Battery Capacity Calculation

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ether100

Member
Joined
Oct 24, 2014
Messages
16
Location
SF Bay Area
The trip meter can be configured to show total kWh and Wh/mile. If it is reset at a full charge, does the total used kWh value at 0 mi range => usable battery capacity?

Or put another way, does the reported Wh/mile * miles travelled from Full to Empty = usable battery capacity?

My trip meter currently shows 270 Wh/mile with 63 miles travelled and 7 mi range left. 270 * (63 + 7) = 18.9kWh

Is this correct, and if so, is this an expected battery capacity for a new 2014 FFE?
 
Yes, you've got the right idea. You can approximate the usable battery capacity as you have done.

The consensus around here is that usable battery capacity of the FFE is anywhere from 18.5 kWh to 19.5 kWh. So, your result of 18.9 is certainly in that ballpark.

You'll note that the window sticker for your FFE said that it can go 76 miles on a full charge and does so getting 320 Wh/mi. But, that 320 figure, quite usefully, is the full "wall to wheels" energy required, and accounts for any energy lost during charging, which is typically about 20%. (Yes, EV charging, on average, is only about 80% efficient -- in simple terms, some energy lost as heat.) Of course, this wall to wheels amount is the true amount of energy, and is what you'll have to pay your electric utility per mile, to drive your FFE around. It makes sense to put that number on the window sticker.

The "battery to wheels" energy usage, on the other hand -- what the car displays to you in trip meter and other energy displays -- does not include the energy lost during charging. The car's accounting only reflects the energy stored in the battery (which, as we know, is only 80% of what originally came out of the wall). But, we can use the information from the sticker to deduce that, if you were to drive 76 miles on a full charge, the car should display an average Wh/mi of about 80% of 320 Wh/mi -- or 256 Wh/mi. Indeed, this 256 figure has been corroborated by people who routinely achieve mid-70s ranges driving around in their FFE -- sure enough, their average Wh/mi settles somewhere within 250-260.

Anyway, at this point (quite similar to what you have done with your trip meter numbers) we can estimate the usable battery capacity:

256 Wh/mi * 76 miles = ~19.5 kWh

Now, to be sure, 19.5 kWh is the upper range of what anybody has seen using the "trip meter accounting" technique, but perhaps the FFE is not even 80% efficient when charging, it may be worse, or perhaps the trip meter isn't completely accurate.
 
The trip meter may also have inaccuracies during regen. Regen varies in efficiency and depending on at what point the car is measuring the data there could be some discrepancies there. The consensus for the best practice to have an almost laboratory test is to drive the FFE from full to empty without any regen and see what the trip meter shows for kWh consumed.
 
Thanks for the useful info. A couple of points:

- I assume that the trip meter doesn't account for power consumed during Acc mode or when remote start is active.
-Adding up the pertinent individual energy usage numbers from the MyFord Mobile website results in a total around 15kwh, far less than the trip meter value. i wonder why the difference.
 
ether100 said:
- I assume that the trip meter doesn't account for power consumed during Acc mode or when remote start is active.
I believe you are correct about accessory mode, the trip meter goes "idle" then. Does anybody know if the trip meter is affected by remote starts?

Interestingly, though, while the car is turned on, the trip meter energy usage will even run backwards if you charge the car while it is turned on (just like it runs backwards with enough regeneration, say, going down a very long hill). This lets us know there must be something very "basic" about the way the trip meter measures energy consumption... it is affected by any energy removed or added to the battery while the car is on.

ether100 said:
-Adding up the pertinent individual energy usage numbers from the MyFord Mobile website results in a total around 15kwh, far less than the trip meter value. i wonder why the difference.
We often joke that any numbers shown by the MFM website or app are for "entertainment purposes only". They are notoriously inaccurate and incomplete (the log is often missing entries, the and reported total car mileage doesn't match the actual odometer reading for anybody, as far I know).

In short, do not use the MFM numbers to calculate anything "real" about the car's energy usage. Instead, rely on the trip meter, or your own measurements.
 
WattsUp said:
ether100 said:
- I assume that the trip meter doesn't account for power consumed during Acc mode or when remote start is active.
I believe you are correct about accessory mode, the trip meter goes "idle" then. Does anybody know if the trip meter is affected by remote starts?
The Trip Meter does not count electricity consumed during remote start events.
 
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