Bought a used Ford Focus, How much range should I get?

[Freefalljay]

I purchased a 2013 FFE over the weekend and the range is a little off so far. It wasn’t fully charged when I picked it up at Carvana, boo to them. The budget had about 30 miles on it so I took it to a charge point L2 near there and sat for about 1.5 hrs. It got up to about 75% but only added 10 miles of range(42). My destination was only five miles away just up I-10. Without the heat on at all and no radio playing or headlights or anything I drive the five miles like an old lady. On the short drive the miles were falling off the budget 2-3 per mile. Then after a few hours at my destination not charging I went home another 5 miles and my range was down to 18 miles. So I’m 10 miles of driving slowly with no accessories on it dropped 22 miles. After charging 110 for 14 hrs that night it read full and displayed 52 miles budget. I drove another couple of miles and it dropped into the twenties. I’ve now driven a grand total of 13 miles on what should have been about 60 miles of change over two days. What’s the deal? Do I just need to charge it level 2 longer and give it Time?

How many miles is full for a 2013?
What is the normal drop for a a ten mile trip.
Should I start looking to return it or into a warranty?

Thanks

 

[Guest]

I bought a used 2013 in september. With the cold weather my full is in the 50's sometimes almost 60. As soon as I turn on the heat it drops into the 40's. In the cold it does really poorly with the budget. When the weather was good I would have high 60's low 70's as the full budget. I dont normally drive it like an old lady. I like the zip it has in the 20-60 mph range. In the nice weather, if I drive it nicely, the budget is fairly accurate. My daughter drove it for a couple of days back and forth to work (in the nice weather) and managed to get the budget to 80. But in the cold weather, and with the heat in use, its all over the place. Your numbers sound low. How many miles on the car? Ive currently got just over 12k miles. I would drive it for a while and see if it gets better.

 

[jmueller065]

I purchased a 2013 FFE over the weekend and the range is a little off so far. It wasn’t fully charged when I picked it up at Carvana, boo to them. The budget had about 30 miles on it so I took it to a charge point L2 near there and sat for about 1.5 hrs. It got up to about 75% but only added 10 miles of range(42). My destination was only five miles away just up I-10. Without the heat on at all and no radio playing or headlights or anything I drive the five miles like an old lady. On the short drive the miles were falling off the budget 2-3 per mile. Then after a few hours at my destination not charging I went home another 5 miles and my range was down to 18 miles. So I’m 10 miles of driving slowly with no accessories on it dropped 22 miles. After charging 110 for 14 hrs that night it read full and displayed 52 miles budget. I drove another couple of miles and it dropped into the twenties. I’ve now driven a grand total of 13 miles on what should have been about 60 miles of change over two days. What’s the deal? Do I just need to charge it level 2 longer and give it Time?

How many miles is full for a 2013?
What is the normal drop for a a ten mile trip.
Should I start looking to return it or into a warranty?

Thanks

Keep in mind that the displayed range is pretty much a guesstimate (there is a reason that gauge is called the guess-o-meter). As such you won't be able to go to the dealer claiming things about the meter as it isn't very reliable. Once you've had the car for a while you'll figure out its idiosyncrasies and can rely on it a little more.

You really need to go by the % value instead of miles which is a much more stable value.

 

[Freefalljay]

Okay here’s an update. Charged overnight on 110. It did say it was 100% last night at 9 pm and the “guess-o-meter” guessed 51 miles at 100% last night before I went to bed. After posting this I refreshed the mobile app and it’s now up to 64 miles on the mobile app.

The car has just over 31k on it and is very clean. I feel like the previous owners took good care of it and I have the carfax report showing that it’s not been in any accidents. It did show to have had two windshield relacmantes in new Mexico... wonder what that was all about.

Overall after reading y’all insights and seeing the increased mileage on the meter over night I’m more hopeful!

Thanks for sharing you knowledge!

