New Energi owner, looking for do's and don'ts

[harmanrk]

Just purchased a 2016 Energi, and so far am really happy with it.  I'm looking for hints, or tips on how to get the most out of the car, without damaging anything.

 

MY wife's commute to work is a few miles on city streets to the highway, then about 10 miles on the highway, and finally a few miles on city streets to her office.  WE have found that by plugging the car in overnight to charge (level 1) the battery, she can use EV now to the highway, then EV later while on the highway, and then switch to EV now for the final drive to the office.  She is able to reverse the steps on the way home, and parks in the garage with a few (4 today) miles of EV range left.  We then plug the car in, to prep for evening errands, before pluging it in overnight to start the process over.  This is great, and the mileage numbers are wonderful, but I am concerned in what I have read if this will have a long term impact on the HVB?

 

Is this a driving habit that will lead to degradation?

 

Are their areas of this usage profile that we should revise?

 

Thank for any information you can provide.

[fbov]

The resource you want is batteryuniversity.com.  Where do you live?

 

The key life stressors are heat and high SOC. Heat during use is under your control; lower power demands run cooler, so your strategy of EV on side streets, ICE on the highway is sensible. Charging at level 1 is also sensible. Heat during storage may depend more on where you live than anything else. 

 

And heat sensitivity increases with SOC; storing a fully charged Li-ion battery at high temperature is the worst case. Someone living in Arizona who stores the car plugged-in in an unventilated garage,  but only drives every other day, will see high, permanent range loss. Someone living in Minnesota will  lose range every winter, due to electric heat, recovering in temperate seasons.  

 

HAve fun,

Frank

[harmanrk]

Thank you, I will check out that link.

 

Can you expand on what is SOC?

 

I live in Michigan, so high temps are only a concern a few months a year (and realistically our 90 degree days are not as bad as the Southwest).  This week, the heated seats and electric heat are getting used.

[plus 3 golfer]

It's too bad the administrators of this forum and the equivalent (currently shutdown) C-Max Energi forum haven't merged the Energi forum as was supposedly planned into this forum yet so Energi owners can comment. You can also post your questions about how to best operate your Energi on the fordfusionenergi.com forum.

 

IMO, first you should assess how much usable energy (kWh not miles) is currently available for EV only operation on a full charge.  This will give you a base reference as to how much capacity the HVB has lost and a reference to measure how much capacity fade (HVB degradation) you will experience over time.  When new the HVB has a capacity of around 7.6 kWh with about 5.6 kWh available for EV only operation which would include use of the HVB for all electric power used in the car.  For example, in the winter many Energi owners will not use the heater as it's electric until the gas engine (ICE) has been run so that the engine cooling system can supply heat to the cabin.  Some simply never turn the heat on and just use the driver seat heater.   Thus, in the first mile or two one might want to run ICE before switching to EV.   

 

In addition, every time you discharge / charge the HVB, the HVB looses a little bit of capacity.  So, you might want to use ICE more than you are currently doing or you might want to not charge the HVB to full capacity but only to the amount normally used every day.  In your example, your wife arrives home with 4 miles of EV capacity left.  Thus, rather than charge to full everyday, you might consider charging only to XX% everyday not 100%.  Problem though, as I understand, there no way to automatically set an XX% charge level.

 

SOC = state of charge expressed as a %.  So, when new and fully charged, the SOC = 100% or the HVB capacity is charged to 7.6 kWh.  Over time, the HVB loses capacity.  If after several years, the HVB has lost 1.9 kWh, the maximum SOC of the degraded battery would be 75%.  
 

You cannot directly read SOC of the HVB unless one has a scanner to connect to the OBDII diagnostic port.  So, one can monitor SOC, HVB temperature, and other variables while driving so that one can operate the car to mitigate battery degradation. Most owners don’t do this but those that do have minimized battery degradation.  

 

 

 

Edited March 4, 2020 by Plus 3 Golfer

[fbov]

3 hours ago, harmanrk said:

I live in Michigan...

So heat is less an issue. And you're level 1 charging overnight, using a mix of EV/ICE, and not discharging too deeply. Hard to do better....

Frank

[plus 3 golfer]

On 3/3/2020 at 6:05 PM, harmanrk said:

Thank you, I will check out that link.

 

Can you expand on what is SOC?

 

I live in Michigan, so high temps are only a concern a few months a year (and realistically our 90 degree days are not as bad as the Southwest).  This week, the heated seats and electric heat are getting used.

Living in Michigan does not necessarily get you off the “hook”.

 

The HVB is cooled by cabin air being circulated through the HVB.  The HVB can heat up quickly when using EV and especially during regeneration when driving. So, HVB temperature is fairly independent of ambient temp when driving assuming cabin temp in winter and summer are very similar.  So, the key is to keep power demand and generation moderate when driving.  This is why owners monitor HVB temperature when driving. 
 

Also, when the car is being charged at night, some owners wait until their garage cools to charge since during charging, air is drawn through the cabin and HVB by the HVB cooling fan and the hot air is expelled into the garage.  Although living in MIchigan and L1 charging will mitigate this with cooler garage, you still need to be vigilant when charging.

 

There is an Energi owner on the C-Max Energi forum named Raja who lives in Massachusetts and has many great posts on how to treat your HVB to mitigate capacity fade.  IIRC,  when he owned his 2013 Energi (before it was totaled), he was not vigilant and learning and suffered capacity fade (don’t recall the numbers).  He replaced it with a 2017, IIRC.  And now his capacity fade is minimal compared to his 2013.  
 

The number of times one discharges and recharges (cycles) the HVB and the depth of the discharge from 100% also affects capacity fade.  So, assume you charge to 100% and your depth of discharge is 60% (down to 40%) and you still have 4 miles of EV only charge left before you recharge to 100%.   If you only charge to 90 % and then discharge to 30 %, depth of discharge is still 60%.   But charging only to 90% will significantly reduce capacity fade over time and increase the number times you can cycle the HVB before reaching the same capacity fade. There are charts on Battery University about this.

 

 

 

 

[bookemdano]

The worst part of this forum debacle is that Raja's posts are gone, and apparently he doesn't intend to re-join this forum to continue to post his expertise. When I first got my 2017 Energi last August his posts were so helpful in learning the idiosyncrasies of this vehicle. I wish I had saved a bunch of them, even for my own reference.

 

[Billyk24]

No kidding, Raja's post were excellent and he worked in and had an education in the field.   The new Energi Michigan owner needs to obtain a third party hardware device to monitor items such as HVB temperature, SOC, amps and other.   It would go a long way to helping understand how the car operates and how to drive it without causing excess battery degradation.,