Dear @FordMotorCompany

[mr.Magoo]

Btw, most cars with the 80-90% daily charge scheme have very little buffer up top. A couple percent at most, not 5.

I believe several folks here have shown with OBDII data that 100% displayed is 95% actual. I know @mr.Magoo tracks it and perhaps can chime in with more concrete data.

So, I haven't charged my truck to 100% since May (should probably do that), which is when I wiped / restructured my database, but you can check out the graph for some comparisons over time.
Worth noting with displayed vs. actual, is that it reads higher than actual above 40% SoC but lower, below it, so it's not a percentage or linear scaling, I can only assume it's a part of built in buffers, both for charging and running out of "juice".

Sponsored

 

[Lytning]

Ahh see but when it's a paid service, the company has a vested interest in keeping things working and customers happy. When there's no revenue stream from the application, making any changes is just costing money.

You've gotta think like a bean counter.

Bean counters have ruined the car companies ... and most other companies for that matter.

 

[astricklin]

Bean counters have ruined the car companies ... and most other companies for that matter.

We won't dive into that discussion on here

 

[cal]

Has anyone gone to their dealer and had this addressed?

My dealer appt is the 24th and it’s specifically for my inability to charge to anything less than 100%. But it was this way before this update. Now even the truck “set one time max charge” function doesn‘t work anymore.

 

[dcp9142]

I was stunned that Ford didn’t include a function for setting charge limit globally. It’s been a Tesla feature since 2013, IIRC. Having location based charge limits was added about a year later.

 

[RichB-HTX]

100% isn't really 100% either, it's like 95% at most.

As a new owner, I wonder what 100% actually means. Is it 100% of the EPA rating or 100% of the battery capacity which would be higher in certain conditions.

I was reading an article on the EPA mileage rating process and it said every vehicle is run through the same scenarios of high, low speed, and start and stop driving to determine the unadjusted mileage then they create that to 70% of that number. I’ve got the standard battery pack on an XLT som my max mileage per the EPA is 230. The un-debated number would be 328 miles. I wonder if anyone has gotten significantly more than 230:from a full charge on a standard battery,

 

[Zprime29]

As a new owner, I wonder what 100% actually means. Is it 100% of the EPA rating or 100% of the battery capacity which would be higher in certain conditions.

I was reading an article on the EPA mileage rating process and it said every vehicle is run through the same scenarios of high, low speed, and start and stop driving to determine the unadjusted mileage then they create that to 70% of that number. I’ve got the standard battery pack on an XLT som my max mileage per the EPA is 230. The un-debated number would be 328 miles. I wonder if anyone has gotten significantly more than 230:from a full charge on a standard battery,

100% state of charge, like your cell phone. EPA rating gives you a ball park on the efficiency but weather, speed, and elevation changes can have significant impacts on that efficiency. The more efficient you are, the farther you can drive. I think @metroshot was able to easily beat the EPA rating in his SR with mostly (all?) city driving.

Also note that the range displayed in the truck is just a guess. It's referred to as a guess-O-meter and should not be wholly trusted. Keep an eye on your efficiency if road tripping and do some mental math to estimate your range. It's worse in bad weather, but you will find that the range from the GOM drops faster than your miles driven.

 

[metroshot]

...... I think @metroshot was able to easily beat the EPA rating in his SR with mostly (all?) city driving.

Also note that the range displayed in the truck is just a guess. It's referred to as a guess-O-meter and should not be wholly trusted. Keep an eye on your efficiency if road tripping and do some mental math to estimate your range. It's worse in bad weather, but you will find that the range from the GOM drops faster than your miles driven.

Yes, 100% correct - warm weather year around - urban driving in the city streets under 45 MPH.

 

[cal]

As a new owner, I wonder what 100% actually means. Is it 100% of the EPA rating or 100% of the battery capacity which would be higher in certain conditions.

