Good MotorTrend article on the GOM and winter range

[shutterbug]

Gas vehicles all suffer from the exact same problems that affect range on EVs. Because gas stations are on every corner of every town and city, people don't realize this. They just drive until the gas light comes on and then fill up at the closest station. They even have the same inaccurate guess-o-meter. They don't pay much attention to it.

Also gasoline engines are much less efficient so, while they are impacted by the same external factors, the loss is less noticeable.

Sponsored

 

[Skidrowe]

My 2021 F150 ICE had a very accurate GOM. I could always trust it.




Ford had an accurate GOM on the Lightning. Until they intentionally broke it.

My 2014 F-150 told me I could go 480 miles after every fill-up. About 350 miles later, it would always need to fill it up again.

I think your long daily commute makes it much easier for even the most basic of algorithms to show accuracy and benefit. Ironically, daily commutes are the drives where most drivers least need an estimate of driving range.

 

[Maquis]

Also gasoline engines are much less efficient so, while they are impacted by the same external factors, the loss is less noticeable.

That’s something that very few understand. Since you start out only using about 20% of the stored energy for actually moving the truck, even large increases in that energy required is still a fraction of the total.
It’s like needing a cup of water to quench your thirst while pouring the rest of a gallon down the drain. If it gets really hot and you need double (2 cups) to quench your thirst, and the same volume (120 oz) is wasted, you only increased the total amount of water used by 6%.

 

[TaxmanHog]

A really smart system would let you know with a pop up warning:

"Range reduced due to driving like an idiot"

 

[luebri]

I for one am not impressed with the adaptive logic (if it even really exists) for the truck to predict range. Last Saturday when towing 6 back and forth trips of topsoil in a dump trailer sometimes turning the truck on and off sometimes leaving it on the GOM constantly was predicting ~0.8 MPK even though trip after trip I was between 1.1 and 1.2 all day long in the exact same conditions. I dont mind doing the math in my head but it is disappointing that it cant self correct to such an easy scenario. This was just one example while towing that was obvious but it has been consistently poor at predicting ever since the DTE update that @Pioneer74 has been railing against that made it less accurate.

A nice feature would be if you had an ability to capture a reference period of a drive and then have the truck extrapolate that out to determine the GOM. (i.e. An example, Im going to be driving due South on the Interstate at 75 mph for the next 4 hours. Capture the 1st 20 minutes of this drive and then adjust the range of that sample)

Or another feature would be to toggle the Range calculation based on 3 settings that you know you'll be driving but the truck does not. City, Mix, or Interstate. (i.e. A theoretical example, I typically would be set to mixed driving but after being at 75 MPH for 15 minutes the truck pops a message, do you want to switch the GOM to interstate driving mode?)

 

[Maquis]

This entire thread validates my choice to totally ignore the GOM.

 

[vandy1981]

Or another feature would be to toggle the Range calculation based on 3 settings that you know you'll be driving but the truck does not. City, Mix, or Interstate. (i.e. A theoretical example, I typically would be set to mixed driving but after being at 75 MPH for 15 minutes the truck pops a message, do you want to switch the GOM to interstate driving mode?)

You could just type your destination into the native Nav system and it would do all of that for you while also integrating topography and weather into the range estimate.

 

[luebri]

You could just type your destination into the native Nav system and it would do all of that for you while also integrating topography and weather into the range estimate.

Yep, Understood. I like Waze and CarPlay, I dont like Ford Nav and I dont want to enter a destination constantly.

 

[LightningShow]

Ford definitely deserves to catch some crap for artificially inflating range with the DTE update. As I said when it happened, it was obviously aimed at reducing angry customer calls about “bad batteries”. They didn’t educate the customers enough about significantly reduced range due to cold weather and high speeds. Their solution was to lie about it instead of telling customers that often times their 300 mile truck will only get 200 miles. Reap what you sow.
It’s worth noting that this is the same game every automaker is playing. No one is making much effort to tell customers about the things that significantly reduce range.

 

[artificial_airspeed]

Winter Blend Gasoline usually results in 2-3mpg less in my ICE F-150.

 

[swajames]

Well I thought it was a terrible article. Almost, but obviously not quite, Hoovie levels of terrible.

 

[Calvin H-C]

The GOM does a reasonable job, given the parameters it has to work with. Namely, your recent driving history, with progressively heavier weighting on that history as it gets closer to now. In other words, your driving conditions from the past few hours counts more than the conditions three days ago.

This was true for our last ICE vehicle, where the GOM would have an in-the-ballpark figure after each fill-up that went up noticibly when we filled up on a trip because of the Highway driving compared to our usual city driving.

The Focus Electric we've had for the past 5.5 years used the GOM with the nav system when we told it we would be recharging at our destination. It would display a "surplus" value representing how much extra range we would have when we reached our destination.

As we drive, if the conditions assumed by the GOM remained pretty constant, the surplus number would remain constant. That is, the range and distance to destination were decreasing at the same rate.

Most of the time, the surplus would vary a bit. Dropping a bit during a part of the trip that's generally uphill and increasing during a generally downhill part. It seemed to take into account the speed limits on the route, as getting caught in slower traffic increases the surplus.

However, highway driving up to 110 km/h (70 mph) generally didn't affect the surplus, but go over that speed and the surplus begins to drop. Depending on how much over that speed and for how long, it can be quite significant. Wind drag at those speeds definately eats up your range.

 

[ivan256]

Ford deserves this bad press. The "GOM" was really accurate initially, and they made it lie with the patch that stops people from complaining that they can't charge to "full range".

 

[LightningShow]

Ford deserves this bad press. The "GOM" was really accurate initially, and they made it lie with the patch that stops people from complaining that they can't charge to "full range".

Yup, my "range" suddenly jumped from 225 miles to 320 miles at 100%SoC in the dead of winter. Even though by the time I would get to 50% SoC it would still say a little over 100 miles. Totally blatant misrepresentation of the actual range by Ford.

 

[Zprime29]

Totally blatant misrepresentation of the actual range by Ford.

And that is what the entirety of the article should have been about. Ford is making some good choices but we still need to call them out for these bad ones.

Sponsored