YoloSwaggins

if you're looking to get an Inverter you may want to consider getting one that is between 500w and 1000w that connects to your battery terminals. you could use your HVB to power your camper by leaving your car running since the HVB sends a charging voltage to the 12v battery terminals, but its not recommended. I would also recommend getting a much larger 12v battery, because the one in the Energi is very small compared to ones you might see in a truck for example. if you're using that battery to power your camper, you're gonna need some more juice.

that 14.2v is the voltage used to charge the accessory battery (normal car battery) located in the trunk. That voltage comes from the HVB and is sent through the DC-to-DC converter and stepped down from 200v+ to ~14v. The charging voltage is only present when the car is running, when the car is off you will see ~12 which is the voltage being output by the accessory battery.

I think all of us have invested a little too much time into this conversation. If it helps you enjoy your driving experience then go for it, as long as other people don't fall for it. :2thumbs:

You're not getting what I'm saying at all. This has nothing to do with Hybrids being more fuel efficient. (which they are) regardless, I don't know what you saw to make you think you were getting better overall MPG by abusing the EV Later button to "top off" your battery, but I promise you you weren't. Its not physically possible. I would send you a link to a page about the laws of conservation of energy, but I don't think you would understand any of it or why I'm linking it to you. This is a somewhat complicated and confusing topic, so I don't blame you for not understanding, especially since the Chevy Volt uses a gas generator to power the vehicles all electric drivetrain when the battery gets depleted, but even the Chevy Volt (which has a dedicated engine used for generating electricity) doesn't have a Charge Mode in which you can use the generator to top the battery off, because it would make no sense to do that. There is not a single circumstance in which using this trick would help you in any way. Yes its charging your battery up, and yes using the electric motor is way more efficient than the ICE, but the fuel you burned in the process of charging the battery would have been more efficiently used to just drive the car, even in the city. Using the battery isn't more efficient than using the ICE if you used the ICE to charge the battery in the first place. That's why ford didn't make a "Charge Mode" (plus a bunch of other reasons).

That doesn't make any sense. Even if you had city driving left in your trip and you didn't have any EV mileage left, its still way more efficient to just do your city drive using gas, than it would be to use gas to generate battery power for you to use in the city. You're spending way more money on gas trying to generate electricity for no reason, than you are saving by driving in EV mode in the city. according to basic laws of physics, its physically impossible for this to get you a better overall MPG than just not doing it at all. You need to look into Energy conversion loss: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_conversion_efficiency If you had city driving coming up in your trip, you should have saved battery power for it by switching to EV Later long before you ran out of Battery. regardless of whether the Generator can handle it or not, its not designed for what you're doing, and you're still putting unnecessary stress on it that not only isn't benefiting you, its counterproductive to your mileage efficiency. Not to mention, its degrading the life of your HV battery by charging it for no reason. Its your car and you're free to do whatever you want with it, but you're naive to the features and functions of the car and you're spreading misinformation. You might convince other forum members who are new Energi drivers to waste money and unintentionally damage their drivetrain which is the only reason that I care.

Electrical engineer speaking here: you guys haven't stumbled across some sweet hack Ford doesn't want you to know about. all you're doing is wasting gas for no reason. First: Car companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars per year researching ways to squeeze 1 or 2 more MPG's out of a car so they can get a leg up on their competition. if there was a way for them to claim they could increase driving efficiency, i promise you, they would have already done so, because it would have saved them millions of dollars. Second: it's MUCH more efficient burning gas to drive 20 miles, that it is for you to Burn gas to drive a generator to charge a battery to drive a motor to drive the car 20 miles. there is so much energy lost in that whole process and it all comes ultimately from your gas tank. The whole point of owning an EV is that its much cheaper driving on electricity from a power plant than it is from burning gas and this defeats the whole purpose of having a fully charged battery. its costing you ~$3 to charge you battery the way you're doing it vs ¢77 charging it from the wall. Third: as for you getting "46 MPG:" the way the Energi calculates "MPG" when using electricity, is WAY different from actual miles per gallon when you're burning fuel. Rapidly switching between the two is causing a glitch that is tricking the car (and you) into thinking you're getting better MPG's than you really are. there are other glitches similar to this, such as resetting your MPG meter, running on gas for 20 seconds then switching over to EV for a while. within a few minutes your "Average MPG" will be like 999MPG which is impossible. Fourth: youre damaging your generator using it in a way its not meant to be used. normally it only has to deal with generating electricity for a short amount of time when you brake, but using it to charge the batter is causing too much heat to build up in the generator windings thus drastically reducing the life of your drive-train.

When it comes to winter driving, just remember that there is one thing combustion engines are very good at: Producing ass-tons of waste heat. I find the most efficient way to get the car heated up is to run it in EV Later mode until the coolant warms up, then switch over to EV mode once its warm. Getting the coolant from cold all the way up to temperature takes a lot of juice and time when using the battery and will rob you of a few miles because of the current draw.

in order for that to happen you would need to leave the car running without noticing it somehow. It honks at you twice when the keys leave the car while its still running so you would have to be deaf not to notice. I actually do this to keep my dog nice and cool while I run into the store for 5-10 mins. it works well but drains the battery by a few miles.

all you guys saying "Kill-O-Watt" sound Hilarious XD. It's just "kilowatt" Kilo as in "1000"

This is only true if you get your electricity from renewable sources. 90% of US power comes from coal or natural gas, so if that's the case for you; you are just putting less pollution into the air.