New to Ford Focus Electric

[ruiru]

I didn't know Ford made electric cars. Was looking for an affordable EV and was deciding on a Nissan LEAF when I saw a 2013 Ford focus electric from a dealer. Fell in love with it when I test drove it and bought it for $3500 with plates and everything.
Here's the thing, right now it's fall and it's around 45 degrees Fahrenheit in my area. I know cold conditions affect EV more than gas cars, but when I drove 16 miles of highway with a full charge(showed 72 miles), the budget was -20 and I'm left with 38 miles! Battery dropped to 62% and I'm confused, does cold climate affect the battery that much? Or was my battery degraded that badly? I was on cruise control set to 55mph, no climate control at all.
Also, how does FordPass work? I registered my car using VIN and it just shows a picture of the car, no controls at all.
Oh, and apparently my remote start doesn't work too? Double pressing the keyfob doesn't do anything. How do I configure all these? It's enabled in my car's settings. Please help a newbie out

 

[Anti_Climax]

You have to double press lock and THEN double press start.

If I remember right, a 2013 would have about 19kWh of available capacity when it was brand new. You can't really go by the range estimate, you'll want to monitor the trip meter while you drive if you don't have Forscan. More than a decade on your battery could be near dead or have years left depending on it's history. My 2012 had lost something like 25% of it's capacity when I bought it in 2016.

The battery has inline heaters that kick on when the coolant loop is under 40F. I believe it's three 300 watt elements. Once the motor has warmed up it's coolant enough, the car will cut that over and turn off those heaters. The cabin heater itself can pull up to 5kW, though that's not going to be continuous and is around a worst case. While you're running defog, the AC compressor will also be going and that can get up to like 3kW, but again not typical or constant.

Start with clearing a trip meter and making note of the kWh used at different SoCs to get an idea of capacity. You can also run a full charge and use a cleared trip to tabulate the total energy used to draw it to 0. When the meter hits 0% you have a 1kWh reserve if you want to run it down by driving, but you can also just park it in the driveway and run the heater on one side and the AC on the other to draw it down.

 

[ruiru]

Thank you for the reply! I drove it from full to empty and i calculated about 65miles total, which i'm pretty happy about since 16miles was on highway.
Any idea on how to upgrade the battery? Right now its fine for city driving but I would like to continue using this car for a few more years. I saw the upgraded 33kWh pack from ener-z. Will there be dealers who will swap the battery out for me? EV components looks more complicated than gas cars.
Overall, happy with this purchase!

 

[Frosty]

I didn't know Ford made electric cars. Was looking for an affordable EV and was deciding on a Nissan LEAF when I saw a 2013 Ford focus electric from a dealer. Fell in love with it when I test drove it and bought it for $3500 with plates and everything.
Here's the thing, right now it's fall and it's around 45 degrees Fahrenheit in my area. I know cold conditions affect EV more than gas cars, but when I drove 16 miles of highway with a full charge(showed 72 miles), the budget was -20 and I'm left with 38 miles! Battery dropped to 62% and I'm confused, does cold climate affect the battery that much? Or was my battery degraded that badly? I was on cruise control set to 55mph, no climate control at all.
Also, how does FordPass work? I registered my car using VIN and it just shows a picture of the car, no controls at all.
Oh, and apparently my remote start doesn't work too? Double pressing the keyfob doesn't do anything. How do I configure all these? It's enabled in my car's settings. Please help a newbie out

To maximize range use seat heaters instead of the cabin heater. Keep top speed under 60mph. You will get better range in stop and go (city driving) than you do on the highway because of recombinant braking. Use remote start to pre condition (pre-heat/cool) the cabin while still plugged in, it must be plugged in to 220v to use preconditioning, it will not precondition on a 110v charger. Resist the urge to romp on the go peddle, always keep it smooth and easy. Coast whenever you can, going downhill or in anticipation of red lights turning green.

 

[Anti_Climax]

ny idea on how to upgrade the battery? Right now its fine for city driving but I would like to continue using this car for a few more years. I saw the upgraded 33kWh pack from ener-z. Will there be dealers who will swap the battery out for me? EV components looks more complicated than gas cars.

Some folks may have info on what's necessary, but most of the pack swaps/upgrades were done by dealers under warranty. I do know the capacity info has to be changed in the BECM. Can't speak to what a dealer near you in willing to do, but the mechanics of a pack swap aren't difficult except for dealing with the weight. It requires a small engine hoist to remove the lower pack as it's like 400+ pounds.

 

[Heima]

Not to discourage anyone, but that Ener-z appears to just be a battery pack flipper. They pull the packs from junked cars, and then resell them. From their website, I see nothing about actual load testing, cell replacement, or any process of refurbishment. Yeah, the price is cheaper than a new or refurbished battery, but you are kind of on your own. The pack you get might be worse than the one you already have. I also see nothing about 23kW or 33kW packs.
Browsing around, the onboard charger they advertise that is for a 2012-2015 Tesla Model S 85, the photograph shows a charger pulled from a 2012-2014 RAV4 EV.
Sorry to be the wet sock.

