Search results

I write maintenance manuals and train railway signalling maintainers, and the preventive maintenance activities have frequencies based on best practices and calculations on the mean time between failures (MTBF) of equipment involved. While there are some rare circumstances where something is...

Absolutely. What I'm suggesting is that structural wear cannot be measured directly. How soon the wear shows to warrant suggesting new tires may be extended by the occasional rotation. It won't hurt, except for the cost of the rotation, which can be mitigated by rotating when the brakes are...

True, unless the tires are directional, which is the case for most (if not all) winter tires. That said, I suspect that there is wear that does not appear as changes in tread depth. As the tire spins and carries a load, stresses are imposed on them that may take their toll on the structure at a...

Does your office have multiple chargers? If so, it may be that two or more share the same circuit and share the available power. If that is occurring, you only get the maximum power when you're the only one charging. Two vehicle would each get half, three would each get a third, etc. If not...

We have the Emporia, but we have it scheduled to only operate from 11 pm to 7 am because we are on what is called the "ultra low" tiered rate. That means 2.8 c/kWh during those hours. While the lightning is scheduled to not start charging until midnight, it will start sooner if it figures it...

That will apply some friction braking, but check your brake score when you're nearly stopped. It's way easier to get a lower score in the FFE compared to the Lightning, but even when stomping hard on the brakes, it requires quite an effort to get a score below 40%. Braking in neutral is a 0%...

There's a good chance they will last the life of the truck. That said, there are a few things to be aware of. While 1PD will get you the most regen braking possible, it won't eliminate all friction braking. Regent's capability drops off rapidly at close to zero speeds, so friction braking is...

Here's my long term experience with EV brakes from my 2017 Focus Electric. Not quite the same as what happens with a 3-ton truck, but one should be able to scale accordingly... I only had the front brakes done at about 133,000 km (82,600 miles) with mostly city driving. The pads had nearly 4 mm...

There's a spot on a regular drive where BC drops out for a short distance. It's annoying, but consistent. Oddly, the "dead spot" is a little longer in one direction than the other.

Wow. It took me just over 7 years to reach 100k miles on my Focus Electric. For those wondering about battery longevity, the FFE's 100 mile range means that 100k miles required at least 1000 charge cycles, and likely more than 2000 since most were topping up from 50% SOC or better. Also...

A lot of people do this without realizing that wind can put loads on the mechanism that could be more damaging. A good compromise is to slip plastic bags over the wipers and leave them down on the window. The bags prevent them from getting frozen in place while not adding any wind stress. One...

Just tried it and it seems to work: The three year complementary BC that came with the 23 Lariat SR ends May 24, 2026 and I read this as the $0 complementary one year starts the next day. The cynical side of me is wondering if having to select a credit card for this $0 purchase means they...

While city driving provides more regen opportunities, highway driving is not free from regen. Coasting applies regen, just not as aggressively as braking does. That said, while regen likely helps with warming the battery, the warmed coolant needed for cabin heating gets circulated through the...

From seven years of driving a Focus Electric, which has no battery preconditioning, I can reasonably say this is true. Had one experience a few years ago on a pretty cold day (-10C/14F). Would need to charge to make it home, but didn't do so upon arrival when the car was warm as we had an...

Love those ideas, especially the gas pump. ⛽ My Focus Electric fits in the garage, but there are times it needed to be charged outside, so we mounted the FCSP/EVSE just inside the garage door so it's 18' cord reaches the port when it's in the garage as well as reach when parked outside. The...

Living in the Greater Toronto Area, where more salt is used on roads than asphalt, not to mention the pre-emptive brine spray they use before a snowfall that generates a fine white dust that seems to magnetically stick to vehicles, we've had no issues with nearly 2 years of Lightning use and...

There's a couple of things at play when it comes to limiting when your vehicle will charge and when it will draw a small amount of power to keep things warm. The first is the vehicle's charge schedule (if configured) and the second is what your EVSE can control. The Lightning's schedule will...

Same here - the Play Store is showing 5.11 still. Perhaps I should fire up the Fake GPS app and try it from "somewhere else". 🤣

Keep hoping. Since having my Focus Electric since November 2017, I continue to get these "reminders". Additionally, when I did take it in for the recommended service checks (I had the maintenance plan that covered these for the first 120,000 km), I would ask what the service involved each time...

Friction brakes are needed to bring the vehicle to a stop once your speed drops low enough for regen to lose its effectiveness - at about 2-3 mph. That said, it will be quite a time before you will need a full brake job. Just make sure they occasionally get serviced and adjusted to help with...