[Updated with Ford statement 2/15/23] 🛑 Lightning Stop Production / Stop Shipment Issued (due to potential battery issue)

[MickeyAO]

I did an Advanced Search for MickeyAO posts and the term battery. MickeyAO has been asked more than once for more specific links to the posts in which he says he discusses battery longevity factors.

The best post that I could find in a relatively brief hunt is a quote by someone else of a summary post of MickeyAO's, but if one tries to follow the link in the quote, an "Oops! We ran into some problems!" 404-type Page Not Found error results. MickeyAO's quoted post doesn't give any real specifics at what level temperature becomes a problem, which he says is one of the more important factors affecting battery longevity. He discounts elapsed battery age as a major factor in another post, IIRC.

I'd love to hear his guesstimate on how much heat in the American Southwest affects EV longevity! But maybe that's commercially valuable proprietary information that Southwest Research Institute charges big bucks to tell you! @MickeyAO

https://www.f150lightningforum.com/...t-drain-new-battery-to-zero.10780/post-219745

Yes, I had to delete a lot of posts after I reread them the next day and would question if the head shed would decide I gave away too much information.

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[BennyTheBeaver]

Yes, I had to delete a lot of posts after I reread them the next day and would question if the head shed would decide I gave away too much information.

@MickeyAO is the reason my truck charges to 85% every night.

In @MickeyAO We trust.

 

[MickeyAO]

Based on the limited details I can find about the F150L fire, I wonder if it is the same reason for the Tesla fire at a Norway (maybe Sweden) Super Charger... extremely high resistance at the charge port (bad/dirty/loose connection) caused localized heating that was enough to start a fire AT the charge port.

Circumstances seem very similar.

 

[GolfJRM]

It looks like they are starting to release trucks that were stopped in transit. The delivery date of mine got moved up a week (it was supposed to be this week).

Mine was changed to 2/17-2/23 but now this evening went to 2/18-2/24

 

[abel408]

Mine was changed to 2/17-2/23 but now this evening went to 2/18-2/24

The expected delivery of mine just got moved back a whole month this morning. It now says March 14th-March 20th. It's currently at the railyard 10 miles away. Not good...

 

[Sealevel]

I wonder if they have identified an issue that occurred on a specific assembly date and have to check the ones put together near that time frame.

My blend was 1/12 and it got to my dealer 2/13. The last forecast delivery I had was 3/13. Hang in there, they may surprise you too.

 

[ONURPH]

Picked my XLT up today from the dealer. It was one of the last ones to make it out before the stop ship. I love it so far! Definitely worth the wait

 

[Ecstatic]

Yes, I had to delete a lot of posts after I reread them the next day and would question if the head shed would decide I gave away too much information.

Mickey, since quite a few of us have searched but have been unable to find your old posts on how to baby the battery to last nearly forever, would you mind posting a brief list for us? No need to provide a detailed explanation of the evidence supporting your recommendations, as I imagine that is the proprietary information you are not allowed to disclose. I hope to drive my Lightning for many years, and would like to extend its battery life as long as reasonably and practically as possible.

 

[Roy2001]

Engineers have now apparently found the root cause of the issue.Adjustments to the truck’s battery production process to fix it could take “a few weeks,” a spokesperson told Electrek. Though the company didn’t disclose details of the issue, there’s “no reason to believe F-150 Lightnings already in customers’ hands are affected by this issue,” the spokesperson added. Retailers can continue selling their inventories.

 

[MickeyAO]

Mickey, since quite a few of us have searched but have been unable to find your old posts on how to baby the battery to last nearly forever, would you mind posting a brief list for us? No need to provide a detailed explanation of the evidence supporting your recommendations, as I imagine that is the proprietary information you are not allowed to disclose. I hope to drive my Lightning for many years, and would like to extend its battery life as long as reasonably and practically as possible.

I've been running the ESTC for over 11 years...I have a lot of anecdotal and historical data I get to pull from. While we have a lot of individual clients, we also run a consortium that tests at the cell level. I will focus on this area since the cell level dictates everything at the module and pack level.

We run several different test groups;

Manufacturing - I will use the manufactures standard charge/discharge cycle until the capacity stops increasing and then use static capacity, DC resistance, OCV at 100% SOC, and discharge/charge polarization time constant to group cells into matching batches. (Doing this now on the harvested Mach E cells)

Characterization - Different C rate discharges at temperatures from -30C - 45C. I use the information here to determine the Cycle Life parameters

Calendar Life - 2 cells in each group of 3 SOC levels and stored at 3 different temperatures (18 cells in total). This really informs me of how cells will react just sitting at different SOC levels (30%, 50%, 80%) and temperatures (25C, 45C, 55C) So when I say that cells prefer to rest at x SOC and x temperature, this is a main area I look at.

