Living with an electric horse - 2021 Mach-E Long Range AWD

Report from the first leg:

Kajsa begged to start driving, so I monitored range and consumption from the passenger seat. We started with 100% and soon came to the conclusion we probably could make it to the hotel with no extra charge. But barely.

So we took the planned dinner stop (well, gas station hot dogs) but the 50 kW charger was occupied by an ID4. We used the 22 kW to add 18 km during just over 30 minutes. The charger just started when plugged in. Not sure if it is connected to FordPass or just gives a free charge?

Then I drove the final stretch and ww got to the hotel with 25% and a bit more than 50 km to spare. Now the car is at a 22kW in the parking garage across the street. This one (another charging network) required the app to start it.

It has been around minus 20C all day but just an hour before we left it warmed up a few degrees. Along the road around minus 10-15C.

My wife says it has been a bit chilly in the back seat but tbh she is usually cold...otherwise, a flawless trip so far.

Tomorrow is a longer drive...

y'all are much more brave than I.

Love it - keep us posted in you wicked cold road trip.  

Quick update on the road - first DC charging with Ionity. Four stalls, one occupied by a Norwegian Audi eTron, one broken and the one I pulled up to had a broken screen. And seconds after a Golf stole the 4th.

The broken screen one would start with the Ionity App but that means I loose out on the discount. Not in a mood to handle that now so we just pay...

The over night charge was only 160 SEK for 80 kW so that weighs it up a bit.

Next stop will be lunch  ;-)

We made it :-) currently at MIL enjoying a Leffe Blonde.

The lunch stop was a bit complex. First try at the charger we had planned was derailed by an Audi that had "ICEd" the one spot beside the Kia that was charging. Second option was a McDonald's but that charger wouldn't start. Back to the first place that now had a 40-ish kW spot available. Soon after plugging in, the Kia left the quicker stall so we moved to that one. Then a 700 m walk into town and a nice Thai buffet. This ended up a perfect solution, better food and a good charge to a bit over 80%.

This meant just one more stop would suffice, if we could do it in the strategic place. But that's where the plan did not work. The quicker stalls were all very occupied. A slow 22kW charger and a cup of coffee...but we would need a stop in the next town too.

There the Christmas rush meant we had to use another slow stall to give us enough range to safely reach the target.

Overall, the trip was fine, bar the last stretch. Had we made a quick charger it would have been marginally slower that a normal ICE trip for us.

We made it with a bit over 50 km to spare. Good enough!

Gustaf

That trip's a worst-case scenario! Through a more remote area at a peak travel time with what sounds like some real maintenance problems with the chargers - and it's cold! Congrats for being willing to take the challenge.

How was the Mach E on the trip? Any comments on what it's like? 

I think it is quite clear that our infrastructure does not yet really support these kind of travels with electric cars for the masses. At least not during these kind of holidays. It's easy to say that it's not always this crowded but I think we need charging to cater also for high-volume scenarios.

The car works great! It's relaxing to drive, the seating position works for me and it mostly just, works... The lane keep assist is not great with snow on the roads so I generally turn that off. And I had to read up this morning on using the "intelligent" speed limiter that actually reduces speed when the car sees the signs. Not sure I would like that always though.

Now we need to find a place to charge nearby, since my MIL does not really have a useful outlet at home. There are a number of stations withing walking distance so I think we will be fine.

So an update now when we are back home again.

We topped up at two different stations close to my MIL, and that worked fine. Why two stations? The first one was a bit slow and we didn't have all plans set...

As we drove the 100 km over to my fathers house, we had a plan to stop at an Ionity station on the way there, just to make sure we would have enough to start the trip back home. But that place was crazy busy so we just drove on.

Instead we did a shopping trip to a mall with a large number of outlets but it turned out the advertised 22 kW places were mostly giving a lot less. So instead we stopped at a gas station on the way back to my dad, where there were 4 newly installed fast chargers. Then we took a walk to a grocery store while charging to around 85 % so we could head north the next day with at least 80%. That night we also plugged in the portable charger in a wall outlet just to get the preconditioning going.

