Value Charge Question

I just recently got a Focus EV. I have set the charge profile to be cheapest from 11pm to 7am. If I plug in the car before 11pm it works fine, i.e. it starts charging at 11pm, but if I plug it in at 1am, then it says it is waiting to charge, and it will start at 7am, this really is stupid. Is this how it is supposed to work, or am I doing something wrong?

pdighe said:

I just recently got a Focus EV. I have set the charge profile to be cheapest from 11pm to 7am. If I plug in the car before 11pm it works fine, i.e. it starts charging at 11pm, but if I plug it in at 1am, then it says it is waiting to charge, and it will start at 7am, this really is stupid. Is this how it is supposed to work, or am I doing something wrong?

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Sounds like you programmed your Value Charge to go from 7am to 11pm, not the other way around.

Wattsup, I don't think I have programmed incorrectly. I checked it again. Why would it start charging at 11pm when I plug it in before 11pm if I have programmed it wrong?

pdighe said:

Wattsup, I don't think I have programmed incorrectly. I checked it again. Why would it start charging at 11pm when I plug it in before 11pm if I have programmed it wrong?

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I don't know... I agree it doesn't make sense. I just thought it was a possibility that you had the times reversed from what you thought (the website UI doesn't make it very clear, IMO).

Btw, did you use the MFM website to create the profile, or the screens in the car itself? (That is, if you have the new 3.5 or later MFT software installed in the car.) In either case, can you show us a screenshot of your Value Charge settings?

Also, are you charging at 120V or 240V? Did you configure the charging level properly in the profile? Most people report that attempting to use Value Charge at 120V simply doesn't work. Probably because there is no way for the car to charge fully at 120V (it can take up to 18 hours) during most Value Charge periods -- and this apparently make things go crazy. Other have reported that Value Charging works much better at 240V.

Also, do you really get lower rates between 11pm and 7am? If you don't (I don't), then Value Charging is useless. I don't bother with it.

Even with the new update you cannot create value charge profiles in the car--you have to use the MFM website.

I found some funky behavior of value charge if I set it to begin charging before midnight (my test time was 11pm). When set to charge before midnight upon plug in it would show the charge starting at "now" and ending at midnight even though it would charge at the correct time.

When I adjusted the charge start time to 1am everything works correctly: At plugin it says it will start charging at 1am and be complete sometime after 1am.

In addition I've had to set the weekend charge times to be the same as the weekday because frequently on Friday it will think its Saturday, and on Sunday it will think its Monday (this is still present with the 3.6 update).

Just a few things to think about.

Thanks for your inputs, you have several ideas on what the problem might be.

I used MFM website to create the profile. Don't know how to add a screenshot of the profile here,

I am charging at 120V, will get 240V installed in a couple of weeks, hopefully that will solve it.

yes, I get lower rates from 11pm to 7am. I had to call the electric company (PG&E) to get a special EV rate plan.

You can set value charge times in the vehicle with MFT 3.5+. You can't set location-specific profiles but you can set your default profile.

Saving money may be the main reason to charge your EV off peak, but I disagree that value charging is useless otherwise. Power companies incentivize off peak charging for good reason. Any power usage during peak demand time furthers the level of peak demand and increases the chance of power outages this time of year. Plus nighttime coal/nat gas power generation results in less ozone production than daytime generation. If you are using your own solar panels/ wind turbine, or pure hydro power like some NW folks, by all means charge any old time. Otherwise you might consider off-peak charging even if it won't save you a few bucks.

jmueller065 said:

Even with the new update you cannot create value charge profiles in the car--you have to use the MFM website.

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I thought you could... but, I re-watched the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IOixDw4_cc

You are right, you must set up profiles on MFM. But, you can set GO times on MFT (in the car).

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If you miss your start time for value charge, just toggle to "charge now" on your drivers display before you get out of the car.

pdighe said:

I just recently got a Focus EV. I have set the charge profile to be cheapest from 11pm to 7am. If I plug in the car before 11pm it works fine, i.e. it starts charging at 11pm, but if I plug it in at 1am, then it says it is waiting to charge, and it will start at 7am, this really is stupid. Is this how it is supposed to work, or am I doing something wrong?

Click to expand...

I read this post a few days ago, but didn't pay too much attention because the value charge was working for me. Well, now I am paying more attention. I have my value charge time set for 9 pm. It has worked normally for two weeks. Over the last two days, the car has started charging early; 6 pm on Monday and 7 pm on Tuesday. I know because I get a text when the charging starts. I also checked on the car to confirm that charging had started. Does anyone know how the car knows what time it is? Does it use the clock or is there some other time keeper in MFT that controls the system? My clock shows the correct time so that doesn’t seem to be the problem. This is more an annoyance than a critical issue for me as I was delaying the charge time to do my part to reduce the pressure on the grid in HOT Houston. But, you would like to be able to rely on the system to work correctly. Has anybody else experienced this? Did the problem resolve itself or did you have to take action? What did you do and did it work?

Thanks. Oilman

oilman said:

Does anyone know how the car knows what time it is? Does it use the clock or is there some other time keeper in MFT that controls the system?

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I haven't had a problem with Value Charging yet, but I must use it, so hopefully it will keep going. The rates used by SoCal Edison are .10 after 12 midnight. Before that time, they are $0.32, so my rate is one-third if I Value Charge.

As to the FFE clock. It is set by using the GPS signal, so it is very accurate. (After setting it for daylight savings time in some cases.)

I've found that value charge is not reliable. About 75 percent of the time it gets it right but the other 25 percent it sort of has a mind of its own. I tried using a PG&E profile and that worked for a while, except it always started on Fridays as if it were Saturday. Then it just started charging whenever and would display nonsensical start and end times for the charge.

