How Much Battery Capacity And Range Has My Ford F-150 Lightning Lost After 3 Years and 38,000 Miles?

[Traconesu]

Yes. In fact the slower the charge the better.

I'll try that. As I mentioned I never use Fast chargers. Most my charging is done at 7.2 kwh from my solar system to 80-90% unless I need it quick or not enough sun then I use my 80 amp charger. I'll charge it to 100% using my 80 amp charger. Let it set an hour or so then check my SOH. I was only down to 36% so this might not work as I don't like discharging much lower than that. Regardless I'm not real concerned about the SOH because I know it has to be better than what's showing. I've had the 3 defective modules replaced. Approximately 26k miles on it now. A little over 8k miles a year. With 5 yrs left on warranty I expect maybe 79k miles by then an the way I discharge and charge I expect my battery to last long after that.

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[electricpig]

If you are driving so few miles, why are you changing to 100%? At least that is what I sounds like, maybe that's not the case.

 

[Maxx]

I've got a terrible SOH. I suppose it's because I never DC fast charge. Vehicle is at 36% SOC. Showing 103 mi range left. At 70 mph I'm usually getting about 2/mpk. At 55 mph usually 2.1-2.3 mpk. My 2022 platinum has always been pretty constant at those mpk ranges.

Sorry for late response. I just saw your posts. That is indeed very low for the age of your battery. Are you sure you are not running the car scanner in demo mode?

If it is real reading, I don’t have the personal experience to say why it is so low. My DOD (Depth of Discharge) was very low 40%-60% SOC and when I did a road trip that included 100% charging and DCFC, my SOH bumped up by 0.5% so I can’t explain how 10% drop can be attributed to software estimate to be that far off.

Has Your battery been spending a lot of time at SOCs near zero or hundred? Or has it had many hot days? They really don’t like heat. I just came back from a trip. DCFC took the battery temp from 82F to 106F. I drive in Sport mode right after DCFC charging, it seems like it cools down the battery faster (lower threshold for cooling system to kick in). I also try to park it in the shade anytime I have the option.

Next time you charge to 100% (when you see virtually no power/current going in to the battery). Check to see how close battery power is to what total available power is supposed to be for your pack size if it was new. If the KWh you see is 90% of the KWh for a brand new pack, that 90% SOH is real. if not, a piece of software or hardware is lying to you.

p.s. Regarding the look of your car scanner pages, you can make your own custom pages and put any sensor data In those pages with different colors and looks.

 

[Traconesu]

If you are driving so few miles, why are you changing to 100%? At least that is what I sounds like, maybe that's not the case.

My longest trips are once a month 120 mi round trip. I normally make 1-2 trips into town a week totalling lest than 60 miles a trip. I seldom drop below 60% SOC and charge no more than 90% but usually to 80-85% SOC. I will occasionally charge to 100% when I drive my 120 mile monthly trip. It often takes me a couple of days to charge back up to 85% because I usually use solar to do that and only charge my truck after my solar batteries are fully charged. I usually charge at 7.2 kwh.

 

[Traconesu]

Sorry for late response. I just saw your posts. That is indeed very low for the age of your battery. Are you sure you are not running the car scanner in demo mode?

If it is real reading, I don’t have the personal experience to say why it is so low. My DOD (Depth of Discharge) was very low 40%-60% SOC and when I did a road trip that included 100% charging and DCFC, my SOH bumped up by 0.5% so I can’t explain how 10% drop can be attributed to software estimate to be that far off.

Has Your battery been spending a lot of time at SOCs near zero or hundred? Or has it had many hot days? They really don’t like heat. I just came back from a trip. DCFC took the battery temp from 82F to 106F. I drive in Sport mode right after DCFC charging, it seems like it cools down the battery faster (lower threshold for cooling system to kick in). I also try to park it in the shade anytime I have the option.

