larryh

If you have the car in EV later mode, the car will attempt to maintain the SOC of the HVB within a small window (window size is maybe 8%). If the window is centered at 30% SOC, then when the SOC falls below 26%, the ICE will start to charge the HVB. It will start regardless of whether the car is moving or stopped. When the ICE is warming up, it will run at a constant 1500 rpm. It will provide some of the power to propel the car, but much of the load is still supplied by the HVB and electric motor.

Also, switch the left display to the Empower screen. If you accelerate too fast, beyond the outlined box, the ICE will start in EV Auto mode. It shouldn't start in EV now mode no matter how fast you accelerate, but acceleration will be slower.

Note that the ICE comes on when the HVB is too cold because the HVB can't supply adequate power to propel the vehicle. When the HVB is too hot, using power from the HVB will heat it up even more. The ICE indirectly regulates HVB temperature, by allowing it to warm up or prevent it from overheating.

If the SOC of the HVB exceeds 98.5%, you don't get regen. If you press the brakes, the car should use the friction brakes to slow the car down. However, if you lift your foot off the pedal, when it attempts to slow down the car, it will not be able to use regen to slow it down. The ICE will start and be used to slow down the car. Once the ICE starts, it will run until until it is warmed up and coolant temperature exceeds 100 - 120 F.

Max regen is 35 kW. The 120 V charger only supplies 1 kW. You need about 5.8 kWh of energy to charge a depleted battery. If the car and contents weigh 1870 Kg, that would mean a descent of at least 1138 meters, or 0.7 miles. But regen isn't 100% efficient, so you will need more energy than that. Depending on how fast you go down the hill, you might capture 60%. That would mean a descent of at least 1.2 miles. I'm not sure if the car can accept a sustained regen of 35 kW for a long period of time.

The SOC of the HVB cannot be estimated accurately. Accuracy is only about 5%. The Battery Energy Control Module is constantly readjusting its estimate. I have seen it jump by 5% in a short period of time. The estimate is computed based an engineering model of how the battery works. But no model can accurately account for all the complexities of a real battery.

MyFord Touch should display Battery Temperature in the EV info screen if the battery is too hot or too cold. In either case, EV Now and EV later modes are disabled. Due to normal operation could mean that the ICE is warming up. For some reason, the ICE was started. Then it will not turn off until it is warmed up. What is the SOC of the HVB when this happens? If it is near 100%, the ICE may start during regen.

Look at the MyFord Touch EV Info Power screen, it should tell you why the ICE is on.

Contact Crystal with Ford in this forum, user name is FordService.

I had TSB 14-0020 applied to my car to fix an issue with the check engine light coming on when using the engine block heater. The TSB changed how the car charges the 12 V battery. Prior to the TSB, the SOC of the 12 V battery was around 70% in the morning when I checked it and the no-load voltage was between 12.5 and 12.6 V. After applying the TSB, it is now around 85% and the no-load voltage is between 12.75 and 12.9 V. The car charges the 12 V battery a lot more after applying the TSB. Now it occasionally draws power from the charger to charge the 12 V battery even when the HVB is fully charged. It did not do that prior to the TSB.

They should allow you to use the remaining credit in succeeding tax years. The tax credit benefits the manufacturer of the vehicle. They would have to lower the price if there were no tax credit to sell the same amount of cars.

The purpose of the PHEV tax credit is to promote PHEV's. It is Tesla that benefits from the tax credit--they sell more cars. You want to encourage new technologies. If you are worried about the fairness of the tax system, there are alternative ways to address that. You could raise income tax by an equal amount for the wealthy to provide them further incentive to use the PHEV tax credit to buy a PHEV. You want to provide the credit to everyone to promote EVs.

When coasting in neutral, I slow from 50 mph to around 40 mph and then shift into L to complete the stop. The total distance to stop is the same as in post #120. I lose 0.05 kWh of kinetic energy due to resistance while in neutral. Of the remaining kinetic energy, I capture 0.064 kWh. I have captured a total of 51% of the available kinetic energy. If I leave it in drive, coast closer to the stop sign, and then brake until I come to a complete stop, I capture 57% of the available kinetic energy. So coasting in neutral is not optimal.

I notice that when I have the car on and plugged in, the rear defroster is disabled. I have to unplug the car to turn it on. All the other climate controls work fine. There should be no reason to disable the rear defroster just because the car is plugged in.

Does ET (Engineering Test) mode show any DTCs? If there are no DTCs from ET mode, then an OBD II scanner may indicate the DTCs causing the CEL. I would also check the 12 V battery.

Coasting in neutral will most likely yield slightly worse results than coasting in drive. Since you are not slowing down as fast in neutral, more kinetic energy will be lost due to aerodynamic drag, rolling resistance, and internal frictions. You are already getting around 95% regen efficiency with coasting in drive. You are not going to get much more efficiency by slowing down at a faster rate. So you are just losing more energy due to resistance and not getting much gain in return from improved regen efficiency.

