larryh

You can get a free 240 V charging station with the purchase of a car if you live in California. http://evsolutions.avinc.com/products/cec/cec_program_overview

I placed the order for the Bosch Power Max charger on June 28, about a month after they provided me with an estimate. They had not started production yet. I was told that they expected the first units would start shipping in about three weeks. My unit was not shipped until August 14. The electrician was busy until August 27 before he could install it. The power company installed the meter for the charger on September 3. The electrical inspection occurred on September 10. You would have to call Bosch to see if they are still backlogged with orders. I am happy with the charger and the installation. If you order the unit without installation, you can get estimates from several electricians to get a better installation cost than from the electrician Bosch selects to install the unit. However, as mentioned above, you only get a one year warranty rather than a three year warranty if you do that. If you let Bosch install it and get the three year warranty, then all costs to repair/replace the unit are covered by Bosch, including the cost to have the electrician come out and fix the problem or to install a new unit. But I am not sure that is worth the higher cost. Bosch selected Mr. Electric to do my installation. He installed all the Ford Leviton chargers for the local dealers and is also the official installer for Tesla chargers. I was not overly impressed with him. I would expected him to have been a bit more knowledgeable about things than he was. Bosch discounted the price of the original estimate for me--they were apparently more anxious to sell the unit than I was to buy it. I was not in any rush to install the unit. I still had the 120 V charger. Price was more important to me than the time to install. Anyway, the extra time gave me more time to evaluate possible alternative installations and chargers. I also chose the 30 Amp charger over the 15 Amp charger. I had a more complex installation that included a separately metered circuit to get discounted electric rates. If I am going through all that expense, I am not going to skimp and buy a 15 amp charger over a 30 amp charger just to save $150. All the other 30 amp chargers that I am aware of cost at least $200 more than the Bosch charger. Hopefully, more competition will eventually reduce the cost of chargers.

It is a 2013. The VIN # is 3FA6P0PU3DR385807. Mine is the same exterior color, but a Titanium rather than SE and with more options. I don't particularly like the black interior. I prefer a dune color interior.

It takes almost exactly 1 kWh of energy less to charge a fully depleted battery with a 240 V charger vs. the 120 V charger. So for a daily full recharge, that would be 365 kWh each year. At $0.12 / kWh, that would be about $44 per year. For the charger I selected, the Power Max 30 A, the charger is normally priced at $593. You receive a 30% tax credit for the charger and installation. So that would reduce the price of the 30 Amp charger to $415. It would then take 9.5 years to recover the cost of the charger alone. It would typically cost another $350 to install the charger for which you can also get a 30% tax credit. There is also a $450 model with a shorter cord and 15 amps rather than 30 amps. There is also the 20 Amp Clipper Creek for $495. However, with my charger installation, I am able to take advantage of a discounted electric rate from the electric company at $0.0585 / kWh. With this discounted rate, the total savings would amount to about $200 / year. My total cost for the charger and installation was $1550 (I had a complex installation), less the 30% tax credit yields $1085. I would recover my investment in 5 years under these assumptions. You should check to see if your electric company offers discounted rates for EVs. There are additional potential savings with the 240 V charger: . You can charge in just over 2 hours. So you can charge multiple times throughout the day and travel more in EV mode. . You can precondition the car without depleting the battery. You will reduce range and deplete the battery using a 120 V charger. I am hoping that this will allow me to commute to work and back entirely in EV mode this winter. The round-trip commute is 14.6 miles. I don't think it would be possible with the 120 V charger.

The car I originally ordered back in March finally arrived at the dealership. It has a sticker date of 6/28/2013 and a build date date of 7/9/2013. I would have been waiting five months had I not selected the current Energi.

Comparing my results with http://www.fordfusionenergiforum.com/topic/687-ge-wattstation-installreview/?p=2486, the average power use reported by Scooter80 using the GE Wattstation 240 V / 30 amp charger appears to be around 3.425 kW. So I must be computing the power usage correctly from my meter using the Bosch Power Max 240 V / 30 A charger when I obtained 3.427 kW.

Thank you for your reply. I wish Dakota Electric would use smart meters. They would make it much easier to track electricity usage. To get accurate power measurements, I have to make a movie of my meter with my digital camera so I can accurately determine the timing of the Digital Power Indicator. In addition, the resolution of the meter is only to the whole kWh. Either I have to take measurements over a long period of time, or again record the meter so I can calculate the current fraction of a kWh.

When the car is not charging, the "Digital Power Indicator" bars below the digits do not move at all, even after 24 hours. So I can't measure the standy power being used by the timer and the charger. If the charger uses 5 Watts during standy mode, the bars should move at least 5/1.2 = 4 digits each hour. I notice on the specifications for the meter, the "Starting Load" for the meter is 12 Watts. Does that mean the meter does not register any electricity use below 12 watts and I don't have to pay for that electricity?

You could always try riding the brakes while you are on the freeway. Maybe that would generate lots of regen miles. Actually, to get the best mileage, you want to avoid braking whenever possible. Generating a lot of regen miles is counterproductive unless you really need to stop. A lot of regen miles could be a sign of poor driving technique. This does not seem to be the best goal to strive for.

The meter is shown below. I think I figured it out. Kh is 7.2 for my meter. So each time the bars rotate once across the six digits represents 7.2 Wh of energy. The bars under the digits appear to simulate the wheel on a mechanical meter. I observed 10 rotations in 75.63 seconds. I made a movie with my digital camera and then used a movie editor to step frame by frame through the images. So that corresponds to 0.13222 rotations/sec. Multiply that by 3600 seconds/hr and by the 7.2 Kh and I get: 3427 watts.