 

[triangles]

Welcome to the club! It really depends on what the weather conditions are where you are at, how you drive it, and how much you use the climate control. In a sub-freezing winter you can expect 40-50 miles and in the summer you can expect 65-85 depnding on AC use and driving style. The AC can cause a 5-10 hit on range and the heater can easily zap 10-15 miles off your range so if its really cold out side and you insist on having the heater cranked at 85F you'd probably get about 35 miles. Drive it like you stole it and you'll get even less. If you live where it's cold in the winter you really should invest in having a L2 EVSE to plug into when not in use. This will help keep the battery warm and lessen the impact to your range in the winter. Depending on how the PO abused or took care of the battery you may or may not have some battery degradation. Constantly running the battery down to empty is not good for the battery. leaving it sit at a low SOC (state of charge) is even worse for the battery. Also the battery doesn't like to sit fully charged all the time. This isn't nearly as bad as constantly fully discharging or letting it sit discharged. In other words, keeping it always fully charged will probably have a negligible impact on the battery but it isn't good for it. I vaguely remember reading that lithium batteries are happiest between 40-60% charged or maybe it was 40-80%. Anyway you shouldn't have to take any extraordinary actions to care for the battery as the car does some things for you. For example, 100% charge isn't really 100% charge it's actually 90% and on the low end the car won't let you completely discharge the battery. When the GOM (Guess-o-meter) says 0 miles left you actually have between 0 and about 1.5 miles until the car will stop. The battery TMS (thermal management system) on the FFE does a fairly good job of keeping your battery in a "happy" temp rage to minimize degredation. If I remember correctly it tries to keep it between 50F and 95F. Probably the best advise I've seen on here is to crack your windows in cold weather to minimize the windows fogging up. Running the defrost to clear the windows runs both the heat and AC at full to dehumidify the air. I really wish the climate control had an option to just blow outside air on the windshield for times when that would be sufficient to keep the windows clear.

 

[Freefalljay]

Wow thanks for all the input! Learning a lot here for sure.

I live in San Antonio and it’s warm. Sat outside and ate pizza in a T-shirt while it just charged for free on a free charge station by the Alamo Dome (took the son to Monster Jam). It showed 56 miles of range and that it had been at 100% for a few hrs on the L2. I then drove home with the fan on low and radio low driving 70 I made it 24 miles but it took 36 from my range and dropped to like 40%. I drove smooth too, used the cruise control and regen L mode when not on the interstate. I feel like the battery on this thing is compromised. I’m sure I wouldn’t make it 50 miles, 35 would be about as far as I think this thing could go on a full charge.

 

[triangles]

Aerodynamic drag increases exponentially with speed. In my experience range really takes a hit above 60mph. One thing that is very counter intuitive is that efficiency/range is the opposite of ICE cars. An ice car is more fuel efficient on the freeway than on city streets. Your FFE will go significantly farther in the city than it would on the freeway. This is due to less aero drag and because in an EV you can recoup some of the energy spent to get moving when you regeneratively brake. Remember that regen is at best 80% efficient so the more you can coast instead of using regen to slow the more efficient your driving will be. You can configure the left screen to show a trip meter with a running Wh/mi average and how many kWh used from the battery. It will look like this:

This was from a warm summer day where I tried to get the best efficiency I could. Mostly flat country roads at 40mph or less with few stops. Typical warm weather Wh/mi without AC would be in the 250Wh/mi neighborhood. I'm going to guess your 70mi/hr freeway consumption would be in the neighborhood of 275Wh/mi.

When brand new the 23kWh battery has about 18-19kWh usable. If you take that and divide by a typical Wh/mi you'd get 18.5kWh/0.250kWh/mi = 74 miles which is pretty close to the EPA rating of 76mi. As the battery ages and is used degradation is normal. For the age I'd expect about 17kWh to be usable which would mean you should get 17/.25=68 miles typical range. There have been reports of higher mileage FFEs down to as little as 15kWh which would still give you about 60 miles (15/.25). Unfortunately Ford has no capacity guarantee in their warranty. They only guarantee that the battery works for 8 years.