It appears the better strategy for stopping for a stop light is to lift your foot off the accelerator as as soon as possible and coast to the stop light, applying the brake as required when you get close to the stop light. You get more regen when stopping faster, but to maintain speed until closer to the stop light, you consume more energy than you gain in regen. I am assuming that you leave the car in drive. The following table shows the amount of kinetic energy at various speeds stored in the HVB with the two different methods of stopping, i.e. maintain constant speed until you get close to the stop light and then apply maximum regen braking vs. coasting in drive and then applying the brake when close to the stop light. This assumes you have plenty of time to stop and coast most of the way to the stop light. Initial Speed Max Regen Coast (mph) 30 59% 69% 40 52% 62% 50 46% 57% If you need to stop quickly (no time to coast), then the amount of kinetic energy stored in the HVB (max regen) is approximately as shown in the following table: Initial Speed Max Regen (mph) 30 81% 40 79% 50 77% Note that the motor converts approximately 95% of the mechanical energy to electrical energy even when coasting. However, with coasting, you slow down much more slowly and more energy is lost due to aerodynamic drag, rolling resistance, and internal frictions, which is then not available to the motor to convert to electricity.

At least the Energi has regen. Without regen, as is the case with conventional cars, efficiency would be down to 31% and mileage down to 86 MPGe.

I have also measured the efficiency achieved when going up and down a 9% grade at 30 mph. The length of the hill was 0.6 miles in each direction. The following table shows the energy output of the HVB and Motor: Direction HVB Motor Efficiency Down -0.23 kWh -0.24 kWh 97% Up 0.47 kWh 0.38 kWh 81% Combined 0.24 kWh 0.15 kWh 61% So 97% downhill regen efficiency plus 81% uphill acceleration efficiency yields 61% overall efficiency. This is the same efficiency one would expect traveling at a constant speed of 30 mph. The MPGe for the trip was 171. Not very good for 30 mph. If there were no aerodynamic drag, rolling resistance, and internal friction, the mechanical energy applied to the motor going downhilll should equal the energy required to go back uphill. But since it exists, we see a 0.15 kWh difference. That means a total of 0.15 kWh of energy was lost due to these sources in the 1.2 miles traveled. Had I simply gone at constant speed for those 1.2 miles, the motor would have output exactly the same amount of energy from the HVB. And at 61% efficiency, the HVB would have output exactly the same amount of energy and MPGe would be exactly the same. Normally I would expect at least 220 MPGe at 30 mph. I think energy is being lost somewhere--not all of the energy from the motor is making it to the road. On a level road at constant 30 mph, the motor should have had to output less than 0.15 kWh of energy.

I'm not sure what they are talking about when they say "supercharging". No one can provide concrete proof that such a thing exists or even define it clearly. Their claims are highly suspect. Running the AC has little impact on the HVB temperature. If you charge the car when the car is turned on, it will charge to a higher actual SOC than when the car is turned off. Normally, when the car is off, it charges to around 98.5% SOC. When the car is turned on, it charges to 99.5% SOC or higher. You can only see this using a scanner. The car will report 100% SOC when the actual SOC is anywhere between 96% and 100%. So you may get 1-2% more SOC simply by charging the car when it is on. In addition, if you charge the car when it is on, you confuse the algorithms for determining estimated range for the HVB, lifetime MPGe, and the current trip MPGe's. It thinks you are getting regen. So if you want 255 miles in range to show up on the car's display and in MFM, simply charge a depleted battery with the car running. I can easily get 999.9 MPGe to show on the trip odometers by charging the car while it is running after a trip. When the trip odometer decrements down to 0 kWh of plug-in energy used, MPGe stops at 999.9. You can't get it to show negative plug-in energy.

