App charging - preferred time weirdness ??

[lex-man]

Trying to get the Ford app to charge at preferred times - sometimes it will - sometimes…

I have a preferred time set in my app.
Sometimes when I get home i plug the truck in and it just starts charging - other times it waits and gives the correct ‘your truck will begin charging at 12” etc.

My Autel is not set to auto charge. And ford Ac settings are not set that way either.

anyone have any insight for me? Thanks fellow e-truckers

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[Charge_Rob]

Preferred Charge Times are just that - preferred.

Check out the examples here: go.ford/chargetimes

Departure Times, your arrival SoC, your charge rate, your target SoC, and the size of the preferred charging windows within the current and following day all matter to whether the charge takes place within the times.

 

[Jesse-Infotainment]

I use AUtels with my Lightning and I have to make sure the charge starting time is correct every time I plug in. It is set to 12 am. Sometime when I connect it will show a weird time. You have to refresh on the home Screen of Fordpass once or twice for it to show the correct start time. The mach E never seems to have this issue only the Lightning

You can look at the starting time in the charging page of fordpass.

 

[potato]

It has always driven me crazy that it doesn't respect the charging window. If you plug in at a low enough state of charge that it thinks you can't finish within the preferred charging period, then it will start charging right away.

Interestingly it will stop at the end of your preferred period even if it hasn't yet reached the charge target. You'd think it would respect the start and end equally, but no.

It's always been my humble opinion that if you set a preferred time, the truck should *never* charge outside those times except by a manual action. We have reasons to set those times, typically much higher electricity rates on peak. But no. Ford thinks the truck is smarter than the owner.

To work around this I have to either wait to plug it in later, or go in the app and adjust the target charge lower (and remember to go back and fix it later).

 

[dpwmc93]

Trying to get the Ford app to charge at preferred times - sometimes it will - sometimes…

I have a preferred time set in my app.
Sometimes when I get home i plug the truck in and it just starts charging - other times it waits and gives the correct ‘your truck will begin charging at 12” etc.

My Autel is not set to auto charge. And ford Ac settings are not set that way either.

anyone have any insight for me? Thanks fellow e-truckers

I had a similar issue when I first got the Home charger installed. I set the preferred charging in the Ford App to charge from 11 pm to 7 am, and for some reason the settings would get overwritten or dissapear all together. It eventually resolved itself, or there was something in the Emporia app that was overwriting it. I don't recall exactly, but I would check the Charger app for your particular charger.

 

[K6CCC]

It's always been my humble opinion that if you set a preferred time, the truck should *never* charge outside those times except by a manual action. We have reasons to set those times, typically much higher electricity rates on peak. But no. Ford thinks the truck is smarter than the owner.

The problem is that the truck IS smarter than some users. It appears that the priority is to make sure that the target charge is reached - which DOES make sense. You would really be pissed if you got into your truck expecting a high state of charge because you were going to go somewhere and needed it, only to find that you had far less charge than expected / needed.

I ran into something similar last Friday evening. I am on a ToU electric rate that is much higher from 1600 to 2100 so my charge time is preferred from 2100 - 1600 every day. I had a 0730 departure time set for Saturday morning. I charge with a FCSP and normally get right about 10KW charge rate into the battery. I plugged in about 1930 at 46% and shortly thereafter verified in the Ford app that it was waiting to start charging at 2100. Perfect so far. A little after 2000 I looked at the app and it said it was charging and would reach my target of 95% by 0730 - say what? 46 to 95% in an ER battery is just over 64 KWH which should have taken about 6 1/2 hours. Then I noticed that it was charging at 6.1 KW rate. That would explain the early start time. I have a couple times had the FCSP / truck charge at a lower than expected rate so I knew the normal solution is just to unplug, power cycle the FCSP, and plug back in. That worked, and it went back to waiting to charge at 2100. Just after 2100 I verified it was charging at 10 KW rate and charging completed at 0323 as expected.

The moral of the story is to verify what it's doing and that it really is doing as you expect.

 

[lex-man]

It has always driven me crazy that it doesn't respect the charging window. If you plug in at a low enough state of charge that it thinks you can't finish within the preferred charging period, then it will start charging right away.

Interestingly it will stop at the end of your preferred period even if it hasn't yet reached the charge target. You'd think it would respect the start and end equally, but no.

It's always been my humble opinion that if you set a preferred time, the truck should *never* charge outside those times except by a manual action. We have reasons to set those times, typically much higher electricity rates on peak. But no. Ford thinks the truck is smarter than the owner.

To work around this I have to either wait to plug it in later, or go in the app and adjust the target charge lower (and remember to go back and fix it later).

Exactly ! If I set a ‘preferred’ charging time and FOrd App thinks I can’t level up to where I need to be- at least give me a message ..or something. Thanks for the reply.

there are some things about this app that I really don’t like.

 

[K6CCC]

Exactly ! If I set a ‘preferred’ charging time and FOrd App thinks I can’t level up to where I need to be- at least give me a message ..or something.

Yea, it would be nice, but in my opinion, the onus is on you. You ALWAYS should verify that the charging is doing what you want. It's really annoying to wake up and find the red ring of death and a low battery SoC. In my experience, once L2 charging has started and run for at least a few minutes, I have never had it fail for the rest of the charge session. But I have had it fail at the beginning of a charge session (either when plugged in or at the beginning of preferred charge time).

 

[RickLightning]

The issue is NOT the Ford app, the logic is in the vehicle.

The only thing the app fails at, at least with Andorid, is providing a notification that charging has begun or ended.

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