low miles 2013 Energi only charges plug in battery to 50% capacity over half of the expected charging time ????

[patch7984]

I have a 2013 Cmax Energi plug in hybrid

I first bought it in like 2018

When I drove it home from the dealership I had 24 miles of range on the battery only

Every day / time I have charged the battery since the day I drove it home it has taken exactly half the amount of time a 120v is supposed to take and only charges to 12 miles but says 100% charged

I only get 12 miles of range, and I understand that the miles varies depending on the driving sometimes 11 or 13, but I am basically getting exactly half of what I'm supposed to be getting.

This cannot be coincidence, it must be correlation/causality because of something. 

This vehicle when I bought it only had 24000 total miles on it and 19000 of that was electric only driving

I now have 56000 miles on it and 33000 of that is electric only driving.  So it can't be that my battery is old, and odd that it would fail literally the next day after purchasing the vehicle

once again it only charges for 3 hours then says its full on 120v and I only get 12 miles not 24.

Some one said it is because I can only get the 24 miles if I have a 240v charger, but that doesn't make any sense to me and I have not seen that stated by ford anywhere.

Can some one please tell me why I am only getting this car to charge up to 50%?

[B Wells]

Same here! I have a 2014 Energi and have the same situation.  Used to get about 25 and now 13.   Ford told me it's all within specs.  

I guess that's specs of BS.

Question though - how do you know how many miles for electric vs gas?

[cr08]

On 2/26/2024 at 10:45 AM, B Wells said:

Same here! I have a 2014 Energi and have the same situation.  Used to get about 25 and now 13.   Ford told me it's all within specs.  

I guess that's specs of BS.

It's because on these early vehicles (ie: ANY C-Max or Fusion Hybrid/Energi up until the final model years before the new vehicles like the Escape/Maverick/Mach-E/Lightning/etc took over) they are not warrantied for any level of degradation. Per Ford's own legalese as long as the car drives, it's functioning as intended no matter how bad the battery is degraded.

 

It's not surprising seeing these low 'range' numbers on these early model years especially if they've been through a few owners and racked up the miles. If the car was just driven like a normal car in that time without any care taken towards the battery, this is what you can expect. The charge time the OP mentioned is also not unexpected as a result. My 2013 with around ~3.5kwh capacity remaining usually only takes about 4 hours at L1 for a full charge vs the original ~6 hours.

 

Ultimately Ford left some big loopholes in the programming of various systems in these vehicles allowing owners to easily degrade the battery if they just drive as-is. There are a number of voluntary precautions one can take to better manage it like not using EV mode on the highway, monitoring battery temp and keeping it in check, limiting power draw, etc.. (Now that I'm thinking about it, I don't think there's any concise list of recommended steps online that might be worth working on)

 

That all said, I'll use the same boilerplate response to these types of posts: The miles of range is merely an estimate or guess and can vary wildly depending on various conditions like previous driving behaviors, ambient temp, HVAC use, etc.. If you want an insight into the TRUE battery capacity remaining, the following test needs to be done:

 

1) Fully charge the car to 100%

2) Drive in EV mode only, avoiding anything that can start the ICE like highway driving or cabin heat usage. If the ICE starts during the trip, the test is immediately invalidated.

3) Drive until the plug-in charge is depleted and it drops back to hybrid operation.

4) Safely stop the car (or use one of the trip meters but make sure to reset it before this test) and shut it off. The trip summary will list the kwh used.

 

Brand new from the factory plug-in capacity is 5.5kwh. Above 4.0kwh is still in good territory.

Edited February 27 by cr08