larryh
Fusion Energi Member-
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Everything posted by larryh
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Reported Trip Energy Used vs Energy required to recharge car
larryh replied to larryh's topic in Lounge - Fusion Energi
Note that my 56.5 mile commute is mostly freeway/highway. The mileage at the different speeds in the charts above are applicable for highway/freeway driving. I don't know what results you would get for city driving. I haven't tried to determine hybrid MPG vs. EV MPGe for city driving. All my commutes in the city are in EV mode. If you were really ambitious, you could reset one of the trip odometers at the start of each of the various segments of your commute and determine the MPGe you get for that segment in EV mode vs. hybrid mode. You would, of course, have to drive each segment at least once in EV mode and then in hybrid mode. Use EV later on the segment(s) with the lowest EV MPGe / Hybrid MPGe ratio, where the electric motor is least efficient vs the engine. -
The car is drawing 60 watts of power for the on-board electronics in the car waiting to charge at 11 pm. The light on the charger will come on if the car draws any power from the charger, even only 60 watts. If you have the Versicharge, you could simply use the delay feature on the charger to delay charging until 11 pm. That way you would not be wasting 60 watts of power waiting until 11 pm.
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Reported Trip Energy Used vs Energy required to recharge car
larryh replied to larryh's topic in Lounge - Fusion Energi
The electric motor is about 3 times more efficient than the engine at 40 mph. At 70 mph, the electric motor is only 2.5 times more efficient. You should get better overall MPGe if you reserve EV for slower speeds. I find that for my 56.5 mile commute, if I switch to EV later in the 60 mph and faster zones, I get much better results. If I simply choose auto EV and run in EV mode until the battery is depleted, I get about 63 MPGe for the trip. If I reserve EV for the slower portions, I get about 70 MPGe. Since I switched, the estimated range in EV mode with a full charge has now increased to 27 miles rather than 23 miles before. You could try switching to EV later in the 70 mph zones and use auto EV the rest of the time. Of course, just make sure that you deplete the battery. The most gas you could ever save by optimizing using EV mode is probably less than 0.1 gallons. -
Once the car is fully charged, I don't think that any further charging will take place until you unplug the car and plug it back in (or turn it on). So keeping it plugged in most likely won't help keep the 12 volt battery charged. Yes, many people have experienced battery problems with hybrids and plug-in hybrids. It is not restricted to any particular model. I have read several posts in the different forums regarding their experiences. Unfortunately, it is not just you that has had this problem. Hopefully, they will figure it out soon.
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I notice that the voltage drops to about 12.20 V when using MFM and to about 12.05 V when opening the door. I observed similar results last night. So opening the doors appears to use more power than MFM. I close the door and peer through the window after starting and turning the car off to observe the meter when measuring the battery for MFM. Yes, I observe the meter turning off quite some time after the door is closed. I haven't observed a low battery charge yet.
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I don't have enough experience with batteries to determine if the car is using a lot of power from the battery. This morning the battery reads 12.58 V after recharging yesterday evening. But it takes quite some time to get back up to that level after I start the car and turn it off and let all the lights turn off. A timer shuts the power points off after a while, so I have to start the car and turn it off to get them to start working again.
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Yes, it charges the 12V battery as soon as the charger is plugged in until charging completes.
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I received the battery monitor today. It shows 12.60+ volts when the car is off and not plugged in. So the voltage is correct. It shows 14.40+ Volts when I plug the car in, and when I turn it on. So it also appears to be charging correctly. I tried pressing the update button at the MFM web site five times. It seemed to weaken the battery a bit, even though the voltage went back up to 12.56 volts, the voltage was a bit lower when opening the doors than when the battery was freshly charged.
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This is an excerpt from an older revision of the manual: If the vehicle is left inoperative for over 31 days, it may be necessary to jump start the vehicle. See Roadside Emergencies (page 232). They deleted this from the latest revision. I wonder how often MFM contacts the car. Probably only when starting/stopping the car, at the start/end of charging, and when you attempt to contact it from MFM. I don't see anywhere that it states limitations on how often you can use MFM to contact the car. The car has all sorts of features that constantly require power from the battery even with the car is off, such as the circuits that enable remote start and locking/unlocking the car from the keyfob, the circuits to detect when the car is plugged in to initiate charging, the circuits to enable contact with MFM when initiated by the user, etc. Yes, using MFM during the tests to contact the car would probably mess up the test results.