Next time you charge to 100% (when you see virtually no power/current going in to the battery). Check to see how close battery power is to what total available power is supposed to be for your pack size if it was new. If the KWh you see is 90% of the KWh for a brand new pack, that 90% SOH is real. if not, a piece of software or hardware is lying to you.

p.s. Regarding the look of your car scanner pages, you can make your own custom pages and put any sensor data In those pages with different colors and looks.

I never get close to zero SOC. Seldom to 100% soc and never sets that way for more than a day. Max temperatures don't look bad at all. After charging from 36% to 100% at 17 kwh my SOH still showing 90.5%. 131 kwh battery only showing 126.08 kwh of energy.I guess I'll try taking it down to near zero and charge to 100%.

 

[Maxx]

After charging from 36% to 100% at 17 kwh my SOH still showing 90.5%. 131 kwh battery only showing 126.08 kwh of energy.

126 KWh of energy supports that SOH is real. The only thing I can think of to cause it not be real is that if you captured it immediately after displayed SOC hit 100% and didn’t wait until it is fully charged. My battery (standard pack), takes near 1 KWh per % for most of charging but many more KWhs from 99%-100% and more after.

Your module variation looks good so there may be other reasons your batteries internal resistance has gone up. If you get 126 KWh out of it, and your long trips are 120 miles round trip, just enjoy it knowing you still have many years left on that battery warranty. I have never felt like I needed more than 98 KWh. On my recent trip, I was fast charging between 20/30% to 80% and that gave me 120 miles of driving between 1/2 hr stops. The length of stops and drives were perfect for us.

I know the number may look disturbing comparing to everyone else. Frankly I didn’t like my 98% when others where reading 100% but if the truck is driving fine, don’t let numbers take away from your enjoyment.

sorry I can’t be more help in figuring out what causes the low SOH.

 

[Traconesu]

126 KWh of energy supports that SOH is real. The only thing I can think of to cause it not be real is that if you captured it immediately after displayed SOC hit 100% and didn’t wait until it is fully charged. My battery (standard pack), takes near 1 KWh per % for most of charging but many more KWhs from 99%-100% and more after.

Your module variation looks good so there may be other reasons your batteries internal resistance has gone up. If you get 126 KWh out of it, and your long trips are 120 miles round trip, just enjoy it knowing you still have many years left on that battery warranty. I have never felt like I needed more than 98 KWh. On my recent trip, I was fast charging between 20/30% to 80% and that gave me 120 miles of driving between 1/2 hr stops. The length of stops and drives were perfect for us.

I know the number may look disturbing comparing to everyone else. Frankly I didn’t like my 98% when others where reading 100% but if the truck is driving fine, don’t let numbers take away from your enjoyment.

sorry I can’t be more help in figuring out what causes the low SOH.

I waited until the next day to check my SOH and it was still at 90.5. I'm going to try one more thing in a day or so. I'll run my home off my truck until it gets near zero using bed 240 receptical. The way I have it wired it powers my home thru my solar inverters which allows me to regulate the load on my truck to just below the 7200 watts keeping my solar batteries topped off while also running everything in my home. Then I'll recharge it to 100%. But I'm not really too concerned about my SOH, more curious about it though.

 

[Maquis]

I waited until the next day to check my SOH and it was still at 90.5. I'm going to try one more thing in a day or so. I'll run my home off my truck until it gets near zero using bed 240 receptical. The way I have it wired it powers my home thru my solar inverters which allows me to regulate the load on my truck to just below the 7200 watts keeping my solar batteries topped off while also running everything in my home. Then I'll recharge it to 100%. But I'm not really too concerned about my SOH, more curious about it though.

Be sure to leave it sit undisturbed several hours at both ends.
More detailed info here.

 

[Zprime29]

People are stressing way too much about SoH when we don't even know how it's being computed. 126kWh means you're down 4% from stated useable capacity. I just charged to 100% last night myself as I hadn't done that in a while and wanted to give the BMS a good "reset". It showed 127.7 this morning, so I'm down 2.5% at 48k miles. I think it's similar age to yours. I didn't look at SoH because I put no stock in that number.

