New to me 2017 FFE getting ~70 miles per charge

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awefulspeller

Well-known member
Joined
Aug 10, 2013
Messages
111
Hi everyone,

I recently purchased a 2017 FFE, and am getting ~70 miles per charge. Speed avg 55-65 miles per hour. Relatively flat roads, avg temp 75 degrees F. No climate control. A little bit of radio. Cruise control. Car has 30,000 miles on it.

Is this normal?

The car should still have the original factory battery warranty and I am considering bringing it to the dealership to get their opinion.

Before I do that, can anyone recommend things I can do to make sure this isn’t an easy fix. I am almost for certain this kind of range is well beyond normal battery degradation.

Thank you for reading and your help
 
charge up to 100% turn on your enhanced trip meter. Drive until the battery is low say 10%. Since you used 90% of the available battery you would simply take the kWh used shown on the enhanced trip meter and divide by 0.9 to get a pretty accurate of your total battery capacity. It should be in the mid to upper 20's. There is no warranty on battery capacity. If it is charging fine and doesn't throw any codes ford will do nothing so don't waste your time at the dealer.

What does your trip meter say your average Wh/mi is?

Also what tires are on the car? If you don't have LRR tires that could also be killing your range.
 
Thank you for the help.

It does charge fine, and throws no codes.

I just completed this trip. Here is what the trip meter says:

64.7 mi
193 Wh/mi
12.5 kWh

12.5 / .9 = 13.8

Crap. This is very terrible in my opinion. The two rear tires are the stock Michelin’s. The two front tires are new imove Gen 2. 225/50R17

I’m actually really surprised at these numbers, and maybe I didn’t do something right. I’m going try the test again, to verify the results. I’ll post the results as soon as I can.

I did purchase this at CarMax. So if there is not hope to get better range, I might have to return with CarMax 30 day return policy. But, I want to keep cause I like the FFE a lot, but at this rate of range degradation, I’ll only be getting 30 miles to a charge in two or three years.

Anyone with experience, your advice is most certainly appreciated
 
if those numbers are accurate it looks like someone may have swapped an earlier 23kWh battery in. A degraded one at that. My '14 has about 17kWh usable (was 18.5kWh when new). I would think a '17 would have at least 24-25kWh usable (33.5kWh battery). Someone can correct me but I think they had about 28kWh usable when new. That means you're at 50% battery degradation! :shock:

Would be interesting to hook up an ODBII dongle and see what codes forscan has. I think there's somewhwere in there where it even has estimated battery capacity. If you're only 14kWh something is definitely wrong!

The battery has 86 groups of 5 parallel cells in series. (86S5P) I wonder if one of the groups of 5 cells has bad cell(s) that are keeping the rest of the pack capacity from being used. Although I would think it would throw the yellow wrench if that were the case.

I would seriously run from this turd! Sadly even if your numbers are correct Ford will do nothing warranty wise if there are no error codes as there is no warranty on degradation. Even if the would do something it's likely not worth the hassle and headache unless you have another vehicle to drive while they take their sweet time remedying it (months).

If you do return it, post the VIN so that someone here doesn't inadvertently buy it.

Oh btw, congrats on getting the Wh/mi below 200. I struggle to get below 260. In the winter I'm usually in the 300-350 Wh/mi range.
 
Hey guys,

Thanks for your input on this.

I have not had an opportunity to do another test, but hopefully by the end of the weekend. The original test I did was 100% down to 10%.

This car has kind of grown on me, and I don't want to give up on it. But, here is the VIN: 1FADP3R47HL308643


Good news, I did hook up forscan. Here is a picture of forscan that shows it has a 33.5kw pack. Not sure what else I can do this with this nifty forscan thing.


IMG-8732.png
 
I use the windows version of forscan, so I don't know about the Android version.
In the windows version, I can request the Estimated Battery Capacity, then divide that by the current State of Charge, which will give me the estimated total capacity of the battery. Currently, my 2017 is showing 28.125 kW. I think that might be down a kilowatt from last year.
 
In the mobile version, there's a PID under BECM named BAT_TO_EMPTY_ESTIM. This is the kWh the car has derived as available between a full charge and empty on the SoC gauge (down to watt hour precision). I don't believe it includes the 1kWh reserve. For my 2018 battery, it reads just over 27kWh.

For the benefit of other folks:

When using a large set of cells like in these batteries, the system monitors the voltage on small sets of cells or individual ones and treats the lowest cell voltage hitting the lower threshold as the whole pack being empty and the highest cell voltage hitting the upper threshold as being full.

If it tracks the voltages throughout that range, along with tabulating the amount of energy spit out along the way, it can pretty reliably map cell voltage to state of charge. You can lose capacity if your lowest or highest cell is hitting the limit well before the others along with the normal degredation that gradually reduces their charge and discharge efficiency.

