ER Lightning- Cannot Charge Past 265 Miles?

[bydabeach]

Do you have aggressive tires? Or, anything else installed that might affect wind resistance? I regularly see 2.5-2.6 on my commute, which is mostly highway.

Stock tires. I don't know if they are aggressive or not.

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[mr.Magoo]

The preconditioning is totally useless for people who don't have a set schedule. The app should let hit a precondition button 15-30 minutes prior to departure.

I know this is resurrecting an old post but I can't believe they haven't added on demand preconditioning.

Not trying to defend Ford or anything, but, the battery heater uses about 9kW of energy
and it takes about 20-25 minutes to warm up your battery, so that's essentially 3-4kWh used to heat it.

If your charger is unable to supply 9kW or more, you're getting a net loss from the get go as it'll now use battery power to heat the battery, so although you have more capacity because your battery is warm you might up with shorter overall range because you used battery power to heat it.
I could only imagine the service-call nightmares of "preconditioning gave me shorter range, WTF???"

Could they (should they) modulate the heater to only use what's supplied by the charger so that you don't experience this loss and in the end a slightly warmer battery is better than a cold one - absolutely - but they don't. (don't ask me why, I only report what I see)

I haven't dug into the programmed pre-conditioning too much, but I'm guessing they start the heating early enough to recoup any energy lost as a result of a small / insufficient charger, but that's pure speculation / my hopes at this point.

 

[JRT]

I learned by my 2021 Mach-e in 30k miles, winter range is always 20 to 30% less then summer. I live I north Alabama now and we got some pretty serious cold this past week, pretty competitive to when I lived in Maine. I doubt I would have ever bought a Lightning in New England base on what I know now.

 

[TomB985]

My mom’s new Kia EV9 has on-demand preconditioning. There’s a button in the EV options menu to activate, and it tells you whether the battery is at an optimal temp for fast charging. I really hope Ford comes to the table with this.

 

[snowy_91]

The last week my SR's GOM range was about 150 mile at 100% charge, my power consumption was .8 miles per Kw. it's going to be nice this week to get above zero.

 

[mefly2]

The last week my SR's GOM range was about 150 mile at 100% charge, my power consumption was .8 miles per Kw. it's going to be nice this week to get above zero.

Negative 40 F / C here last weekend but climbing up to the high 20s and mid 30s this week!

 

[RickLightning]

Is it mostly flat where you live?

I was giving an explanation of how temperature impacts range, showing the relative change on my Mach-E, which back in Dec 2022 was all I owned. Now have a Lightning also, and going through my first winter with it.

And no, it's not flat in Michigan.

 

[bydabeach]

It's not an issue. It's what happens when it gets cold out. My ER Lariat only showed 186 miles of range at 90% this morning. It's cold and windy outside.

Have a question. Does the vehicle provide the range based on the temperature inside the garage or the outside temperature. This may seem like a dumb question, but it is not readily apparent.

Also, do you have a helpful conversion for mi/kWh to expected miles of range, assuming the mi/kWh is constant and accurate during a trip?

The Lightning ER battery has 131 kWh of usable charge. Charged to 90%, that should be 118 kWh?

So, when fully charged on a cold day if my 90% charged range is 265 miles, the predicted mi/kWh under "ideal" driving conditions is 265/118= 2.24 mi/kWh.

This evening, it was a balmy 45 degrees on the freeway ride home, charged to 90% outside at work, GOM said I had 265 miles of range, and I was going a bit fast at 70 mph, and my heat was set at 65F. Dash told me I got 1.7 mi/kWh. If I kept driving at that mi/kWh, I would have 200 mi of range.

I know I got scolded once for doing this, but at the end of my 37 mile drive, I had 198 miles on my GOM. That was 67 miles used for a 37 mile drive. Assuming my mi/kWh stayed constant, it seems I would only have 146 miles of range? Would than be 146 mi/118 kWH= 1.23 mi/kWh?

At 45 F and going "only" 70 mph on a relatively flat freeway, isn't this pretty bad?

Any tips?

Pre-conditioning this morning was only slightly better.

 

[Maquis]

Have a question. Does the vehicle provide the range based on the temperature inside the garage or the outside temperature. This may seem like a dumb question, but it is not readily apparent.

Also, do you have a helpful conversion for mi/kWh to expected miles of range, assuming the mi/kWh is constant and accurate during a trip?

The Lightning ER battery has 131 kWh of usable charge. Charged to 90%, that should be 118 kWh?

So, when fully charged on a cold day if my 90% charged range is 265 miles, the predicted mi/kWh under "ideal" driving conditions is 265/118= 2.24 mi/kWh.