 

[ruiru]

No problem Heima, thanks for letting me know about it. Better to know than to waste like $2000 to get a useless battery.
Just an update, I drove 55 miles with about 3% of battery remaining, in Washington terrains which is full of hills and whatnot in around 40 degrees faren. Puting them into chatGPT gave me about 16.5 kWh capacity. I'm not sure how accurate it is, but is 55 miles an "okay" range for a 11 year old car?

 

[Anti_Climax]

I wouldn't trust chatgpt to give an accurate estimate. It's best to get the raw kWh from the trip meter - that will give us a direct calculation of your capacity and your efficiency instead of estimating efficiency to estimate capacity.

It's important to note that degradation is continuous and unavoidable. It has a curve something like this:
Often the "end of life" for a battery is considered to be at 80% of the original capacity where the rate of degradation changes. They're still useful after that but with fairly constant usage, it translates to more frequent charge cycling and therefore faster degredation. That is to say 50 miles was about 60% of a cycle at the beginning and now it's nearly 100%.

Not sure what the cycle estimates from these cells actually are, but the curve shape itself should be similar and can give you an idea of how your range will continue to drop going forward. You could even use the current mileage to estimate how many cycles have been put on it and fit the curve to a proper scale. But you're almost certainly over that knee.

Pretty sure the amount of energy used to charge doesn't drop either, so you're still putting in the same amount (or more) and it's just getting lost a extra heat instead of getting stored.

 

[Dnland]

No problem Heima, thanks for letting me know about it. Better to know than to waste like $2000 to get a useless battery.
Just an update, I drove 55 miles with about 3% of battery remaining, in Washington terrains which is full of hills and whatnot in around 40 degrees faren. Puting them into chatGPT gave me about 16.5 kWh capacity. I'm not sure how accurate it is, but is 55 miles an "okay" range for a 11 year old car?

I've had 2 Focus FFEs, a 2014 that I've had since 2016 (90k miles) and my wife had a 2018 we bought new but unfortunately had a battery issue last year and Ford wound up buying it back under warranty rather than fixing.

Anyway, I think 55 miles on a 2013 is pretty good. I wouldn't expect much more than that. A battery "upgrade" to the 33kwh (2017-8) packs is possible but doubtful it's worth the time and cost.

A cheap/easy way to see approx what is the % loss of your battery would be to drain it down to 0%, and use something like a killawatt and charge it up to 100% on 120v and the killawatt can tell you how many kwh the battery charged. Mine even after 10 years is almost 90%.

 

[ruiru]

Thank you for the information! I noticed I'm still charging about 16-17kwh to full, but whenever i drive, the status seem to drop pretty quickly. I set the dashboard to the budget text with the average line. My line is always about 300wh but my "blue cup" is always there or below it. Whenever i drive, the usage line always go above the blue cup, hence status being negative. I'm just driving at 30-40mph but the line always goes to the top, not even sure why. I don't press the accelerator hard, but if i lightly press it, the line goes down but my speed goes down too, so its a lose-lose situation for me to always have negative status. Do you think its using more energy than usual, that's why the usage is always so high?

 

[Anti_Climax]

The line movement is based on short term power output (like 1 second) versus speed. If you're on level ground and at a constant speed, the line should be pretty steady. If it's not, something is misbehaving and I can't really speculate what. Honestly can't understand how the line would go down when you press the accelerator.

I wouldn't worry about the negative status, the car can give a basic average of recent power use but that has no bearing on what your actual power demands will be on a given drive. It's really only useful for folks that want to game-ify hypermiling. And since your efficiency can't continuously improve forever, you will eventually use more than the average. Doesn't mean anything.

 

[SteveTG]

I didn't know Ford made electric cars. Was looking for an affordable EV and was deciding on a Nissan LEAF when I saw a 2013 Ford focus electric from a dealer. Fell in love with it when I test drove it and bought it for $3500 with plates and everything.
Here's the thing, right now it's fall and it's around 45 degrees Fahrenheit in my area. I know cold conditions affect EV more than gas cars, but when I drove 16 miles of highway with a full charge(showed 72 miles), the budget was -20 and I'm left with 38 miles! Battery dropped to 62% and I'm confused, does cold climate affect the battery that much? Or was my battery degraded that badly? I was on cruise control set to 55mph, no climate control at all.
Also, how does FordPass work? I registered my car using VIN and it just shows a picture of the car, no controls at all.
Oh, and apparently my remote start doesn't work too? Double pressing the keyfob doesn't do anything. How do I configure all these? It's enabled in my car's settings. Please help a newbie out

That was pretty much my experience too. Got a focus electric on the cheap and am figuring it out. I don't think the cold conditions affect the battery life too much but if you have the electric heat going that will draw a lot of power from the battery.