I was reading an article on the EPA mileage rating process and it said every vehicle is run through the same scenarios of high, low speed, and start and stop driving to determine the unadjusted mileage then they create that to 70% of that number. I’ve got the standard battery pack on an XLT som my max mileage per the EPA is 230. The un-debated number would be 328 miles. I wonder if anyone has gotten significantly more than 230:from a full charge on a standard battery,

It's % of battery. Charging to 100% of battery capacity is harmful to some battery types. Depends on the battery chemistry. The first widespread car battery chemistry was nickel cadmium cobalt and of course lithium. Most suppliers are out of the Congo in Africa and notorious for really bad child labor practices. Iron phosphate was used to to replace nickel and cobalt but there were trade offs. Lower power density but higher cycles before the battery started to decay. And you could charge to 100% without reducing the life of the cells. Also cheaper. And while Tesla changed to Li iron for some model 3's and Y's they still use nickel cobalt for Model s especially the Plaid versions.

Every battery has a life meaning how many times you can recharge it. On lithium cobalt everytime you charge to 100% you are using more of those recharge cycles. I've had excellent battery life on my Tesla's and I attribute it to not supercharging (too many fast charges are a whole nother set of problems) very often and only charging to 80-85% daily. I have done 100% on trips but only when necessary.

I'm finding my Lightning range is much better than I expected even towing. I love this truck!!! I can't wait to see what the cybertruck finally comes out with. Just saw that they expect only 350 miles instead of the orignal 500 mile range.

 

[cal]

Here's what Ford just sent me regarding always charging to 100%

Hello, Mr. Plummer,
Our Social Media team indicated that you need the steps to set your charge level in your F-150 Lightning. The steps are below:

SETTING CHARGE LEVEL

• Press the vehicle image in the top left of your SYNC touchscreen.
• Select the Settings tab.
• Press Charge
• Use the slider to toggle Charging Locations on if it is not already.
• Press the pencil icon next to Charging Locations to edit the information.
• You will see a button to +Add New Location, as well as locations you have already set up. If you have not setup a charging location, refer to How do I setup a SYNC 4 charging location?
• Press the pencil to the right of a set charging location.
• Use the slider next to Max Charge Level to set the maximum charge state.
• IMPORTANT: Ford recommends setting the Max Charge Level to no more than 90%. This will help prolong battery life
• Press Next.
• Press Next again to save your edits.

These are interesting as they are not on the Ford Pass app but on the truck itself.

 

[RichB-HTX]

I screen captured this for reference. On the app on my phone I can set charging level for a location, this happens to be a 120 outlet at home.

 

[tls]

That is NOT the point. The point is that these half-assed updates are screwing with user settings for critical, basic, essential functionality affecting high dollar components, causing us hours of messing with menus and redoing things that should not need to be redone.

THIS IS NOT SOME POS KIA. THIS IS A $75,000 TRUCK. I'm so sick of seeing these replies.

I too am having ridiculous charging problems with the most recent update or possibly updates (I got the last two very close together). See thread.

I have another gripe though. What the heck is with resetting the nighttime screen brightness for all profiles to 100% at every update. And mangling various other settings. My $35 wifi router gets this right; why can't my $70,000 truck? It appears that on the software side, at the moment at least, quality (assurance) is definitely not job 1.

 

[tls]

I park at least 50 yards from the store in the middle of the parking lot to be away from all other vehicles. (Yes, I am connected to high speed broadband WiFi at home.)

This is a bug of some kind in the bundled DHCP client in QNX, which is the operating system underlying Ford Sync. It gets into a state where it won't accept any responses from a DHCP server and just keeps soliciting for an address forever. The truck indicates it's connected to wifi, but it has no IP address (more rightly, one of the two computers in the truck that need IP addresses on your wifi doesn't have one, but this is sufficient to block updates) and you are stuck. You can watch this going on with Wireshark or the like on a monitor port on your switch or wireless access point, if you have networking equipment fancy enough to do that. What triggers it? Dunno. Why is it intermittent, even at the same location with the same DHCP server? Dunno. At this point with QNX basically abandonware and Ford having declared their intention to move away from it, do I think it'll get fixed? Sadly probably not...

If they decided to fix it, switching from the bundled DHCP client to dhcpcd would probably be the right path, but that is likely at least a solid work of week for a skilled engineer and three or four times that in QA. I understand where they're sitting with bugs like this but, man, as a customer I don't like it.

 

[cal]

I screen captured this for reference. On the app on my phone I can set charging level for a location, this happens to be a 120 outlet at home.

This never worked for me. I had to change it on the truck

 

[Pod]

Uuuuggghhhhhh

Sponsored