A little concerned about 120V charging now

[WattsUp]

After a normal day of driving to about 25% battery remaining, I arrived home and plugged in my FFE using the Ford-supplied Level 1 charger. This was around 7pm.

Later, around 3am, I couldn't sleep. I reached for my phone and decided to check on my FFE's charge. Everything looked okay... still charging, finishing around 8am. Then, I just happened to flip over to the "Vehicle Status" page. It showed the battery status was "Poor". Huh? I fired up my laptop and checked the battery status at the MFM website. Same thing. It showed "Poor" and advised "Plugging in recommended". What the... ? The car is plugged in. The ambient temperature (reported by the phone and website) in my garage was 75 degrees.

I went down to the garage and the car. Silence. Charging ring on, but no fans or systems running. I got in and the cabin felt slightly warm inside... but not excessively so. I turned the car on. Literally within 30 seconds, I received a text message, "Hot battery. Limited performance. Plug car in when not in use". Gee thanks... why didn't I receive a warning earlier? I also noticed a warning on the dash about being plugged in... which is no big deal, I've seen that before (it's to stop you from driving away when still attached to a charger). But, thinking I might take a short drive just to check things out, I went ahead and unplugged the car. That instant, all hell broke loose under the hood... pumps started whirring up, liquids were gurgling around, and fans came roaring on. Obviously, the car was cooling off... but only after being unplugged?

If the car needed cooling, especially seemingly due to charging, why wasn't it already doing so while plugged in? Why did I have to turn it on and unplug it first? What kind of battery management is THAT? Anyway, the cooling cycle went on for a good 10 minutes before whirring back down into silence. When I re-checked the battery status, it had switched to "Good". At least that made sense. Seeing as the outdoor temperature was a brisk 55 degrees, I did go for a short drive (seemed like it might help cool things off even further). Everything seemed normal during the drive.

But... now I'm concerned/perplexed. If the battery can get too hot after charging on 120V for several hours in fairly normal ambient temperatures and the car doesn't respond by automatically cooling (nor notify me until it's too late) it makes me wonder how many other times I haven't been aware of a hot battery. Perhaps other times, the battery eventually cooled down and no warning was sent, and no fans came on the next time I started the car.

Anybody else experience this?

 

[philly_ev]

Yes! I have had this issue. Last week I got home from work and the battery was down to 25%. I plugged in the 110 and the car charged for about 3 hours. It was hot outside, but with the car being plugged it, it should have been cooling itself. So my wife and I went out to dinner and I unplugged the car and started driving. I immediately got an email saying the car had limited performance and to plug it in because the battery was too hot. I'm thinking how could this happen - it's been plugged in and, I'm only driving it a few miles. I got the email 4 times in 45 minutes. Weird thing was that I checked the status of the battery, and it said 'Good' everytime.

 

[Rudy]

Same thing here. I bring it home after running to work when hot out 80+ degrees. I plug it in and after about 3-4 hours Battery reports poor performance while plugged in due to too hot. It does not notify me of the situation, but "luckily" my circut breaker seems to trip when this condition happens... So I tried a few things and this is what I came up with.

It does not turn fan on until I unplug and put car into "Ready to Drive" mode.
Let run for about 5 minutes = -2 miles and then plug in. Car then reports battery "Good".

This really sucks and Ford needs to address this issue. I have been planning on calling the customer care line to log something, but I am getting my 240 line today and I have not had time yet. Has anyone else submitted something to them?

Rudy

 

[Fluke]

I'd suspect that trying to do both charging and battery conditioning duties using 120V may be asking too much. What is the maximum amperage that Ford's 120V EVSE can deliver? What kW would the cooling circuit alone require? If 120V can supply cooling load, there can't be much left over to actually add charge to the battery. Has anyone with this issue tried putting a Kill-a-watt or similar on the circuit? The 120V cord is only capable of providing about 1/4 the power available using 240V (~1800W max vs 6600W max).

Of course, this does not explain why the car's software would not interpret the situation and respond correctly to the issue by providing proper notification of the issue/conflict allowing you to address it.

 

[Rudy]

What is the maximum amperage that Ford's 120V EVSE can deliver? ... The 120V cord is only capable of providing about 1/4 the power available using 240V (~1800W max vs 6600W max).

Of course, this does not explain why the car's software would not interpret the situation and respond correctly to the issue by providing proper notification of the issue/conflict allowing you to address it.

