Worried about cold temperatures?

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pjanisch

Member
Joined
May 6, 2013
Messages
8
It's supposed to be -25F Monday morning in Chicago when I leave for work. Is there anything that I should be nervous about besides lowered range? I have a Chargepoint station at work, should I start the car every hour or so just to keep the battery warm?
 
pjanisch said:
It's supposed to be -25F Monday morning in Chicago when I leave for work. Is there anything that I should be nervous about besides lowered range? I have a Chargepoint station at work, should I start the car every hour or so just to keep the battery warm?
Click to expand...
If you can leave the car plugged in, I believe it is smart enough to maintain the battery temperature without manual intervention.

Have you been receiving notifications from the car like, "It's cold outside, keep car plugged in"? (If you have that notification enabled in MFM?)
 
The Chargepoint will take care of everything at work. Can't hurt to leave it plugged in. If you have a 240v at home you could start the car a few min before you leave to warm everything up. If you have a 240 at home it should also keep the battery warm. If you have a 120v only it's questionable if it warms the battery.
 
What about the tires? I accidentally drove home in a snowstorm tonight. Last two miles were pretty slippery. Maybe it would have been just as bad in another car, but those low rolling resistance tires aren't very grippy anyway.
 
I've driven my FFE around in a good 3 or 4" of fresh snow. From my experience the traction control in the FFE more than makes up for the tires. It handled the snow as well as, if not better, than our ICE Focus with all season tires.
 
Making it home last night was an adventure. I pushed the car to the limit. Typically, I commute 38 miles round trip a day. Not a problem even with heat. However, I decided to go to my fiance's house after this day. She lives 36 miles away. Knowing this would push the range, I did the trip without heat, but with heated seats (I did drive to work with heat). To keep the windows from fogging, I had to leave the windows cracked to leave the 15 degree air in. What normally takes 50 minutes to drive ended up take 3 hours. Accidents and traffic backups caused major delays. I had left with an indicated 10 miles of surplus. By the time I made it half way, I was at -2 surplus. Hyper miling all the way I made it back up to 6 miles of surplus. This was until I had to make the climb on an extremely steep, winding hill. The driver in front of me slowed to a crawl, causing me to slow. Even with my Michelin X-Ice Xi3's, I came to a crawl on the hill. After letting the car behind me pass, I crept forward (crept = Grandma with walker could have gone faster). The traction control just kept going. This was an extremely long ordeal for the traction control to work, but with no choice I had to press on. After what seemed like 5 minutes later, the traction control finally gave up as I crested the hill. Multiple cautions and warnings rang out. ABS, Brake, yellow wrench, and see manual all popped up simultaneously. My heart sunk, but I really had to make it to my destination, or I would freeze waiting for a tow (or at least suffer embarrassment). All of this struggling up the hill had completely destroyed my 6 miles of surplus and created a 2 mile deficit. If I had 20 miles to go, I could have maybe banked on some regen to get me there, but with only 10 miles to my destination, I knew this wasn't good. Still, with the snow falling, I pressed on, popping into L every chance I got to regen as much as possible. With 4 miles to go I had -2 miles. To make matters worse, the distance in between my office and my fiance's house is a charging waste land, so there would be no clear chargepoint to stop at to give me a little range boost. I contemplated my options: I knew the final mile of travel was uphill. I consulted the charging screen, and watched the battery percent go down to 1%. I knew this was the final effort my FFE could give. There was a family owned beer distributor right down the road. I just made it into the parking lot. I walked into the store, and opened with "I have a bit of an odd request". I told the guy that I had an electric car, that I was two miles away from my destination, and would gladly pay for the use of some electricity. He was glad to help out, and didn't even care about the money. I plugged into a 120V 5-15 outlet, and started to wait. I purchased a case of beer in the meantime for my future father in law, and talked about work and electric cars with the man for about a half hour, until I was up to 9% indicated 3 miles of range. I then unplugged, and completed the final 2.4 miles of my journey. I made it into my fiance's driveway with 2%. I plugged into the NEMA 6-50 outlet there and started charging up at 6.6 kW. Three and a half hours later, I was able to drive the 27.8 miles home. All of this could have been avoided if I had the ability the charge at work, but that does not seem to be in the cards. Still love the car, can't wait for warmer weather.
 
sefs said:
After what seemed like 5 minutes later, the traction control finally gave up as I crested the hill. Multiple cautions and warnings rang out. ABS, Brake, yellow wrench, and see manual all popped up simultaneously.
Click to expand...

That is awesome. You are a geek among geeks. My tribulations were nothing in comparison. I salute you. :ugeek: :ugeek: :)
 
Thanks for sharing, sefs! I love a good early-adopter story... if you haven't seen it yet, you might enjoy pjam3's story:

http://www.myfocuselectric.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=0&t=42&p=8111#p8072

You guys rock!!!
 