I deleted the PG&E profile and set the default profile to midnight to 7:00 am seven days a week and for now that's working, about 75 percent of the time.

They really should fix this... I have TOU plan with PG&E so it makes a significant cost difference.

I use a 240 v charger and I carefully checked with PG&E to confirm I was using the correct charge plan in my profile. It should work!

I've experimented quite a bit with manually setting the charge times and so far this is what I've found (using a Level 2 EVSE):
- Setting the value charge times to anything before midnight ends up with the car reporting really funky start charge times but it will usually start charging at the correct time about 80% of the time.
- Setting the start time to anything after midnight works quite well and the reported start charge times are 99% correct
- MFT will frequently be a day ahead and thus will use the Saturday schedule on Friday and the Monday schedule on Sunday

The net affect of the above is that I have ALL my value charge times (weekday and weekend) set to start charging at 1am. If I need a quick hit over the weekend I switch it over to "charge now" when needed (and try to remember to switch it back). So far this has worked quite reliably.

I also have TOD electricity rates and on my last bill nearly all my charging was done overnight at the lower rate (except for a few days around the time MFM went down because I removed my car and couldn't value charge for a few days).

A quick update to my original post. After 2 days of starting to charge early, the charging started right on time on Wednesday. I don’t do anything fancy; I set the value charge start time in the car and only for the weekdays. One thing I thought about this morning is that I had toggled to ‘charge now’ a few days earlier and toggled back from ‘charge now’ to the value charge time on Monday afternoon. That shouldn’t have made any difference (the change was made many hours before the set starting time), but maybe that confused the system for a while. Anyway, things were ‘back to normal’ on Wednesday.

Oilman

I have been struggling with inconsistent value charge performance for weeks. Thanks to this forum I think I figured out the two issues I have been experiencing.

1 - As stated the value charge logic wants to ensure there is enough time in the window to fully charge the car. The problem is that there is a bug in the logic and it does not take into account that the next day is a continuation. I had it set to charge from 11pm to 10am. however it would start charging immediately when I plugged it in and keep charging until it was sure it would finish before midnight as it did not see 11pm - 10am as one continuous charge window. It thought it could only charge for an hour from 11pm to 11:59pm at which point the world would end and it would have failed. As suggested I set the start time to 1am and it now sees that it can charge from 1am to 10am. So if you want to start charging at 10 or 11pm you are pretty much out of luck with the value charger. Pretty lame QA (I love the electric care but the QA failures of the software have been epic)

2 - I added my Home charger to the system. However due to the slight inaccuracies of the GPS the car does not always recognize it is at "Home" and will start charging on the default profile. I have to check it and add additional home entries (Home 2, Home 3, etc...) to make sure it picks up the correct profile.

OK sorry to be long winded. The second item can almost be forgiven but the first is simply the most basic logic and QA failure. FORD really needs to fix this and show they are committed to making their software as good as their cars (love my car).

Shelly said:

2 - I added my Home charger to the system. However due to the slight inaccuracies of the GPS the car does not always recognize it is at "Home" and will start charging on the default profile. I have to check it and add additional home entries (Home 2, Home 3, etc...) to make sure it picks up the correct profile.

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For me, before the app/site update, the recorded GPS locations for charging locations were always accurate. Since the update, I've noticed a significantly increased occurrence of "rogue" GPS locations for what should be known, "saved locations". Previously visited locations (literally, parking in the exact same spot) repeatedly show up as "unsaved locations". The reason appears to be... the coordinates (at least as displayed on the maps shown by the app/site) are frustratingly "just a little off" from where the car actually is.

And, yes, this happens for my home location too. One time, with my car parked at home, in the garage, where it is always parked, the recorded location was one street over in my neighborhood.

Luckily, I don't use Value Charging, so the situation is not as frustrating for me as it might be. But, this charging location inaccuracy never happened to me before the app/site update. It was fun to name all of my charging locations, see them reliably appear in the log visit after visit, etc.. Now, it's a crap shoot.

I've also have had to add additional "Home" entries to get it to properly value charge--although I'm only at 2 right now.

It is possible that parking the car inside a garage may reduce the accuracy of the GPS reading (GPS signals are very easily blocked).

jmueller065 said:

I've also have had to add additional "Home" entries to get it to properly value charge--although I'm only at 2 right now.

It is possible that parking the car inside a garage may reduce the accuracy of the GPS reading (GPS signals are very easily blocked).

Click to expand...

Yes, that's possible, but the feature worked nearly perfectly before the app/site update. Same for my other routine locations (work, etc.). I had all my locations saved and named and they would be recorded properly for each visit. Occasionally, sure, there might be a charge missing or something like that, but the locations were never wrong. Only since the update have the "rogue locations" become a problem.

What's worse, the site itself has also become flaky in managing the locations... it used to be, all the named locations appearing the Charge Log could be found in the Saved Locations list. You could rename them, delete them, the Charge Log would immediately update. Now, there are named locations in my Charge Log that are simply not in Saved Locations list.

Yes the new application is buggy and there were some issues with the data migration. I also have the C-Max plug in Hybrid and it looks like they used that app as the basis for the combined app even though the Focus Electric application was more polished and stable.

I had an issue after the migration where I had two 'Home' locations saved. One was set to value charge and the other was set to charge now. I was not able to make any changes at all to the locations (the sync would error out) and ended up having to remove my car completely by doing a factory reset and then add it again to fix the problem. I called ford twice about it but all I ever got was a case number with no actual help.

They are clearly overloaded with issue with the software side of these cars. Which is really too bad because the functional design is pretty good, they have so far just failed to execute with any consistent quality. It feels like they cheaped out on the software development and certainly on any QA.

I wish them good luck and best speed getting the software where it needs to be. Software development is not easy. Especially if you ignore QA.