Value Charge Failure

Ford Focus Electric Forum

Help Support Ford Focus Electric Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

jeffroper

Member
Joined
Jul 10, 2017
Messages
12
I plugged in my 2017 FFE in last night at 10:24 PM. Value charge was set on. MyFord Moblie said that value charging was beginning. Lights looked like charging had commenced. This morning I discover no charge happened. No error messages in the car or MyFord Mobile. I just said that it was scheduled to value charge at 9 PM tonight. What is wrong? I had to turn off Value Charge this morning to get it to start charging during peak hours. This happened once before, but I got an error message. I am charging at 240V 24A with a Level 2 EVSE.
 
what i've noticed is if i put my car on one of two options for charging (i think for l2) it won't value charge. the option is not very clear and when i change it back to default i can value charge again.
 
Damania,

I'm not sure what you are referring to with the charging options. I haven't seen an option for charging except Value Charge on or off. Can you describe what that charging option is?

I didn't change anything from Saturday night to Monday Morning. Saturday night it Value Charged fine. Sunday night it failed. I plugged it in at 10:24 PM after the beginning of the lowest tier, so it should have started charging right away and looked like it was. The lights at the charge port were on and pulsing. In the morning no charge had occurred and no error message.

Thanks,

Jeff
 
It is that one - value charging on and off in the charging menu on the screen behind the steering wheel. i have to leave it to default for value charging to work.
 
A few things to note about value charging:
  • It is tied to a location--if the location isn't the one setup on the web it won't value charge
  • On Sync3 equipped cars the Value Charge/Charge Now setting is global in the car and tied to each location/default on the web. What this means is that on the web you can setup each location differently (default charge now, location value charge). Thus it can be confusing looking in the app or the website if the car is on value charge or charge now
 
The location has always been my home. I haven't tried to value charge anywhere else. I didn't change anything from Saturday night to Sunday night. Same location and settings. One night it worked, the next it didn't. I had value charge fail one other time. That time there was a message that there was a charge error. Not sure what caused that, but it worked since.
 
It is possible the GPS is locating your car someplace else? As in not detecting that you are "home". Even though you are parked in the exact same spot, it might have you over 10 or 20 feet and not detecting that you are home.

I think it was Wattsup that did this really cool study on GPS location with the FFE. He discovered that it used a grid system and you could be on one edge of the grid and end up with the GPS putting your car someplace else. I can't remember why he studied that, or how to fix whatever problem he was trying to solve - just that the GPS wasn't as continuous as you might imagine.

No idea how you figure out if your car is "home" and how you could force it to call home a second location.

Even though we are on time of use for electricity, I don't bother with value charging. Granted our day rates are not all that dramatically different from night time except some rare cases in the afternoon during the summer. The most they have ever been different is about $0.10 per Kwh. The more typical is a couple of cents.

And I was horribly burned with value charging about six months ago. Could not get my car to charge at all away from home. It took stripping out all the darn value charge settings and then the car finally charged. It was a pain.
 
Well and thank you so much for reminding me about that whole charging thing. We no longer need Go times. The car has been getting itself ready every morning for the past week, and we didn't need it anymore. Jeffroper - thank you, you just saved me some money.
 
My Default Location Value Charge profile is the same as my Home profile, so I don't think the problem has anything to do with the GPS accuracy. I have a Time Of Use rate plan, so Value Charging usually starts at 9PM. This timing is set up automatically by MyFord Mobile. You are requested to input your utility company, PG&E in my case. Then you are requested to input your zip code and specific rate plan from a list. This automatically figures out the best time to charge. I assume it keeps track of summer and winter rate plans.
 
jeffroper said:
My Default Location Value Charge profile is the same as my Home profile, so I don't think the problem has anything to do with the GPS accuracy. I have a Time Of Use rate plan, so Value Charging usually starts at 9PM. This timing is set up automatically by MyFord Mobile. You are requested to input your utility company, PG&E in my case. Then you are requested to input your zip code and specific rate plan from a list. This automatically figures out the best time to charge. I assume it keeps track of summer and winter rate plans.
I wouldn't assume that--I don't think it changes the times after you've initially set it up.

You are far better off selecting the manual times and setup your own value charge window (You can select manual when you pick the utility company). You'll treat your battery better if you setup the value charge time to be finished as close as possible to when you leave in the morning. As an example I have my C-Max start charging around 4am so that it is always finished by 6:30am. This is good for the battery because it minimizes the amount of time the battery sits at 100%.

In the 3 years I had my FFE I think the value charge failed only once or twice--In both cases I had enough charge to get to work and had a local charger I would use in "emergency" situations like that (normally I didn't charge at work at all).
 
I did see that I could set up my own Value Charge profile where I can modify a graph to set the rates and time. Kind of a clunky interface. No way to see the actual time you set for the changes, just a rough scale with no dividing lines. I guess I could revise my home Value Charge to be user defined. I'm not sure what good that would do though. Since it is an intermittent problem, I don't think it is related to the Value Charge configuration.

The method you are describing for charging sounds like Go Times. You set the time you wish to leave and it has the car charged and ready at that time. That method is useful if you wish to have the vehicle cabin warmed or cooled to a set temperature using shore power instead of onboard power. Maybe I will try using that method and see if I have luck. I'm fortunate enough to live on the California coast and don't normally need to precondition my car cabin temperature.
 
jeffroper said:
I did see that I could set up my own Value Charge profile where I can modify a graph to set the rates and time. Kind of a clunky interface. No way to see the actual time you set for the changes, just a rough scale with no dividing lines. I guess I could revise my home Value Charge to be user defined. I'm not sure what good that would do though. Since it is an intermittent problem, I don't think it is related to the Value Charge configuration.

The method you are describing for charging sounds like Go Times. You set the time you wish to leave and it has the car charged and ready at that time. That method is useful if you wish to have the vehicle cabin warmed or cooled to a set temperature using shore power instead of onboard power. Maybe I will try using that method and see if I have luck. I'm fortunate enough to live on the California coast and don't normally need to precondition my car cabin temperature.
Well similar to go times. Go times, as you say, gets the car to the proper temp by the time you are ready to go. I also used go times extensively with my FFE (and my C-Max). Every day I get in a toasty warm, or nice and cool car ;).

The idea of charging as late as possible is more for battery conditioning and longevity.
 
I contacted the dealership and talked to the salesman who is somewhat knowledgeable about Value Charging. He said to try deleting the Value Charging Profiles that I set up online and modify the Default Value Charging Profile to just specify the times directly using the car's Sync 3 interface. It worked last night, we will see if it continues to work.
 
jeffroper said:
I contacted the dealership and talked to the salesman who is somewhat knowledgeable about Value Charging. He said to try deleting the Value Charging Profiles that I set up online and modify the Default Value Charging Profile to just specify the times directly using the car's Sync 3 interface. It worked last night, we will see if it continues to work.
Yeah I had to do that in my C-Max--couldn't get anything other than default to work.
 
Back
Top