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A plethora of system faults last night.
larryh replied to Nherring's topic in Advanced Driver Assistance Technologies
The auto window up not working is a common problem with many owners. See CombsAuthor's post to fix that http://www.fordfusionenergiforum.com/topic/806-global-opening-and-closing/. Yes--it is unlikely the battery was completely dead. Just didn't have enough power to energize the circuits required to start the car and the dc to dc converter from the high voltage battery to charge it, and not enough power to reliably maintain the volatile memory of Sync. Hopefully, Sync is not corrupted so that it properly turns things off and shuts down correctly.- 11 replies
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Won't accept a charge and gives the message Charge Fault
larryh replied to erickw's topic in Batteries & Charging
I am sorry to hear about your problems with your Energi. Dealers should offer an exchange policy for cars if you are not completely satisfied. The dealer that I purchased my Energi from allows the customer to exchange a car within three days for another one of any value if they are not completely satisfied. When buying an Energi, if one can find a dealer with a similar policy, it would allow you to exchange it if you find any serious problems within the exchange period. BTW, I also given a Toyota Camry rental car when they needed to order a replacement block heater for my car. The Energi was a much nicer car. -
Thank you. So that requires having to buy a second battery to connect in parallel with the first. I think I will just buy a simple, inexpensive power point battery monitor to monitor the battery voltage.
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How do you measure the amperage drawn from the battery without disconnecting the battery? If you disconnect the battery, then you have to follow the procedure on page 244 of the manual to reset everything. I wonder if there is a way to record the power used by each of the devices on the car. There are a lot of fuses controlling different things. If somehow one could connect a recording meter to a fuse they could observe the amount of power used by that device throughout the day.
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Reported Trip Energy Used vs Energy required to recharge car
larryh replied to larryh's topic in Lounge - Fusion Energi
Thank you, Energized, for these two data points. The A/C generally uses about 0.5 kW of power. At 75 mph, the power to the wheels is around 28 kW. So A/C uses less than 2% of the energy. It won't have much impact on MPG. The measurement errors for MPG are probably more than 2%. I updated the chart to include these measurements. They align quite well with what I have measured. So every 10 mph increase in speed reduces MPG by about 7 MPG. -
From the album: Car
MPG vs Speed in Hybrid Mode -
At what point is it cheaper to use gas?
larryh replied to Energized's topic in Lounge - Fusion Energi
The cost for installing a submeter socket to monitor electricity useage for charging the car is about $200 for me. The electric company provides the meter. I buy the socket from them and have an electrician install it. -
L is designed to provide engine braking when going down a hill. It would normally try to use the generator to slow down the car, but your battery was full. So it would have to turn on the ICE to provide engine braking. I wonder if what you felt was the car attempting to start the ICE. With L, if you let up on the gas pedal, it will agressively slow the the car down with regen. It reached a point when it could no longer put any more energy into the battery and stopped this aggressive regen and switched on the engine to use it instead. Maybe that is what you intrepreted as acceleration, it couldn't do its aggressive deceleration temporarily until the ICE was up and running and it switched to that. I would not use L unless I needed to slow my descent down a hill. I would use grade assist first. If that doesn't slow the car down enough, then I would switch to L. For a discussion on L, see the following posts: http://fordcmaxenergiforum.com/topic/748-low-gear-regen-ive-heard-its-more-aggressive-but-how-much-any-links-and-my-experience/
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A plethora of system faults last night.
larryh replied to Nherring's topic in Advanced Driver Assistance Technologies
If you look on page 244 of the manual, you will see a procedure that you should follow when the 12 volt battery fails: Because your vehicle’s engine is electronically-controlled by a computer, some engine control settings are maintained by power from the low voltage battery. Some engine computer settings, like the idle trim and fuel trim strategy, optimize the driveability and performance of the engine. Some other computer settings, like the clock and radio station presets, are also maintained in memory by power from the low voltage battery. When a technician disconnects and connects the low voltage battery, these settings are erased. Complete the following procedure in order to restore the settings: 1. With the vehicle at a complete stop, set the parking brake. 2. Shift the transmission into P. 3. Turn off all accessories. 4. Step on the brake pedal and start the vehicle. 5. Run the engine until it reaches normal operating temperature. While the engine is warming up, complete the following: Reset the clock. See Audio System (page 297). Reset the power windows bounce-back feature. See Windows and Mirrors (page 72). Reset the radio station presets. See Audio System (page 297). 6. Allow the engine to idle for at least one minute. If the engine turns off, step on the accelerator to start the engine. 7. While the engine is running, step on the brake pedal and shift the transmission to N. 8. Allow the engine to run for at least one minute by pressing on the accelerator pedal. 9. Drive the vehicle at least 10 miles (16 kilometers) to completely relearn the idle and fuel trim strategy. Note: If you do not allow the engine to relearn the idle and fuel trim strategy, the idle quality of your vehicle may be adversely affected until the engine computer eventually relearns the idle trim and fuel trim strategy.- 11 replies
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So if the charge on the 12 Volt battery is low, the car is going to contact MyFord Mobile drawing current which spikes over 10 amps from the battery and doesn't die down for several minutes so that it can send out a notification that the battery charge is low? If the battery weren't dead yet, that would probably finish it off. How do you measure the current from the battery without disconnecting it? If you disconnect it, then you will have reset everything as described on page 244 of the manual.