I'm only concerned about my 100% capacity and the module/voltage variations. Your variations look great, they went down after you charged to 100% which is what we'd expect. The BMS did it's job and your battery looks completely fine to me. The capacity loss looks normal given what I've seen from Tesla battery life studies. The first few years we'll see a drop to around 90% and the loss slows down a lot there. I expect to have better than 85% at 10 years and better than 80% at 20 years. That'll be perfect for me.

 

[electricpig]

When you charge to 100% the next time, use your OBD scanner and check these numbers. Also the battery needs to be idle and warm but not hot. From the scanner software find the "actual SOC and not displayed AOC. It should say around 95%. Next find your actual kw in the battery. Divide the percent into that actual kw i.e. 123/0.95=129.47. This will give you your actual battery capacity at the current conditions. The last time I did this in June, I got 107 of the spec 107,4. This IMHO is the best way to determine SOH.nut be aware, conditions at the time wll change the reported stored kw, hence best at near ideal conditions.

 

[Traconesu]

When you charge to 100% the next time, use your OBD scanner and check these numbers. Also the battery needs to be idle and warm but not hot. From the scanner software find the "actual SOC and not displayed AOC. It should say around 95%. Next find your actual kw in the battery. Divide the percent into that actual kw i.e. 123/0.95=129.47. This will give you your actual battery capacity at the current conditions. The last time I did this in June, I got 107 of the spec 107,4. This IMHO is the best way to determine SOH.nut be aware, conditions at the time wll change the reported stored kw, hence best at near ideal conditions.

So you are deriving the SOH from the batteries calculated battery capacity by its rated battery capacity ?

 

[Maxx]

I am hoping by the time battery is out of warranty, we will have other options (like this i3):

 

[electricpig]

Allthe.values relie on BMS calibration, and all interdependent. Others in other threads have reported having 99+% BMS reported BMS while having battery cell/module problems requiring replacement. So I don't trust that much. The BMS MUST know the amount of energy stored to calculate percentage, range, AND SOH. Hence some of those mentioned above would change to 100% and immediately fall to a much lower percentage upon start up. That would not happen unless the BMS knew there was much less available energy. Again these persons were showing high SOH reading. The stored energy value also changes widely with temp as would be expected. . With all that said, my understanding is that it uses Voltage for that calculation, again requiring correct calibration. No way to get around the BMS calibration using OBD reader.

With all that said SOH SOH combined with voltage variation when fully charged and cells are leveled can potentially indicate future issues. I just believe stored energy is a more fundamental metric indicator. So if I calculated 107 kwh capacity in what was rated at 107.6 kwh (this is the actual total for a SR), then I would feel very good about it. I don't try to assign a % SOH. Just know I'm in excellent shape. Btw, that was the number I got in June with 19K miles.

No matter what we use, it's all best guess from the BMS and OBD reader on the consumer end. Use what works for you.

 

[Traconesu]

I am hoping by the time battery is out of warranty, we will have other options (like this i3):

Still a little over 4 yrs warranty left for me. Who knows where Battery technology will be in 4 yrs. Hopefully our batteries will last long past their warranty period.

 

[electricpig]

That isnt necessarily a fool proof method for finding SOH. The BMS doesnt "know" the energy to empty (kwh) in the battery, its just estimating based on voltage, temp, etc. To adjust that number it would need to calculate SOH, which would just then be the SOH value presented.

Point being, for the BMS to change the capacity it has to determine the state of health.

Of course not. Did not claim it to be full proof. I stated it relied on the BMS being calibrated, meaning accurate based on voltage. Also said all OBD readings relie on the BMS being correct, and that temp seriously affects these numbers. But it is a fundamental value to calculate many other values such as SOH.

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