Charging times no longer available

[Maquis]

Thanks, by accident, I've never encountered that condition and didn't know about it. I'm usually no lower than a 40% SOC and have 50% SOC as my usual top-off limit or an 80% SOC limit for a long day trip, so I never have hit the >50% charge trigger that's created by my limited allowed charging window. I think the few times I've drained my battery to somewhere between 20% and 30% SOC from an 80% fillup, my refill limit was reset to 50% SOC. So, I've been obliviously tiptoeing around accidentally hitting that instant recharge trigger you describe.

The trigger in your case is >50 kWh, not 50%. You could encounter that condition if you need more than 35%, approximately. Ford probably has some fudge factor in there to make sure you get there, so it could even be lower.

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[GoodSam]

setting the times for my Lightening to start charging at midnight to 7 am

Which model Lightning do you have? Pro/XLT have horizontal 12" screen vs. Lariat/Platinum vertical 15" screen.

On my XLT, I go to Features, Charge Settings, Charging Locations, hit the Edit (pencil symbol), then need to Add a Location (hopefully you are at Home), then set charging hours and maximum charge amount, I think.
See this clip I made (ignore the Blind Spot image shown and just press play):
I attached a "Features and Settings" cheat sheet in another thread:
https://www.f150lightningforum.com/...nc4-features-settings-menus.13952/post-291124

 

[Jim Lewis]

The trigger in your case is >50 kWh, not 50%.

Sorry, @Maquis, that I didn't read your post carefully. 50 kWh/131 kWh is ~38% charge, so I've even tiptoed around that amount of charging (20%-50% is a 30% charge as is 50% to 80%).

I just tried the >50 kWh trigger, though. It's 8 pm CDT. I upped my limit to 100% SOC (the battery was at 50%), and just as you stated, the truck immediately began charging to 100% with no warning***, ### with the preferred charging start time still set to be 3 am (and no obvious way to shut it off). I set the SOC limit back to 50%, and the truck stopped charging. There is a warning on the charging settings page that things like departure time may cause the truck to ignore the preferred charging times settings.

The FordPass app is typical of so many things Ford: lack of good communication with vehicle owners about what's going on. They could have a LEARN MORE link after the warning that other settings may affect preferred charging times so you don't have to discover what all is involved entirely by accident.

*** The "no warning" may be because the BACKUP POWER UNAVAILABLE notice has come back to the lower part of my FordPass Home screen, overlaying the area where the charging status button usually appears. That's also clever programming on Ford's part - to destroy one important piece of information to display another. Backup power is unavailable because my HIS unit still doesn't work three months after installation was completed. Good smartphone apps allow you to disable app notifications you don't want to see. Perhaps when one already knows backup power is unavailable, one should be able to disable that notification until one knows the problem is fixed.

Edit_Update: One of Ford's conundrums, I think, is not wanting to overwhelm owners with too much detail. Have the truck and the software take care of that (the owner's manual is already 662 pages long). Maybe not having too much manual detail is like not allowing too many vehicle purchase options: a support cost-containment measure as well. But there is no FordPass app manual, AFAIK. Perhaps one is supposed to relate whatever questions one has about the app behavior to the vehicle detail provided in the owner's manual. My suggested LEARN MORE links in the FordPass app could lead the FordPass user to the sections of the online owner's manual relevant to one's year and Lightning model. But then the screens in the vehicle aren't identical to FordPass app screens. The warning about charging "outside of your set Preferred Charging Times" if one can't charge enough with scheduled charging to meet a scheduled departure time is described in more detail in the owner's manual. But how and why this relates to the limited width of a charging window (when I haven't scheduled any departure time in the first place) is not rationalized at all, even in the owner's manual. The vehicle is multi-dimensional; sometimes, the explanations are too one-dimensional.

And as others have pointed out, breaking a scheduled charging window willy-nilly can have significant cost consequences in states like California with drastically different time of day electricity charging rates.

### As a further footnote, the owner's manual does say that "Charging pauses when the rest of the charge can be done within the preferred charging windows."

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