniques. Remember this is their second EV and their first truck.

Not often. Without specifics, the HVB SOH was excellent last I checked, within the past 1,000 miles.

 

[flypony53]

I knew that I would get judgmental and accusatory posts. Congratulations, you are the first. All I was doing was driving the speed limit. I was drafting as much as possible. People who get 2.2 have 65 mile an hour speed limits and drive in heavy traffic. I have 75 mile an hour speed limits and the roads are pretty sparse. You would get 1.6 or 1.7 also. And there are absolutely no options for me to charge closer than 178 miles from home on that route. Please consider that other peoples’ conditions may be different before you judge.

In my opinion, granted I have not read all of the posts, but people are missing the fundamental issue here. Fords BMS is abysmal. I had a similar issue, albeit only 800 yards from my house with 1% left on the Guess O Meter...I have driven many other EVs, none of which have had this problem. It would equate to your fuel indicator on your ICE vehicle showing above E, but running out of gas. This would not be acceptable for ICE, but for EVs, people attack the owner for not driving "efficiently," but my take is we need to not show battery availability if there is none.

 

[RickLightning]

There are a couple of things that I respectfully don’t agree with on this post.

1. Very few people have an OBD reader. We should use the 131 that Ford publishes, not 127.
2. I have made this run at least 6 times. Every time I have used 131 and every time the rate of energy usage has been linear and in accordance with my expected calculations. I keep the trip meter on the dash for the average and I continuously reset trip 1 and recalculate to make sure I know how much energy remains. Energy usage has always been linear down to sometimes below 5% with the exception of the time before this when in the last 2-3 miles I saw the % drop unexpectedly. This time the displayed percent charge started dropping in a fashion that did not correlate with the mi/kWh at somewhere around 15%. Below 10% I watched it drop to 3% over about 2 miles. That’s when I lost power.
Please don’t tell me that this was my problem because I should have known better. This is a Ford problem.

You can disagree with the 131 vs. 127 all you want, but facts are facts. The energy displayed in that top right box is the energy you have, PERIOD. So if you use 5kWh more than actual, you're going to come up 8.5 miles short. That doesn't matter as much, but now go and check the energy at 100% when it's 15 degrees out and you can't precondition the battery. It's way less than 127kWh...

 

[RickLightning]

I think this is a Lightning issue, not a Ford issue. With our Mach-E, I have gone down into the low single digits MANY times on trips and never had this issue. On the truck, the lowest I have gone is 5%.

Also, if you get any of the battery modules replaced, it will take up to 22 calendar days for the BMS to learn the battery.

 

[MM in SouthTX]

You can disagree with the 131 vs. 127 all you want, but facts are facts. The energy displayed in that top right box is the energy you have, PERIOD. So if you use 5kWh more than actual, you're going to come up 8.5 miles short. That doesn't matter as much, but now go and check the energy at 100% when it's 15 degrees out and you can't precondition the battery. It's way less than 127kWh...

Read #3 of my edit of the post. I should have made it even if using 125.

Sponsored