Safety - All the things the manufacturers tell you NOT to do, we do them here. Makes for great videos, but unimportant to our discussion here.

Cycle Life - We run an L9 matrix with 3 different levels in each of the following areas; delta SOC (centered around 50% SOC), discharge current, charge current, and cycling temperature.

I really wish I could share normalized graphs for calendar and cycle life so you could see EXACTLY what I see on a daily basis.

Bottom line - higher currents hurt the cell more (both charge and discharge), high SOC levels (both storage and delta during cycling) hurt the cells more, and higher temperatures hurt the cells more.

The more you can reduce these factors, the better it is for the cells.

NOTE: No matter what you do, the cells WILL start to lose capacity after the very first cycle you put on the vehicle! You just won't see it on your display because the manufacturer will not let you use the actual capacity of the battery. This is why some people say that they have been cycling from 100% to 5% and have never seen a capacity loss. They actually do have a capacity loss, it just doesn't show up on the screen.

A very brilliant man I work with has an outstanding analogy when it comes to Li-ion cells. Cells are a lot like humans in the temperatures they like. I will extend that further that they don't like to work like a lot of people don't like to work (they prefer the easy way).

Now, I'm not worried about the life of my battery...I will still have fun during accelerations, but will limit the charging SOC to 85% unless I will need more the next day, limit fast charging as much as possible but will use it on long distance trips, and use shore power to maintaing the temperatures on cold/hot days.

TL;DR - sorry, I'm not going to distill 12 years of knowledge to one line because you don't wont to read several inches on the screen

 

[sotek2345]

I've been running the ESTC for over 11 years...I have a lot of anecdotal and historical data I get to pull from. While we have a lot of individual clients, we also run a consortium that tests at the cell level. I will focus on this area since the cell level dictates everything at the module and pack level.

We run several different test groups;

Manufacturing - I will use the manufactures standard charge/discharge cycle until the capacity stops increasing and then use static capacity, DC resistance, OCV at 100% SOC, and discharge/charge polarization time constant to group cells into matching batches. (Doing this now on the harvested Mach E cells)

Characterization - Different C rate discharges at temperatures from -30C - 45C. I use the information here to determine the Cycle Life parameters

Calendar Life - 2 cells in each group of 3 SOC levels and stored at 3 different temperatures (18 cells in total). This really informs me of how cells will react just sitting at different SOC levels (30%, 50%, 80%) and temperatures (25C, 45C, 55C) So when I say that cells prefer to rest at x SOC and x temperature, this is a main area I look at.

Safety - All the things the manufacturers tell you NOT to do, we do them here. Makes for great videos, but unimportant to our discussion here.

Cycle Life - We run an L9 matrix with 3 different levels in each of the following areas; delta SOC (centered around 50% SOC), discharge current, charge current, and cycling temperature.

I really wish I could share normalized graphs for calendar and cycle life so you could see EXACTLY what I see on a daily basis.

Bottom line - higher currents hurt the cell more (both charge and discharge), high SOC levels (both storage and delta during cycling) hurt the cells more, and higher temperatures hurt the cells more.

The more you can reduce these factors, the better it is for the cells.

NOTE: No matter what you do, the cells WILL start to lose capacity after the very first cycle you put on the vehicle! You just won't see it on your display because the manufacturer will not let you use the actual capacity of the battery. This is why some people say that they have been cycling from 100% to 5% and have never seen a capacity loss. They actually do have a capacity loss, it just doesn't show up on the screen.

A very brilliant man I work with has an outstanding analogy when it comes to Li-ion cells. Cells are a lot like humans in the temperatures they like. I will extend that further that they don't like to work like a lot of people don't like to work (they prefer the easy way).

Now, I'm not worried about the life of my battery...I will still have fun during accelerations, but will limit the charging SOC to 85% unless I will need more the next day, limit fast charging as much as possible but will use it on long distance trips, and use shore power to maintaing the temperatures on cold/hot days.

TL;DR - sorry, I'm not going to distill 12 years of knowledge to one line because you don't wont to read several inches on the screen

If you can share, what cutoff temps do you use for "hot" and "cold" to make sure you are on shore power?