On the way home we had better planned stops and it was only really the last stop that was a bit of an issue - to few chargers, one almost ICEd (but I scared off the poor kid in a Volvo). It was a long drive but also a bit reaxing with the charging stops. The last leg was around 270 kms and we made it in one go, that's better than I expected. We got home with over 30 km margin so it was fine.

The car still is mostly great apart frome phone as a key. That is NOT mature.

Fun thing; My brother surprised us as he showed up at my dads house in a new Tesla Model 3. Nice to be able to compare a bit. We both feel there are pros and cons with the different choices...

Gustaf

For new years eve (or rather the weekend) we took the ICE up to the camper in the mountains. We did not feel like chasing charging points at this time.

Coming back home, and checking in on the charger admin website I couldn't see the real time current measurement that the load balancer uses. I think I mentioned that our 3-phase (something that all houses here have, 3 phase 400V power) charger had a load balancer to make sure we don't blow fuses. It has worked fine in the sense that fuses have not blown, but I have not really been able to figure out the logic of it.

Anyway, the load balancer showed as "un-installed" so I sent a message to the charger customer service. They stated all looked OK on their side and asked me to contact the power company (where I bought the charger and installation). They couldn't really see anything wrong on their side but investigated further.

But now that I had a "contact" at the charger manufacturer I asked a bit more about how the load balancing part really works. To be fair, it is not really "balancing" the load, it's more a "load limiter". But I wanted to know how I could see when it was in fact limiting supply to the charger. While discussing this, the tech guy said that there was an installation error or two. Firstly, the charger itself was excluded from the load balancing (limiting) measurements. Secondly, the main fuse was set as 16A when in fact it is 20A.

As he changed this, the live current measurement on each phase also came alive.

Today was the first morning my wife was driving to work after this fix and I felt I wanted to monitor how it worked. Glad I did because now it seems that the load limiter shuts down the charger too often for it to pre-condition the car as it should.

So, if you can stand some electric ramblings...

This is a snapshot of the current use during a normal night. The cycling of the black and blue lines (phase 1 and 3) I think is the electric floor heating in the garage (plus the fridge and freezer in the kitchen is also on the black I think). I'm not really sure what is on the green line, except a couple of outlets in the garage. The main heat source for the house, an air-to-water heat pump uses all three phases. When the garage heat cycles "on" it draws around 13,5A on the black line and 8,5A on the green. 

Looking at the graphs from when we wake up, you can see that the kettle for the morning tea is also on the black phase;

The kettle maxes out at 2400W according to the label, so it can draw 10A on 240V.

If we now add the graph where the charger is shown...

This is from this morning, with departure time set at 6.55. Usually it then starts to pre-condition about an hour before that but you can se here (black lines) that is has done two "peaks" before giving some time "on" just before 7. I checked and during the "off" times, the load balancer does not allow any current to the charger (and the car says "charging station paused").

So now I get the feeling that the load balancer is acting a bit over-cautious. It seems to be set to never allow less than 8A to the charger, and that is my first thing to check - can it be set lower? Unfortunately it is not user-accessible as a setting. While 4-6A would not give good charging speeds it should allow pre-conditioning. 

A long term solution (possibly) is to replace the electrically heated floor in the garage with a simple heat pump (air to air) but I will also see if I can move some load around. The garage heat now has 3 different loops, one on each phase. Only two are "on" (been that way since we bought the house). I wonder if using two different ones or perhaps only one of them would be better. If I remove that heat load from the L3 phase I might get more head room. But OTOH, if it just moves to L2 I am likely back in the same boat. 

This worked great before the change but I guess we were at risk of blowing fuses back then since it was not un-common to see loads over 20A on one phase for 10-15 minutes.

Gustaf

So your tea kettle draws more power then my MIG welder.