The max amp is supposed to be 12 Amps on 120V ~ 1440W ?
So if the the pump was to speed up and the fan was to kick on - what is your guess of what that would use. 200W max I would venture to guess.
The cooling I hear when 120V is plugged in is just the pump running on a trickle. I am guessing this was a software programming oversight (bug). If its hot at least run the pump on a higher speed The AC should not need to run just to cool the battery when it's sitting still charging at 120V.

I have no idea what the issues are, but I hope they get fixed.

Rudy

 

[Fluke]

What is the maximum amperage that Ford's 120V EVSE can deliver? ... The 120V cord is only capable of providing about 1/4 the power available using 240V (~1800W max vs 6600W max).

Of course, this does not explain why the car's software would not interpret the situation and respond correctly to the issue by providing proper notification of the issue/conflict allowing you to address it.

The max amp is supposed to be 12 Amps on 120V ~ 1440W ?
So if the the pump was to speed up and the fan was to kick on - what is your guess of what that would use. 200W max I would venture to guess.
The cooling I hear when 120V is plugged in is just the pump running on a trickle. I am guessing this was a software programming oversight (bug). If its hot at least run the pump on a higher speed The AC should not need to run just to cool the battery when it's sitting still charging at 120V.

I have no idea what the issues are, but I hope they get fixed.

Rudy

Unfortunately, we don't know much about what the battery cooling system entails. I've always assumed it included a refrigerant loop for certain conditions since you would not get much cooling in an enclosed garage that may be hotter than the target temperature for the battery (which I believe is low 80s fahrenheit). If that is the case, I'd speculate that it would require nearly the full 12 amps available on 120V when providing cooling.

I don't charge at 120V, but my suspision is that the car begins charging and hits a point where the battery requires cooling. At 120V, it is not able to provide enough cooling to continue both charging and cooling operations and suspends both for some reason instead of cooling the battery off and resuming charging. When unplugged, the car basically immediately begins conditioning itself using the traction battery which obviously has the capability.

 

[WindPowered]

Unfortunately, we don't know much about what the battery cooling system entails. I've always assumed it included a refrigerant loop...

Actually we do know quite a bit about this, but still don't have a complete understanding.

If you take the electrical diagrams from the modifier's guide and combine them with the overall system description, we can learn very well how much current each system draws. What we don't know is the overall system operation. i.e. What is the expected behavior of each system under a given set of conditions. e.g. When the FFE is plugged in to 120V and the temp rises about x threshold, what happens (vs what is supposed to happen)?

Someone with some time on their hands (and an understanding of scientific process) will have to do some experiments to find out.


WP

 

[Fluke]

Unfortunately, we don't know much about what the battery cooling system entails. I've always assumed it included a refrigerant loop...

Actually we do know quite a bit about this, but still don't have a complete understanding.

If you take the electrical diagrams from the modifier's guide and combine them with the overall system description, we can learn very well how much current each system draws. What we don't know is the overall system operation. i.e. What is the expected behavior of each system under a given set of conditions. e.g. When the FFE is plugged in to 120V and the temp rises about x threshold, what happens (vs what is supposed to happen)?

Someone with some time on their hands (and an understanding of scientific process) will have to do some experiments to find out.


WP

I've looked through these documents before and still say we don't know much about the battery cooling system. Specifically, we don't know whether the battery cooling includes fan, pump and radiator only or a refrigerant loop. Without this, we can't really even speculate on the loads the system might generate during charging with cooling. I don't think that either of the documents sheds light on this, but I'd love to be proven wrong.

 

[Fluke]

One thing I didn't note is that since the cooling accessories run off of the 12V system, the load would be supplied from the traction battery through the DC-DC converter to the 12V system. If the accessory draw on the traction battery is high enough, the 120V EVSE may not keep up resulting in a net loss for the traction battery.

 

[az erik]

I can tell you that in 90+ degree garage on the 120v charger my pump and fan came on full tilt with the battery at about 98% charged. It was so loud my wife said "the car is running in the garage!" Which it pretty much was but wasn't. The ring was off so it wasn't cooling but it was circulating and blowing like crazy for 10 ish minutes. This is the 3.6.2 software BTW.

I'm actually hesitant to charge it now as if this happens again it might wake me or my 15 month old who's room is on the other side of the garage wall.Dont need that happening at 3 am. If I get the chance I'll Kil-a-watt it over the weekend and see if there is a drain ragistering from the wall when the cooling cycle is on.

 

[LJinLACA]

I have 20k miles and no less than a third of that time has been 120v charging. No issues with 120v. The reality is 5 miles per hr on 120v versus about 20 per hour on 240v. For a 40 mile one way trip I need just under 2 hrs 240v, or 10 hrs 120v.

If you are having problems get it serviced...

Hope the info helps somebody...

LJ