If you are wondering how I determined the average power consumed during charging, I simply divided the 17-18 kWh by the total charge time as reported by MyFord Mobile. I subtracted four minutes from each time to account for the fact that the power slowly decreases from the max to 0 during the last eight minutes of charging. I wish I knew how my meter worked. It has two bars under the digits displaying kWh. I would assume that the bars move one digit to the right with each 1 Wh of energy use. But doing that computation, I only get 2.9 kW. So that assumption cannot be right.

It would be nice if they would display the total number of cars in each region. I think I have a smaller region than most. My worst ranking is gas sipper at #51. The value shown has never changed since the scoreboard was created.

Well I didn't make any of the scoreboards. However, I did get a New Impact Achievement for driving 40 miles on one charge during my weekly commute this morning. I guess if you are careful in switching between EV Later and Auto EV, you get this award. I think the wind was helping me this morning. I used 0.55 gallons of gas to go 56.5 miles. Normally it is around 0.7. I have no way to verify that this award is valid since the car does not show me the plug-in energy miles. But if I went 40 miles on plug-in energy, that leaves 16.5 miles for hybrid mode. 16.5 / 0.55 = 30 MPG seems rather low to me. I don't know how they determined the plug-in energy miles for this.

3.2 to 3.4 kW is the power consumed while charging the HVB. It is not the energy required to charge the battery. I haven't actually measured the amount of energy required to charge a fully depleted battery when the meter was connected. Unfortunately, the meter only provides resolution to the nearest kWh so it will take several measurements to get an accurate value. Assuming the car says that used 5.8 kWh of plug-in energy (a typical value for a deeply depleted battery when the hybrid battery on the console shows less than 25% charge), I would estimate the amount of electricity from the power company to be between 6.8 and 7.2 kWh based on the measurements I made this week. If it is less depleted, and the car says around 5.6 kWh (the hybrid battery shows about 50% charge), then the value would be between 6.5 and 6.9 kWh. So my measurements agree with yours. Note that the meter is measuring the entire energy consumption of the charger throughout the day, even the energy it consumes while not charging. However, the timer is supposed to use less than 3 W and the charger less than 5 W. So they should not have large impact on the results.

The power company installed the meter for my 240 V Power Max charger on Tuesday. So far, my car reports that it has used 14.6 kWh of electricity. The meter shows that I used 17 kWh for charging. The meter accuracy is about 0.2% (two-tenths of a percent). But, unfortunately, the meter only provides measurement resolution to the nearest kWh. So the actual energy used is between 17 kWh and 18 kWh. So if I compute the ratio of power from the electric company used to charge the car divided by the amount of plug-in energy consumed as reported by the car, I get a value between 1.17 and 1.24. That is far better than the 1.39 ratio for the 120 V charger. So just by using a 240 V charger, my actual MPGe has increased by 16%. It appears the 120 V charger is rather inefficient compared to my 240 V charger. With the 120 V charger, 72% of the energy from the wall outlet is actually used to propel the car. The rest is wasted. With the 240 V charger, 83% of the energy is used to propel the car. I will continue to track the measurements to get more accurate values. A fully depleted battery takes 2 hours and 10 minutes to charge (as reported by My Ford Mobile). I have determined the power consumed during charging to be between 3.2 and 3.4 kW. So now it costs me about $0.40 to charge a fully depleted battery.

Many 240 V chargers are hardwired. There is no convenient way to turn them off. I would only be concerned during thunderstorms. I wouldn't want surges to damage the charger or the car. I unplugged the 120 V charger during storms. I have an on/off switch on the 240 V charger, so I can easily turn it off.

I now have a 240 V charger. I unplugged the 120 V charger to take it with me so I could charge elsewhere. But otherwise, I left it plugged in.

The 120 V charger consumes 2.2 watts of power when it is not plugged into the car. I leave it plugged in.

This article is, in general, about the weaknesses in the security of car computer systems that we should all be concerned about. In this article, hackers were able to use GM's OnStar system to seize control of the car. I assume that could also happen with MFM. http://news.yahoo.com/hackers-weaknesses-car-computer-systems-134038212.html Stefan Savage, a UCSD computer science professor, said he and other researchers could control nearly everything but the car's steering. "We could have turned the brakes off. We could have killed the engine. We could have engaged the brakes," he said

I wonder for Gas Sipper if they mean that many miles without using gas?

Can anyone decipher how to use of Key Personalization at the updated MyFord Mobile web site and what it does for you? A personalized key allows MyFord® Mobile to more accurately predict driving range based on an individual's driving style. Only trips using the personalized key will count towards predictions for that individual. To associate a particular key with a person, use the Key Usage Log below.

After turning the car off, it takes a while for all the electrical systems to shutdown (lights, fans, etc.). As they shutdown and the load on the battery decreases, the voltage will increase. It takes about 20 minutes for everything to stabilize. The battery is fine at 12.5 V. I frequently observe that value.

From the murphy's plot, the initial current was about 12.2/15 = 0.81 A and the final current was about 11/15 = 0.77 A. The average current over the plot was about 0.77A. The amount of charge drawn was then approximately 0.77 A * 28.4 H = 22 Ah. The voltage dropped about 2 V during this time period. So over another 28.4 H, it might drop another 2 V to less than 9 V. The average current during this time period would be approximately 0.66 A. So that would be another 0.66 A * 28.4 H = 19 Ah. So I am guessing the rating is more than 22 + 19 = 41 Ah if you are measuring down to 8 V.