The following plot shows the efficiency of the electric motor for my commute home from work. The commute is 8 miles. The blue line shows efficiency as a percentage, i.e. the ratio of the total energy output by the motor divided by the total energy output by the HVB. The red line shows speed in mph. You can see that approximately 70% of the energy from the HVB is converted to mechanical energy by the electric motor. The greater the efficiency, the higher the MPGe. Note that every time I slow down, and regenerative braking occurs, efficiency drops. At the beginning efficiency jumps to about 75% (during acceleration) and then at the first stop light, it plummets to a negative value, i.e. the battery did work but the motor didn't. In fact, the motor received more energy from the wheels (during a short downhill) than it output to the wheels. Not enough regen occurred to make up for the energy consumed from the HVB during the trip prior to the stop light. Efficiency varies much more in the beginning and begins to level out at the end. Since I haven't used much energy yet at the beginning, any changes in current efficiency have a much greater impact on the cumulative efficiency. Regen can never increase efficiency, it can only decrease efficiency. However, efficiency in city driving, where lots of regen occurs, is significantly higher than a drive at constant speed taking the same length of time. This seems like a contradiction. However, in city driving, there is also a lot of acceleration from the stops. The motor operates more efficiently during acceleration than driving at constant speed. So although all the regen lowers overall efficiency, all the acceleration more than makes up for it. I averaged about 33 mph for the commute. If I drove at a constant 33 mph to work, efficiency would be about 60% rather than the 68% shown on the chart at the end. So that means I should get higher MPGe in city driving than driving constant speed at 33 mph since it is more efficient? Right? Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way. Rolling resistance, aerodynamic drag, and internal frictions increase significantly at higher speeds. If I drove at a constant 33 mph, the motor would have to output about 0.68 kWh of energy. For the actual speeds traveled during the commute, I estimate that the amount of energy required for my commute to overcome this resistance was 1.01 kWh. I spent much of the commute driving significantly faster than 33 mph where much more power is required to overcome the resistance. The actual amount of energy output by the motor was 1.11 kWh. So I am missing 1.11 - 1.01 = 0.09 kWh. The remaining difference is due to an elevation change. The elevation at home is about 23 meters more than at work.

I doubt that the Focus Electric motor has lower internal resistance than the Fusion Energi. I suspect that's just the way EV motors are. However, the Focus Electric does not have the overhead of the planetary gear system (PGS) dragging it down. For the same speed, the Focus Electric should require less power to propel the car since it does not have to also turn the planetary gear system. I'm not sure what the power loss would be associated with the PGS. Are their any scanners, other than the prototype Scan Gauge II, that work with the Focus Electric?

If I am calculating things correctly, it looks like P&G at 45 mph will be more efficient if I leave the car in drive during the glide rather than shifting to neutral. The motor will consume about -5 kW of power for regen. Regen efficiency is estimated to be around 90%. But most likely, the motor will have to produce more power for the extra regen during the glide, negating any increase in efficiency. Estimated efficiency for CC is 66%. Estimated efficiency for P&G shifting into neutral is 72%. Estimated efficiency for P&G leaving car in drive is 77%. Optimal P&G efficiency (-3.5 kW of regen) is 77.5%.

The following is an explanation of why driving in L is generally inefficient. Assume regen is 100% efficient. Suppose so far the motor has produced 0.75 kWh of mechanical energy from 1 kWh of electricity supplied by the HVB. Efficiency is then currently 75%. Now you stop and regen provides 0.1 kWh of energy to the HVB. Since regen is perfect, the motor converts 0.1 kWh of mechanical energy to 0.1 kWh of electrical energy. Now the motor has output 0.75 kWh - 0.1 kWh = 0.65 kWh of energy and the HVB has output 0.9 kWh of energy. Efficiency has now gone down to 72.2%. Assume you now accelerate and the motor is 80% efficient in converting electricity to mechanical energy. The motor will now have to convert 0.5 kWh of electricity to 0.4 kWh of mechanical energy to get back to 75% efficiency. The motor will have output a total of 0.65 kWh + 0.4 kWh = 1.05 kWh of mechanical energy and the HVB will have output a total of 0.9 kWh + 0.5 kWh = 1.4 kWh of electrical energy. You now have to accelerate such that you provide 4 times the KE that you recovered from stopping. Basically, you have to accelerate to twice the speed from which you stopped. You can't keep doing this without breaking a few speed limits (and exceeding the Energi's maximum speed). In general, you don't want any unnecessary regen. Note that with P&G you get very inefficient regen during the glide. The internal resistance of about -1.3 kW is present the entire time during the glide and no electricity is generated. Fortunately, the energy loss associated with the internal resistance is orders of magnitude smaller compared to the energy you need to supply during the pulse. If you are not going to get anything from the 1.3 kW power loss of the motor, it may be more advantageous to regen say maybe 5 kWh at 95% efficiency instead. One would have to do the math to determine what is best (actually I have done the math and regen is more efficient).

Actually, for my city commute to work, I average about 33 mph. The efficiency of the motor at 33 mph is around 60%. I measure the efficiency of the motor for my commute to work at around 65%. So city driving does actually make the conversion from electrical to mechanical energy more efficient. Unfortunately, it don't see a comparable improvement in MPGe. For constant 33 mph, mileage is more than 220 MPGe. For my commute to work, mileage is at most 165 MPGe. For a perfect car, all the energy from the motor should be transferred to the wheels and road to propel the car. For real cars, that does not happen. It appears the transfer of mechanical energy to the road to propel the car is far less efficient for city driving than cruising at constant speed. The power transfer at constant speed is nearly 100%. For city driving, this efficiency drops to around 75%. Apparently, there are significant losses associated with changes in the car's speed. Not all the energy associated with the change makes it from/to the motor.