I guess so... ;-)

During the day I have tried to switch off one of the heating loops in the garage and I rigged some thermometers to log the temperature. With around -12 C outside it struggles to keep +10 C  inside so that does not look like a viable solution (I need to be sure stuff doesn't freeze at -30 C outside!). I will let it run for another hour or so and then probably try using the loop that used to be off. It now seems it was the "black L3" phase loop I switched off - the one that had the most load before. So it might be wise to keep that off. I also just realized that I should use my infrared thermometer to check what part of the floor is warmer now.

But I also got a reply from the charger tech guy that 6A is possible as the low limit so we will also try that. 

Gustaf

I am not an electrician, but your load balancer seems really conservative. What's the service to your house?

Depending on how it's built, insulating the garage may be more effective than changing the heat type. 

I find it a bit conservative too, yes.

The main service is 3x20A, and as I understand it the load balancer will not allow the charger to use more current than what makes any phase reach 20A.  If there is a "base" load of say 8A the load balancer can give the charger 12A, but when the other loads increase the allowance for the charger goes down. If I start the kettle and add 10A there is only room for 2A for the charger.

While checking on the garage heat yesterday I saw that the thermostat was set at 10 degrees, not the 12-14 that I usually have. I will try today again to shut off one loop and see how it handles -22 C. The garage is insulated although not very well - it is a garage "kit" from the 1980's. But I would say it has at least 50-60 mm of insulation.

Now with 6A as the lower limit the charger is "on" more so it seems a bit promising. But I still think we will upgrade to a heat pump in the garage during the summer so we are in a better position next winter.

For the last weeks I have tried using one of the heating loops in the garage floor together with a 750W simple electric heater and it seems to work pretty good. But we need to learn not to start the dishwasher or something just as we intend to leave...that will shut down the charger and leave us with no preconditioning. It's just a case of using the delayed start features more.

This weekend we made a short roadtrip again, this time to the camper in the mountains. It was partly triggered by forecasts of rain of icy roads (that's a recipe for slippery roads) and the Kuga does not have studded winter tyres - the Mach-E does. Partly the other trigger was a decision to leave work early on Friday - we would have plenty of time for charging on the road - there are basically 3 fast outlets in Arvidsjaur, 100 km before our goal.

So we boosted to 100% charge and set off. It was just around 0 as we left but soon we had around minus 10C and in Arvidsjaur, at the charge stop, it was minus 12.  As usual, an ID4 was charging when we came but had left enough space for us too (the gas station where the charger is is partly blocked by a wrecked roof).  We had 64% when we started and left at 78% after 35 minutes. That's not the advertised 150 kW... We set off and immediately after leaving Arvidsjaur the temperature dropped 10 degrees, now it varied between minus 20 and 22 C. I was happy that we stopped to add some extra juice, and we arrived with 47% after the last climb up the mountain. I had aimed for 50% to be sure to make it back to the charger on the way home.

On Saturday I decided to try plugging in the portable charger when we were out skiing, to see what would happen. I switched off the heat in the camper and it worked fine. So I decided to try with just 1 kW of electric heat on - we have propane as a backup heat source if need be. It turned out pretty well, so we decided to do a slow overnight charge with the aim to be able to drive all the way home (that is 220-240 km depending on what source you trust).

After a total of 17 hours on the slow 230 V charger we had 90% as we rolled down the mountain again. Now it was warmer, around 0, and it is mostly downhill so we got home at 27% or around 80 km according to the GOM.

This was a good test because now I am confident that we can make this trip electrically as long as it is not extremely cold. I still think it is wise to top up in Arvidsjaur on the way up (this time we had a well needed sandwich at that stop) but it's probably not really necessary. But if we don't, we need to charge both nights. 

I have tried to compare the energy use with driving the Kuga. If my calculations are correct we used around 115 kWh on this trip. The Kuga would have used around 31 litres of diesel, and I calculate that to be around 308 kWh. That's a rather big difference...

Gustaf

About charge speeds - the 150 kW is a maximum, with the battery in a certain stage of charge and fully warmed up. Usually, the maximum charge speed drops off as the battery fills and it's by far the slowest for the last 20%. 

