TankII Posted April 8, 2022 Report Share Posted April 8, 2022 So, the Energi has a much higher quality air-cooled battery (According to Ford) than the competition. My care and feeding has been: If outside temp is below 80 F (or below 75 F with high humidity), then normal Level-2 charging anytime is fine. If the temp is above 80 F or 75 F with high humidity, I will either defer charging for an hour after driving to let the battery de-stress, or switch to Level-1 charging if doing lots of driving. Otherwise, I switch to night-only charging during summer months. Both mine and my daughter's Energi's are around 75K miles. I generally use my battery on my way home, which is a long uphill stretch so the battery mileage is always around 11 miles. If I reset it for trips that are not long hills and highway, I'm back up around the 20 mile mark. I was looking at Ford's Escape battery pack as an optional upgrade. Ford claims it is a Suitcase-sized unit (so I would guess around the same dimensions) with 14KWH capacity. Assuming the existing fan cooling is switched to a glycol system with a small radiator, pump, and fan using the existing sensors and fan power leads via relays, I don't see why it wouldn't work though the mini radiator and fan will likely have to have custom ducting made/molded. Does anyone have any specs on the new battery system? Has anyone come up with alternative higher-density liquid-cooled setups on their own? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fbov Posted April 9, 2022 Report Share Posted April 9, 2022 On 4/8/2022 at 4:35 PM, TankII said: I was looking at Ford's Escape battery pack as an optional upgrade. Why? Your life is holding well! The biggest issue is that the HVB is matched to an inverter/converter system tailored to the HVB voltage. It's a smaller battery, running at lower voltage than C-Max, but with water cooling that allows much more aggressive charging/discharging. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TankII Posted April 18, 2022 Author Report Share Posted April 18, 2022 I'm thinking of the future. I keep cars for 20+ years these days, so a future upgrade would be nice. The main concern I have is external temperature and the effect it has. The Pacifica is gets 30 miles on battery (unless it is really, really cold out) of its battery if I pre-warm the car. The C-Max - 11 miles best, if at the same temperature and pre-warmed. 8 miles if driven cold. It would be nice to get 20-30 miles when cold out and be less impacted by temperature overall. I understand it is designed for more aggressive discharge/recharging - so is the Pacifica. And that would limit energy recovery when driving on the hills around here. If there was a kit that used the Panasonic 4680 cells or similar, kept the voltage the same as existing, but with higher density it would probably work well as they are slower discharge/recharge units. In optimal weather, I can drive to my old job (No A/C or Heat, mostly downhill) on a full charge or run Hybrid mode to work, then drive back and have the last five miles on battery. When I do run errands, I'm out for a couple hours easy, and having 14KW would cut my gas use by another 25%. My Highway driving is for 2-4 hours (sometimes 12), so I wouldn't expect any benefit there. I do have to rust-proof the frame and suspension this spring if I want to see that 20+ years I hope for. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ptjones Posted April 18, 2022 Report Share Posted April 18, 2022 The CMAX has a smaller HVB and new ones had a range of 21 miles. Paul Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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