This evening, it was a balmy 45 degrees on the freeway ride home, charged to 90% outside at work, GOM said I had 265 miles of range, and I was going a bit fast at 70 mph, and my heat was set at 65F. Dash told me I got 1.7 mi/kWh. If I kept driving at that mi/kWh, I would have 200 mi of range.

I know I got scolded once for doing this, but at the end of my 37 mile drive, I had 198 miles on my GOM. That was 67 miles used for a 37 mile drive. Assuming my mi/kWh stayed constant, it seems I would only have 146 miles of range? Would than be 146 mi/118 kWH= 1.23 mi/kWh?

At 45 F and going "only" 70 mph on a relatively flat freeway, isn't this pretty bad?

Any tips?

Pre-conditioning this morning was only slightly better.

There’s a lot to unpack here.

Basically, I find that the GOM is so bad it’s useless. I use it for amusement only.

Paying attention to MPK and SoC is the best way to go. Basically, MPK x useable capacity x SoC is your remaining range. The problem is that useable capacity varies with temperature - it’s not fixed at 131. In your example, this formula matches your result of 200 miles using 131 kWh useable capacity.

What was the SoC at the end of your 37 mile drive? That’s more relevant that GOM miles.

 

[bydabeach]

There’s a lot to unpack here.

Basically, I find that the GOM is so bad it’s useless. I use it for amusement only.

Paying attention to MPK and SoC is the best way to go. Basically, MPK x useable capacity x SoC is your remaining range. The problem is that useable capacity varies with temperature - it’s not fixed at 131. In your example, this formula matches your result of 200 miles using 131 kWh useable capacity.

What was the SoC at the end of your 37 mile drive? That’s more relevant that GOM miles.

Dumb/naive question--where do I see the SoC?

 

[Grease Lightning]

Dumb/naive question--where do I see the SoC?

The Calm screen on the dash and the charge setting on the infotainment center, or within FordPass. If your truck has the software updates, you will see it on the dash rather then seeing 0 or 100 only on the battery level gauge.

 

[TheWoo]

Have a question. Does the vehicle provide the range based on the temperature inside the garage or the outside temperature. This may seem like a dumb question, but it is not readily apparent.

Also, do you have a helpful conversion for mi/kWh to expected miles of range, assuming the mi/kWh is constant and accurate during a trip?

The Lightning ER battery has 131 kWh of usable charge. Charged to 90%, that should be 118 kWh?

So, when fully charged on a cold day if my 90% charged range is 265 miles, the predicted mi/kWh under "ideal" driving conditions is 265/118= 2.24 mi/kWh.

This evening, it was a balmy 45 degrees on the freeway ride home, charged to 90% outside at work, GOM said I had 265 miles of range, and I was going a bit fast at 70 mph, and my heat was set at 65F. Dash told me I got 1.7 mi/kWh. If I kept driving at that mi/kWh, I would have 200 mi of range.

I know I got scolded once for doing this, but at the end of my 37 mile drive, I had 198 miles on my GOM. That was 67 miles used for a 37 mile drive. Assuming my mi/kWh stayed constant, it seems I would only have 146 miles of range? Would than be 146 mi/118 kWH= 1.23 mi/kWh?

At 45 F and going "only" 70 mph on a relatively flat freeway, isn't this pretty bad?

Any tips?

Pre-conditioning this morning was only slightly better.

The rate at which your GOM is correcting will slow down. So while you saw it go from 265 to 198, that doesn't mean it's the equivalent of using 67 miles to go 37. It means that during that 37 miles it realized it wasn't going to do as well as predicted and began altering its prediction.

If you do 1.7 mi/kWh you'll get 200 miles of range. After going 37 miles, you used ~22 kWh, meaning you had ~96 kWh left (90% of 131=118-22). If you continued to maintain 1.7 mi/kWh you would get ~164 more miles of range.

Unfortunately, the range remaining indicator is almost always optimistic and you should pay it little regard. It gets better if you have a destination, but even then is driving style and conditions-dependent.

 

[JRT]

There is no reason not to charge your truck to 100% everyday if you are in cold weather.

 

[Maquis]

Dumb/naive question--where do I see the SoC?

If you don’t have the latest screen update, you need to select the calm screen on the instrument panel.
Not being able to see SoC explains why you’re having trouble with this. For example, if driving 50 miles dropped SoC 20%, your overall range is about 250 miles.

 

[Maquis]

There is no reason not to charge your truck to 100% everyday if you are in cold weather.

There’s no reason to charge to 100% unless you need that much range.

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