I've been told that after the vehicle has been plugged in to charge for more than 72 hours or something like that, it will actually begin an individual cell maintenance charge where it will isolate the lower voltage cells and try to further charge them in a effort to more closely balance the voltages between cells, but I'm not sure if that really happens and what difference it may make. There is a service function called r-mode rebalance that should do something similar, but again, details are scarce.
 
Oh, and if you want to run it to zero without risking getting stranded, you can drive it until it's low and then park and run the heater with the windows down to take it the rest of the way to zero. At 0%/Miles you'll get a stop now message and 1kWh below that it will cut the contactors whether you want it to or not.

If you're actually driving during that time below 0% it will limit peak output to maximize the amount of range you can get in an emergency.
 
All the talk about battery thresholds most defiantly makes sense. These talks are fascinating to me, so thank you for sharing.

There have been numerous times when I have run the FFE to 0% SOC, to the point of no ability for the FFE to drive further. I turned the car off for 10-20 minutes, then magically been able to move a bit further. Most likely due to the pack balancing and thresholds mentioned above.

Sadly, I do not have the time to invest in attempting the 72-hour rebalance since I only have 14 days or so left on my CarMax return window. I don't want to be stuck with a lemon and need to return it if it is not functioning correctly. Although, I do believe the cell voltages in this particular FFE could use rebalancing to get the FFE to more normal operating parameters. I am surprised there isn't a yellow wrench trip for when the cells get so far out of balance. Or, maybe there is, and it is not functioning correctly in this particular FFE? Either way, this FFE needs more attention than I can afford at this present time.

Luckily, I will return the car to CarMax in Palm Springs this Friday. I found another 2017 FFE that hopefully has more usable watts—keeping my fingers crossed. I like the focus a lot, especially the FFE. I wish I could afford the Mach-E :cool:
 
As an aside, lately it seems that people are buying FFEs that appear to have degraded batteries. Fortunately they are able to return them during a trial period. But this makes me think, how many people are buying and returning the same vehicle? I think it was Onlybimmers got a bad one, returned it, and could Awefulspeller have purchased the same car? Its not like Carmax or Carvana to replace a degraded battery out of their own pocket.hey know that getting the battery replaced under warranty is like pulling teeth and takes months. They would just try to sell the vehicle to somebody else and push the problem off onto them.

Regardless, methinks a Degraded Battery VIN List might be in order.
 
Seems most folks don't want to give them up so the ones most likely to end up on the market are the ones that have been worn out - and it doesn't help that so few were ever made. Unless it's a problem that makes a vehicle unsafe to drive, it's almost certainly going to be sold as-is.
 
Traded in the crap FFE today, at CarMax. They had another 2017 shipped to my local CarMax location from Riverside, CA.

I’m on the trip home now, and I already can tell the difference in range. The guess-o-meter says 113. I should have the opportunity to charge to 100% and get good data.

Now that I have a properly functioning FFE, I can most defiantly say the FFE I had previously has battery issues. Check out the VIN above and avoid at all costs…. Unless you get a really really good deal on it :lol:

I’m very happy with the 2017’s larger battery pack, and the super charge capability. It really does make a big difference.
 
awefulspeller said:
Traded in the crap FFE today, at CarMax. They had another 2017 shipped to my local CarMax location from Riverside, CA.

Glad you got a good one! I hope to find a salvage '17 or '18 some day for peanuts to harvest the battery for my '14.
 
triangles said:
awefulspeller said:
Traded in the crap FFE today, at CarMax. They had another 2017 shipped to my local CarMax location from Riverside, CA.

Glad you got a good one! I hope to find a salvage '17 or '18 some day for peanuts to harvest the battery for my '14.

Triangles,

There is one on copart right now.....super low bid. I would buy it, but I don't need it. If you're ready, this might be a steal for you..

https://ibb.co/hfvQLCN
 
Anti_Climax said:
Not you just need to add CHAdeMO to it ;)

Show me the ways, and I think I am super interested in this.

I recently cracked the code on how to use Tesla Model S battery modules for power backup. I currently have 2x modules (50lbs/each) that have a capacity of ~10kw. This would be a nice addition to have in the trunk of the FFE, along with a way to fast charge. Although expensive.
 
I'm working on a new rev of the hardware Sefs created along with a code release and write-up. I can't commit to when I'll have it out though, still working on fixing all the other problems with my car.
 
I'd like to learn more about using the Model S modules for backup. I'm interested in getting a salvage 75 kWh pack for solar storage. Is there a written guide online someplace? These packs are the cheapest I've seen per kWh of storage.
 
Check out EVTV. Many years ago I stumbled on them when trying to create a spare battery for my FFE. They have some solutions for full Tesla battery packs.


evtv.me
 
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