cr08 Posted September 30, 2022 Report Share Posted September 30, 2022 (edited) Doing some research on other topics and came across this thread in the Forscan forums: BECM Configuration - FORScan forum The short summary being that they are discussing modifying the battery age counter for the HVB to try and affect the reported battery capacity. As backstory: It has already been sufficiently documented that this is also a thing on the first gen (2010-2012) Fusion Hybrid's with the NiMH based packs and has actually worked for them. In this case the assumption is Ford, under an abundance of caution, put some artificial age based limits in their programming and a lot of those vehicles still had good batteries that were otherwise hampered purely in software after reaching a certain age. Now that's for NiMH chemistry packs which are a COMPLETELY different beast from our current Li-ion based batteries. As a result, I am personally hesitant to put any belief in this really doing anything meaningful given we don't really have to worry about things like the memory effect or regular reconditioning by the BECM to help with said memory effect. But I found the thread intriguing and figured I'd share. I'm interested as a 2013 Energi owner with about 3.7-3.9kwh left in my HVB but I'm very hesitant to mess with this so I'll just leave this here for others to potentially guinea pig if they're adventurous enough. ? Edited September 30, 2022 by cr08 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cr08 Posted December 9, 2022 Author Report Share Posted December 9, 2022 Looks like a new reply to the thread with some updated data has been posted. Not terribly conclusive unfortunately so I'm personally still a bit wary of this change, especially these being Li-Ion based batteries and being particularly picky with how they are handled. But if you want to believe the posted results, changing the battery age does seem to have the potential to increase available battery capacity. YMMV. I'd be very interested in seeing if anyone else attempts this and can post more concrete findings (such as the proper battery capacity test which it seems hasn't been done in the linked thread). Unfortunately this being my daily driver I am VERY wary of messing with the programming for a key part of the vehicle that could potentially brick it and rack up a multi-thousand dollar repair. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jzchen Posted December 12, 2022 Report Share Posted December 12, 2022 I agree, not worth the risk to a DD. That's great to know if one is to replace their battery with a new one, kind of like how it is with the 12V. Thanks for sharing this find! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cr08 Posted December 13, 2022 Author Report Share Posted December 13, 2022 On 12/12/2022 at 11:42 AM, jzchen said: I agree, not worth the risk to a DD. That's great to know if one is to replace their battery with a new one, kind of like how it is with the 12V. Thanks for sharing this find! The one thing that makes me curious about this, bouncing off your comment on doing it when replacing the battery: With the older NiMH based Fusion hybrids (2010-2012) had been found to have a hard artificial time limit that severely reduced the usable capacity of the battery and rolling back the clock on these has been well documented to bring them back to being usable again. My memory's a bit fuzzy but I think this even got documented on Ford's end too. So it would be interesting to see if there's any correlation with our newer vehicles as well. I'm gonna see if maybe I can do up some survey/form for people to fill out some good details to compare against like model (C-Max or Fusion), model year, manufacture date, mileage, tested battery capacity, etc.. Just to satisfy my own curiosity. jzchen 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jzchen Posted December 14, 2022 Report Share Posted December 14, 2022 That makes complete sense from a Ford warranty standpoint. I remember reading in our C-MAX manual how Ford does not warranty against normal battery degradation. So slowly automatically diminish capacity to prevent possible errors, (which to my understanding is covered). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cr08 Posted December 14, 2022 Author Report Share Posted December 14, 2022 Ok. Got a form set up. I'm hoping I got all the useful data in here. If anyone has suggestions for other data points to add, let me know. I think for the sake of correlating battery capacity to age/mileage this is sufficient. Feel free to share this around. I'm gonna post this over on the FB Energi group, the Fusion Energi forums, and also the C-Max subreddit as those I have immediate access to. https://forms.gle/HkxTZ3Eoqi83r8xW9 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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