murphy

The battery is protected by large fuses. A short in the external wiring would blow those fuses in a heartbeat.

Ford says it takes about 7 hours to do a full charge with the 120 volt charger so 20 minutes is 20 / (7 * 60) * 100 = 4.8% of a full charge. 4.8% of 21 miles is 1 mile. There are so many inefficiencies in this process that it's impossible to calculate accurately. You could gain 1 mile by fine tuning your braking and accelerating skills. Once the battery is discharged it has to be recharged before it can be used again. This process only works with an AGM battery. Fully discharging a standard wet cell starter battery can destroy it. The motor in a small reffigerator only draws a couple of amps when running.and they don't run 100% of the time. You might be able to add some charge to the HVB. It depends on how low the 120 volts can go before the charger aborts due to low voltage. You can never be pure EV year round. The oil maintenance process will force the ICE to run eventually. Also if the gasoline in the tank gets close to 18 months old the car will run the ICE to burn it all to get rid of it. I had to check where you live with the mention of running the A/C. It's 16 degrees F here at the moment. The only inverter I have is 150 watts so I can't do any testing to see what the real world numbers look like. If you can afford the unit without upsetting you budget give it a try. Even if it doesn't prove useful for charging the car it is still a source of emergency power.

Something doesn't add up. ELECTRICAL SPECS Inverter Max Power (10 min): 1500 Watts Inverter Max Power (continuous): 1350 Watts Surge Power, Max: 3000W Max DC current draw: 12 Amps@12V Battery: Sealed, non-spillable 60 amp-hour AGM battery "1350 watts continuous from the inverter." To get 1350 watts from the inverter would require 1350 / 12 = 112.5 amps if the inverter was lossless. The inverter is no more than 80% efficient and probably closer to 50%. At 50% efficiency the current from the battery would be 225 amps. No battery that you can lift without a crane or a forklift is going to supply that much current for very long. It's a very inaccurate calculation but a 60 amp-hour battery will supply 60 amps for 1 hour, 120 amps for 1/2 hour, 240 amps for 1/4 hour. You might be able to charge the HVB for up to 20 minutes. The solar array to charge the 12 volt battery in a reasonable time would be large. 60 amp-hour x 12 volts = 720 watt-hours. Ignoring charging ineffiencies an 85 watt solar array would take at least 8.5 hours of full sun to charge the 12 volt battery. I also find the fact that under Warranty it says "null" disturbing.

Initially it said it couldn't access the Restraints & Driver Assistance system. Later it added that it couldn't access the Checks, Fluids & Filters system. Now that the site is working again those have both gone away and everything looks good. There were no DTC's displayed on the site or in the car. I now think it was all bogus due to a troubled web site.

My electric rate is 16 cents per kWh. They were installed at the end of September. For the month of October I generated 1 kWh more than I used. It's been down hill from there with the days getting shorter and the low sun angle. The best days so far were October 15 and 21 when I generated 43 kWh each day. I expect the high sun angle and longer days in the spring and summer will work very well. At the moment there is 4" to 6" of snow on the panels so even with bright sun they are only generating 11 watts.

That 85 watt panel is only going to produce 85 watts when aimed directly at the sun (no clouds). It takes 6 to 7 kWh to charge the battery. That's 6000 to 7000 watt hours. The car's battery is around 300 volts DC. A single solar panel like the type on the roof of my house puts out around 35 volts in full sunlight. The only provision to charge the car's battery is with 120 or 240 volts AC. Your solar panel would have to charge a 12 volt battery which is running an inverter to provide 120 volts AC. The inverter would have to be rated to produce around 1400 watts at 120 volts AC. That means it would be drawing over 117 amps from the battery. A standard 12 volt car battery would not last very long with a 117 amp load on it. IMHO the Ford concept car will only be practical in the sun belt where the sun is overhead most of the time. I have 40 solar panels, rated at 250 watts, on the roof of my house. The system is rated at 10 kW (10,000 watts). Yesterday was a very cloudy day with a snow storm approaching. My system generated 4 kWh of energy yesterday.

10 amps should be more than enough to put the car in run mode. Note that if the 12 volt battery is dead you can't open the trunk unless you connect a piece of rope to the emergency handle and feed it through the opening to the back seat. Either install the rope or don't carry the jump start box in the trunk.

You will have to take the right side panel off of the console to get to the release to get the shifter out of park. It's in the Owner's Manual but it doesn't tell you how to get the side panel off. It's held on with push snaps but can be daunting if you've never done it before. It's much easier to jump a 12 volt battery to the terminals under the hood to get enough power to turn the car on. Once it's on the big battery will start charging the 12 volt battery. Do you have a 12 volt battery charger? A lawn tractor or electric start lawn mower that you could steal a battery from to get it going? 8 or 9 D cells in series would supply enough power to turn it on.

Well I ran my first of the month VHR today and the error conditions that were in the last report are magically gone. :) The vehicle history is still rolled back to the day the car was built however. :waiting:

Have the people responsible for the SyncMyRide web site ever heard of code reviews? It is very unprofessional to put a web site on line that has obviously not been reviewed and tested based on a detailed test plan. In my case, and I suspect many others, the underlying database has been rolled back to the day the car was built (April 1, 2013). Everything that happened since then has been deleted. The Vehicle Health Report is reporting strange problems. The web site has been broken for at least a month. Very disappointing. :waiting:

PM sent.

There are manual shutters on the rear vents that can turn them off completely.

Set the EV Mode to "EV Later".

The SyncMyRide web site is seriously corrupted. It has been rolled back to the day my car was built (April 1, 2013). The Sync version shows as 3.5.1. The car actually has 3.6.2. I installed it the day after it was released. The entire history of anything that was done after April 1 is gone. I just ran a Vehicle Health Report (December 24, 2013). For several weeks it has been reporting that the "Restraints & Driver Assistance" system is unavaiable and today it added that the "Checks, Fluids & Filters" system is unavailable. I had previously discussed this with the service manager at my dealer and was going to set up an appointment after the first of the year. The car itself is not exhibiting any problems and the DTC list is blank. I now feel that going to the dealer would be a waste of his time and mine.

The Energi does not come with a jack or a lug wrench.

Hopefully the dealer ordered torsion bars and not struts.

The reason that I asked is that should have awakened the car and triggered battery charging if the battery was low. I'm just guessing based on the way I would have designed it.

During those two weeks did you request the car's status via MyFordMobile? I suspect that the only way to keep the 12 volt battery charged in a long term situation is to connect a battery maintainer to the battery.

The maintenance screen is a feel good message. It actually means that the system has crashed and is rebooting.

According to the wiring diagram the HVB has a 225 amp fuse in series with the positive terminal and the HVB service disconnect. There is no indication where that fuse is located. It doesn't appear in any of the fuse panels.

It's a combination of 20,000 miles and 2 years.

Two 50 foot 10 Gauge cables weigh 16.5 pounds. http://www.amazon.com/Century-Contractor-Grade-Gauge-Extension/dp/B000BMDQHQ

The oil change interval for an Energi is 20,000 miles or 2 years, which ever comes first. The oil life monitor should be tracking based of those two facts. The car has no way to actually analyze the oil.

Do you have the car in EV Auto or EV Now?

My charge from yesterday is fine. Today I made a trip of 4.9 miles followed by the return which shows 4.8 miles. I had about 3 miles remaining on the HVB and fully charged the battery. The MFM log shows a charge between the two legs of the trip from 12:10 PM to 12:08 PM and says it was 58 minutes and put 15% into the HVB. That entry is total nonsense. It does not show the charge after I returned home.