I don't recommend that you do this but one method to "measure" your battery capacity is to configure your trip meter as above, charge to 100% reset the trip meter and run the heater full blast until you get the "stop safely now" warning indicating the battery is fully depleted. The trip meter will indicate how many kWh it took to deplete the battery giving you a fairly accurate idea of how much usable battery capacity you have. I don't recommend this for two reasons, 1) it puts a lot of unnecessary wear and tear on the battery and 2) your GOM will be wildly inaccurate for the near future.

What I would recommend to get an idea of how much usable battery you have is to drive normally down to some even battery% left and use math to estimate the remaining capacity. Say 20% or 10%. It's a little less accurate but is easier on the battery and still gives you a fairly good idea of how much usable battery capacity you have. For example if you drove until your battery was at 20% and the trip meter indicates you had used 13kWh. That means you used 80% of your battery and 80% of your capacity is 13kWh. so to estimate what your total available capacity is you would simply divide 13kWh by 80% and find that you have about 16.25kWh usable (13/0.80=16.25). The lower you run the battery down the more accurate you will be. I just don't like to run the battery below 20% unless I have to and I think doing the math at 20% will give you an accurate estimation of the battery capacity. I haven't done enough measurements to throw out a number but I can tell you that your battery temperature greatly affects usable capacity. Even between relatively warm temperatures of say 70F and 90F. This is also why I would only do an estimation based on running the battery down to 20% since temperature variability would likely cause more capacity variance than the error of estimating an 80% depleted battery. Don't take this as gospel as I haven't done enough measurements to verify everything buy my professional experience and what I have learned about lithium batteries leads me to believe the above is likely the case.

Another option is to get an OBDII dongle and use FORScan (free software) to access more information. I haven't done it myself but some have reported that there is a parameter that can be read that gives you an estimated available capacity. If you fully charged your battery and read this parameter, in theory you'll get your usable capacity.

Edit: I had assumed you have already found this but in case you haven't, one of the settings screens on the Sync infotainment system (7' touchscreen) it will show the battery's state of charge as a %.

 

[triangles]

I'd get a handle on how much battery capacity your car has and see what your options are to return it Carvana. It sounds like you are in a warm climate and if you can't get 50 mi on a full charge that means your capacity is likely less than 13kWh. :shock: It's possible Ford could run some diagnostics and determine the battery is bad and you would get a replacement from ford. As a bonus the 23kWh battery is no longer made and you would get the 33.5kWh battery as a replacement which has about 115mi. of range. The downside is that Ford typically doesn't provide a free loaner and they don't have batteries sitting on the shelf so it can take months to get your replacement installed. They also may find no problem with the battery and claim the capacity loss is just natural degradation not covered by warranty.

Probably the best scenario would be if the Carvana return period allows, is to pay for a ford dealer to diagnose the battery. If they find it defective and you can live without the car for a while, keep it and get the free extra range of the higher capacity battery they will put in. Otherwise if ford can find nothing wrong let Carvana have it back and let them deal with it. Who wants a car that only gets 40mi range on a good day.

If the return period doesn't allow enough time for the diagnostics I'd just return it. Although if you shared your concerns with Carvana it would be in their interest to extend the return period if need be to allow enough time for ford to do the test since you'd pretty much be guaranteed to return it otherwise.

 

[Freefalljay]

Thanks triangles! I took your advice, Carvana is awesome they apologized for not fully charging it and agreed to cover the diagnostic fee if Ford won’t cover the swap.

The car to the best of my estimation on a 70 degree day with no AC or heat on will only get about 45 miles. I have only actually driven 34 but it read only 8 miles left when I rolled into the driveway. This was from a full charge on a brand new L2 ChargePoint station in a parking garage in downtown San Antonio. When I left it read 51 miles but dropped to 43 in the first mile. The full charge always reads right around 60 then drops down 15-20 right outta the gate then it seems to track one additional mile of range for every .67 miles driven.

I’ll post an update on Fords findings here at Red McCombs Ford in San Antonio.
But they don’t seem thrilled about the prospect of me even brining in the car...