 

[MickeyAO]

I've been running the ESTC for over 11 years...I have a lot of anecdotal and historical data I get to pull from. While we have a lot of individual clients, we also run a consortium that tests at the cell level. I will focus on this area since the cell level dictates everything at the module and pack level.

We run several different test groups;

Manufacturing - I will use the manufactures standard charge/discharge cycle until the capacity stops increasing and then use static capacity, DC resistance, OCV at 100% SOC, and discharge/charge polarization time constant to group cells into matching batches. (Doing this now on the harvested Mach E cells)

Characterization - Different C rate discharges at temperatures from -30C - 45C. I use the information here to determine the Cycle Life parameters

Calendar Life - 2 cells in each group of 3 SOC levels and stored at 3 different temperatures (18 cells in total). This really informs me of how cells will react just sitting at different SOC levels (30%, 50%, 80%) and temperatures (25C, 45C, 55C) So when I say that cells prefer to rest at x SOC and x temperature, this is a main area I look at.

Safety - All the things the manufacturers tell you NOT to do, we do them here. Makes for great videos, but unimportant to our discussion here.

Cycle Life - We run an L9 matrix with 3 different levels in each of the following areas; delta SOC (centered around 50% SOC), discharge current, charge current, and cycling temperature.

I really wish I could share normalized graphs for calendar and cycle life so you could see EXACTLY what I see on a daily basis.

Bottom line - higher currents hurt the cell more (both charge and discharge), high SOC levels (both storage and delta during cycling) hurt the cells more, and higher temperatures hurt the cells more.

The more you can reduce these factors, the better it is for the cells.

NOTE: No matter what you do, the cells WILL start to lose capacity after the very first cycle you put on the vehicle! You just won't see it on your display because the manufacturer will not let you use the actual capacity of the battery. This is why some people say that they have been cycling from 100% to 5% and have never seen a capacity loss. They actually do have a capacity loss, it just doesn't show up on the screen.

A very brilliant man I work with has an outstanding analogy when it comes to Li-ion cells. Cells are a lot like humans in the temperatures they like. I will extend that further that they don't like to work like a lot of people don't like to work (they prefer the easy way).

Now, I'm not worried about the life of my battery...I will still have fun during accelerations but will limit the charging SOC to 85% unless I will need more the next day, limit fast charging as much as possible but will use it on long-distance trips, and use shore power to maintain the temperatures on cold/hot days.

TL;DR - sorry, I'm not going to distill 12 years of knowledge into one line because you don't want to read several inches on the screen

To add on to the cycle life...L3 (highest discharge current, highest charge current, highest delta SOC, but best temperature is the hardest conditions to program the cyclers for, but shows the second highest dedragation on life, just behind L9 (highest temperature, highest discharge current, highest delta SOC, but lowest charge current). Looking at those graphs, I can easily see what factor has the most prodomont enfluance on aging, and also tells me the second highest factor on aging. I can then read the tables down to the best conditions (L1, lowest discharge current, lowest charge current, lowest delta SOC, best temperatures). This has been true through several different chemistries (LFP, LMO, LTO, NMC. NCA, etc). The graphs don't lie to me

It seems everytime I do post this type of information, I get people posting ancidotal information trying to refute my information...Tesla rep says the cells LOVE cycling 0-100%, I've charged to 100% everyday for the last x years and have never seen a reduction in miles, Li-Ion has a memory problem like older chemistries so you should cyle 0-100%, etc. If you don't want to beleive what I've seen in the actual data, so be it and you do you.

 

[MickeyAO]

If you can share, what cutoff temps do you use for "hot" and "cold" to make sure you are on shore power?

I make sure I'm using shore power when above 90F and below 50F, but in general, I use shore power the night before every weekday so the cabin temp is set to the appropriate temperature...just have to change the warm/medium/cool based on the next day's temperature and that I'm at 85% SOC the next morning.

 

[sotek2345]

I make sure I'm using shore power when above 90F and below 50F, but in general, I use shore power the night before every weekday so the cabin temp is set to the appropriate temperature...just have to change the warm/medium/cool based on the next day's temperature and that I'm at 85% SOC the next morning.

Thanks!

I had been using around 30F as my cutoff to plug in even if I haven't used much battery, but I will start doing it more based on your 50F input!

 

[CAMB150]

So is it Ok to charge F150L to 100% or just Teslas?

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