Very crazy story indeed. I think a future Super Charger has to be in order because of various situations like this where you just can't charge at work or at home or wherever. I don't think it's good to use a super charger all the time, but now and again, instead of having to wait hours to get more than a few miles, you'd spend 30 minutes and get back up to an almost full charge. That could go a long way having this plus many of these types of chargers around.
 
sefs said:
Making it home last night was an adventure. I pushed the car to the limit. Typically, I commute 38 miles round trip a day. Not a problem even with heat. However, I decided to go to my fiance's house after this day. She lives 36 miles away. Knowing this would push the range, I did the trip without heat, but with heated seats (I did drive to work with heat). To keep the windows from fogging, I had to leave the windows cracked to leave the 15 degree air in. What normally takes 50 minutes to drive ended up take 3 hours. Accidents and traffic backups caused major delays. I had left with an indicated 10 miles of surplus. By the time I made it half way, I was at -2 surplus. Hyper miling all the way I made it back up to 6 miles of surplus. This was until I had to make the climb on an extremely steep, winding hill. The driver in front of me slowed to a crawl, causing me to slow. Even with my Michelin X-Ice Xi3's, I came to a crawl on the hill. After letting the car behind me pass, I crept forward (crept = Grandma with walker could have gone faster). The traction control just kept going. This was an extremely long ordeal for the traction control to work, but with no choice I had to press on. After what seemed like 5 minutes later, the traction control finally gave up as I crested the hill. Multiple cautions and warnings rang out. ABS, Brake, yellow wrench, and see manual all popped up simultaneously. My heart sunk, but I really had to make it to my destination, or I would freeze waiting for a tow (or at least suffer embarrassment). All of this struggling up the hill had completely destroyed my 6 miles of surplus and created a 2 mile deficit. If I had 20 miles to go, I could have maybe banked on some regen to get me there, but with only 10 miles to my destination, I knew this wasn't good. Still, with the snow falling, I pressed on, popping into L every chance I got to regen as much as possible. With 4 miles to go I had -2 miles. To make matters worse, the distance in between my office and my fiance's house is a charging waste land, so there would be no clear chargepoint to stop at to give me a little range boost. I contemplated my options: I knew the final mile of travel was uphill. I consulted the charging screen, and watched the battery percent go down to 1%. I knew this was the final effort my FFE could give. There was a family owned beer distributor right down the road. I just made it into the parking lot. I walked into the store, and opened with "I have a bit of an odd request". I told the guy that I had an electric car, that I was two miles away from my destination, and would gladly pay for the use of some electricity. He was glad to help out, and didn't even care about the money. I plugged into a 120V 5-15 outlet, and started to wait. I purchased a case of beer in the meantime for my future father in law, and talked about work and electric cars with the man for about a half hour, until I was up to 9% indicated 3 miles of range. I then unplugged, and completed the final 2.4 miles of my journey. I made it into my fiance's driveway with 2%. I plugged into the NEMA 6-50 outlet there and started charging up at 6.6 kW. Three and a half hours later, I was able to drive the 27.8 miles home. All of this could have been avoided if I had the ability the charge at work, but that does not seem to be in the cards. Still love the car, can't wait for warmer weather.
Click to expand...

Wow that was exciting to read I guess almost as many twists and turns as a George R Martin novel. Had me hanging in there until the end to see the conclusion. I guess its fascinating to read accounts like this because we've all been there to some extent. As FFE owners we've all lived our version of this little melodrama.
 
Cold weather attempt. Colorado -15 today which is atypical. Currently fully charge plugged into my home level 2. Very short drive today of only 5 miles but no place to plug in will leave outside in sunny but very cold conditions. Will see how it goes and will post my experience.
 
Colorado -18 degree!!! I preconditioned and kept the heater on the whole way(5miles). The car was left outside for 7 hours unplugged. High temperature reached 19 degree. No issues. Range did not drop off dramatically. Use the heater all the way home. only 10 miles roundtrip.
 
Luckily I didn't have to drive in yesterday's -13F, but my time came today. Temps here -6F up to 3F. Preconditioned for morning commute, but windows fogged in 3 minutes. Used about 4 kWh to go 8 miles. I left car unplugged for 9 hours at work. Used about 5 kWh on the way home, with no obvious cold-induced performance issues. Getting out of the ice-covered, rutted parallel parking spot was my biggest problem. Times like this I miss my AWD! After a broken snow shovel, about 40 minutes with a coworker's garden shovel, and a whole lot of rocking, I broke free.
 
I've been occasionally taking the car out over the past few days (with the subzero temps here in MI) but no commutes until today (kid's school has been closed).
This morning's trip in the car read -2 F on the outside temp gauge. I preconditioned it to 85F before the drive. With the cold temps the windows did start to ice up a little on the way in but not much. Had I not had to use the defroster I think I would have used less electricity as the traffic was going 1/2 speed!
 

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