 

[triangles]

I hope it all works out. On a 70F day I would expect a lot more. Assuming no climate control use and 55mph or less speeds even guessing on the high side of reasonable you would be at about 260Wh/mi which means you have less than 12kWh!!! :shock: To get that kind of range with a "good" battery you'd have to be using at least 350Wh/mi. The only way I see that happening at 70F is if you're driving it like you stole it (80mph+) or doing some serious hill climbing. Being in the middle of winter here where it's rarely above freezing it's hard to remember how much range I'd get at 70F. With temps around freezing and little to no heat usage My GOM shows 55-60 and I'd say my actual range is at least 50mi. It is normal for the GOM to be wildly inaccurate at least for the first 1/2 of the battery charge. Since it sounds like you charged up and then hopped on the freeway I would expect the GOM to drop much more rapidly than the miles it showed when full. Especially if recent driving had been city driving.

I just had another thought. With the mileage it's likely no longer on the OEM tires. What tires are on it? Maybe you have some non-LRR tires. I've heard that can take 5-10 miles off the range. What Wh/mi does your trip meter indicate you are using?

I forgot to mention they must be a Ford EV certified dealer to sell or service ford EVs. I think most are now a days but back in '14 when I bought mine most were not. They probably aren't thrilled because there are very few FFE's out there and warranty work typically pays poorly. I have no knowledge of how this is with Ford but I have friends that have worked at other manufacturers dealers who have told me about warranty work and I'd be shocked if ford was any different. For example, Ford may only pay for 3 hours of labor for a certain procedure. This may be reasonable for someone familiar with the car that has done the procedure before but the mechanic likely has never seen an FFE and it may take him 5-6 hours to complete it so he kind of gets screwed on pay for the job. So yeah dealers typically hate warranty work because the manufacturer is usually very stingy with how much they get paid for the work.

 

[campfamily]

Have you checked your tire pressure? I runs around 40-42 psi cold (50-60F).

 

[triangles]

FYI I estimated my capacity on my 3+ year old '14

From the pictures above I have used 88% of my battery (12% SOC). So 15.2kWh/0.88 = 17.27kWh usable. The temps were mid 30's to lower 40's and I used my heat and seat warmers. also about 75% freeway. I thought I was somewhere around 17.5-18kWh so that number makes sense.

Freefalljay have you heard from the Ford dealer yet?

 

[Elektra]

FYI I estimated my capacity on my 3+ year old '14

From the pictures above I have used 78% of my battery (12% SOC). So 15.2kWh/0.78 = 19.48kWh usable. The temps were mid 30's to lower 40's and I used my heat and seat warmers. also about 75% freeway. I don't believe for a minute that I still have 19.48 kWh usable capacity although the math certainly does imply that. I thought I was somewhere around 17.5-18kWh. If I were to run my battery completely down I'd probably get a more accurate number.

Your typo gives you overestimation of your actual capacity. I can't believe you missed that triangles!

 

[campfamily]

FYI I estimated my capacity on my 3+ year old '14

From the pictures above I have used 78% of my battery (12% SOC). So 15.2kWh/0.78 = 19.48kWh usable. The temps were mid 30's to lower 40's and I used my heat and seat warmers. also about 75% freeway. I don't believe for a minute that I still have 19.48 kWh usable capacity although the math certainly does imply that. I thought I was somewhere around 17.5-18kWh. If I were to run my battery completely down I'd probably get a more accurate number.

Freefalljay have you heard from the Ford dealer yet?

Um.....isn't 100% - 12% = 88%? So, instead of 19.48kWh usable, don't you have 17.27kWh usable?

 

[triangles]

LOL thanks for correcting my "slight" miscalculation... DOH! In my defense I did this right before going to bed and was already half asleep... yeah yeah that's it... Typo corrected above...

 

[Freefalljay]

So the Ford dealership ran the diagnostics and found the 12 volt battery was bad. They replaced it and ran a bunch of tests to determine the battery was still at whatever they call them acceptable level. My range is still not very impressive but I like the car and my commute is not more than 10 miles each way, with free charging at work. So I’m jumping in both feet on this EV journey with y’all and I’m loving it already! I don’t miss gas stations...

Thanks everyone for the input, i’ve certainly learned a lot from your input here.