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Charging another EV off Lightning?

WoodduckMN

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I have tested charging my Bolt off of my Lightning which worked using the 240 volt outlet in the bed with the supplied Ford L2 charger.

But only when the Lightning was “running”.

Does anyone know if there is a way to charge my Bolt without the Lightning running?

I only have one charger and in the winters both will need to charge and my off-peak power starts at 9pm.
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Ostrichsak

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Nope. As of right now that's the only way to charge 30A @ 240v is to have the truck "running" in it's current firmware configuration. There's cooling that takes place for the inverters should they begin running warm so my guess is that this is the requirement to be able to power the management associated with that task.
 

Paulightning

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I tried to charge a Mach-E on Thursday, on 240, but of course the mobile adapter is 32 amps, and the 240 socket in the bed is on a 30 amp circuit. It charged for about 20 seconds before it tripped. Really needs to be a way to dial down charging amperage on Ford EVs like you can do in a Tesla.
 

ericpullen

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Just a thought, but my wife and I are sharing the FCSP right now between both EV’s because we don’t need to charge every day. For the winter, we are going to try just using a 110v outlet as a way to just precondition the non charging car. It won’t add many miles but should be able to get the batteries and cabin warmed up.
 

Ostrichsak

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I tried to charge a Mach-E on Thursday, on 240, but of course the mobile adapter is 32 amps, and the 240 socket in the bed is on a 30 amp circuit. It charged for about 20 seconds before it tripped. Really needs to be a way to dial down charging amperage on Ford EVs like you can do in a Tesla.
Fords don't have this? I assumed it was all EVs as it's a pretty important function for safety and sanity.
 

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Paulightning

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Fords don't have this? I assumed it was all EVs as it's a pretty important function for safety and sanity.
Not that I'm aware of, but I haven't charged on anything but my Charge Station Pro and the old Ford dealership charger at work that's only like 6kw. I had to dial back my Charge Station Pro by opening it up and moving the switch from position 7 to 6 so it's only doing 64 amps instead of 80.
 

Ostrichsak

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Not that I'm aware of, but I haven't charged on anything but my Charge Station Pro and the old Ford dealership charger at work that's only like 6kw. I had to dial back my Charge Station Pro by opening it up and moving the switch from position 7 to 6 so it's only doing 64 amps instead of 80.
That's going to create some issues and I really hope that's in a forthcoming firmware update as it's incredibly important for the end user to be able to manually lower the draw.

Example use cases would be that you find yourself at an RV park out in the middle of nowhere and their electrical infrastructure isn't up to code. The standard for RVs was a 30A outlet in years past. They're almost all 50A plugs now (NEMA 14-50 to be specific) so RV parks had to rewire for that receptacle. The proper way is to rewire for the proper power handling. Most do but not all.

I've actually been to RV parks (in my Tesla) that just slapped in a 50A outlet on the same circuit that was wired for the previous 30A draw. Typically, with an RV, this wouldn't create much of an issue as they power demands are are high or constant. With an EV it's a different world though because the draw is 80% and continuous so issues can arise if the components aren't up to par. Thankfully I was able to manually dial my Amperage back to 24A (I think I went to either 20A or 22A just to be safe since we were staying overnight) which prevented any potential issues.

Keep in mind that the UMC (Universal Mobile Connector) w/ NEMA 14-50 will try to pull the full 40A constant unless told otherwise. The car itself will try to sense line conditions and adjust as well but being able to manually limit it w/o it having to test on it's own is safer and makes me more comfortable.

In summary, if this is something missing I sure hope that Ford adds it because you many never need it but, in the rare instance you do, it's really nice to have. It should be standard on every EV IMO.
 

RickLightning

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Just a thought, but my wife and I are sharing the FCSP right now between both EV’s because we don’t need to charge every day. For the winter, we are going to try just using a 110v outlet as a way to just precondition the non charging car. It won’t add many miles but should be able to get the batteries and cabin warmed up.
You will find that preconditioning on 110v is non-existent. You will get minor cabin warming, nothing more. The heater will use more power than the 110v will supply, so battery will be used also.
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