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At what point is it cheaper to use gas?
larryh replied to Energized's topic in Lounge - Fusion Energi
You have extremely high electric rates. Your power company doesn't offer any discounts for electric vehicles? Which power company is this? Yes, your math is correct. If you can travel 24 miles on a charge and the car gets 42 MPG (using the numbers that I observe), then the amount of gas you saved for those 24 miles is about 0.57 gallons. So the price of gas would have to be less than $2.46 / 0.57 = $4.305 / gallon for you to be better off using gas. It would be cheaper for you to use gas. The price of gas for those 24 miles is 0.57 gallons * $3.83 / gallon = $2.19. Your electric rates would have to be less than $2.19/7.7 = $0.284 /kWh to prefer using electricity over gas. -
Ford needs to come up with more robust/failsafe control hardware/sofware for the car. If things aren't working properly, the software/hardware should degrade gracefully. It needs to recognize things aren't working properly. If the 12-volt battery is low, it needs to stop the drain on the battery. For example, don't connect to Ford Mobile when the 12-volt battery is low or do other things that require a lot of power that aren't really necessary. Unfortunately it is difficult to thoroughly test and debug such new and complex designs, anticipating every possible contingency. And the initial buyers are forced to help debug their products and identify quality problems in their manufacturing processes. I would hope after they get all these problems straightened out they would at least thank us for the risks that we are taking when buying a newly designed product in which the bugs have not all been worked out by at least providing software updates to the control modules (which we would have in the first place had they tested the problem earlier). I really like the Fusion Energi. I would be very disappointed if it did not work correctly and were continually plagued with problems. It has a lot of state of the art and innovative engineering design. It would be ashamed if they could not come up with a reliable way to execute that design.
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Reported Trip Energy Used vs Energy required to recharge car
larryh replied to larryh's topic in Lounge - Fusion Energi
Note that MPG will vary depending on head/cross/tail winds, atltitude changes, climate control, temperature, and other factors. You can easily observe the affect of speed on MPG. Set Eco Cruise to the desired speed and reset a trip odometer. After about 15 miles, the MPG should start settling down to a consistent value. Set Eco Cruise to the next desired speed and reset the trip odometer and wait another 15 miles. The two segments of roads should hopefully be level and have similar conditions. I'm not sure that the car learns your driving style. I think it is preprogrammed. The only thing I am aware of that is "learns" is where you park the car to charge, i.e. EV+ mode. It would be nice if the car would actually learn your routes and automatically optimize the use of EV mode over the route. But I think you have to do that yourself. Just reserve EV mode for the slower portions of your route. I prefer a more leisurely drive than racing to keep up with everyone else. I have enough stress in life without driving adding any more. So I observe the speed limits. Driving 70 vs 75 mph will save you 14 minutes for a 240 mile drive. It will cost you about 0.6 gallons of gas. -
Reported Trip Energy Used vs Energy required to recharge car
larryh replied to larryh's topic in Lounge - Fusion Energi
I measured a couple of additional data points (40 mph and 50 mph) for MPG vs. speed in hybrid mode this morning. Actually, the relationship looks quite linear from 40 mph to 70 mph. This is what I also observed for MPGe vs speed in EV mode. So with every 10 mph increase in speed, you loose 7.5 MPG. -
From the album: Car
MPG vs Speed in Hybrid Mode for Fusion Energi -
The Empower screen shows the engine on/off threshold. When things are working normally, the threshold should be 40 kW, i.e. the blue outline includes the first four marks. If the battery is overheated, low, or something else is wrong, the threshold would be reduced. Only the electric motor provides reverse.