For example, here's the maximum charge rate vs stage of charge for a Model 3 (sorry, I don't have this chart for the Ford). That's also assuming your charger isn't sharing power with another one, sometimes they can be wired so a pair of chargers only has 150 kW to share between them. 

Yep, I know and didn't explain well, the graph is very telling and more disappointing for a Mach-E unless it has one of the later firmware upgrades.

But when I unplugged at 78% and we were single on the charger I think it indicated 21 kW and that checks out with the receipt that says 13,54 kWh in 36 minutes.

It may well be as you say, the 150 kW is shared (I think so) and then it might take some time to ramp up when one leaves - and maybe the car does not allow it when it is that close to 80%.

The upside is that it will probably possibly get better next time :-)

It might also be worth considering the lone 50 kW charger a block or two away. If that actually gives say 40 kW it might charge faster...

Gustaf

What is the amperage difference from your home charger to your mobile? 

Im getting a lighting and ford is pushing their home charger that's 80 amps. The charger nets you 30 miles a hour.

Appears that with just a normal welder 50 amp outlet I can get 20 miles a hour back.

doesn't appear that it makes sense to install fords proprietary charger unless I want the home backup feature 

The mobile charger that Ford supplies in Europe comes with two different wall connectors. One is a larger CEE plug (rated at 32A I think), the other is a standard Shuko at 16A. The Shuko is our standard wall connectors, the larger CEE is practically non-existent here (we do have smaller 16A versions for example for the camper).

In practice, it is a max of 16A and on 230 V that's theoretically 3,68 kW max. 

The home charger is a 3 phase 400V that is supplied with 3x16A and that can supply 11 kW.

If I just compare the latest charge logs of similar %, the "travel charger" gave 38% over 15,5 hours or 2,45%/hour while the home charger did 30% over 4,3 hours - almost 7%/hour.  Comparing "miles per hour" is hard since the temperatures were different (and thus range estimates differ). But the home charging gave 12 km/hour or 7,4 mph.

When looking at these figures we also need to take into account that the home charger has the load balancing function, that varies the allowed amps between 6A and 16A per phase. In the winter time I don't expect 16A to be available - the heat and other things means one of the phases "never" drop below 5-5,5A so in reality there is maybe 12-14A available. 

This is also the reason to have the wall mounted home charger with load balancer - it means we can make the most out of the amps we have available. A 3-phase charger also loads the house in a more even way.

Of course there are some differences in different countries - here in Sweden where basically all houses have a 3 phase 400 V grid connection I think the choice is easy. Other countries may have other situations so I think it is wise to look at your conditions. One thing to consider though is what kind of data you can get from the charger. The Ford supplied travel charger is pretty much numb. I have no idea of how many amps it draws and I only have access to the logs from FordPass.

My home charger with the load balancer can provide more detailed reports of all charging sessions, it gives a view of the entire house amps draw and I can also control the charger remotely (for example, switch it off when on vacation but open it if a friend needs an emergency charge at our house).

Gustaf

It is soon 4 months with this horse, time flies...

The Mach-E still performs car tasks fine, of course. The last few weeks I have had a number of occasions when I have driven the Kuga instead and it is interesting to note some differences. I don´t remember the Powershift gearbox being so harsh but I also kind of enjoy the response from the turbo diesel - something I thought I´d never say. Probably because I drive the Mach-E in Whisper mode. Active is perhaps the one to choose as winter eventually goes away.

One thing is nagging though, that is FordPass and its (lack of) performance and stability. The app itself is annoyingly slow most of the time but recently Fords servers have also been acting up. That means you can´t change things like departure times from the app. That is really a problem the way we use this car, especially now in the winter time. Pre-heating is, if not necessary, at least one of the main upsides of running a new(ish) car in our cold. It has failed a couple of mornings, but the problem is we can´t re-program departure times from a distance at work. My job is a 10-15 minute walk from the car, and Mrs Therealpinto while closer still is a block away. This is the one thing that Ford really need to work on.

If they start delivering F150 Lightnings in large numbers the app and servers really ought to be "built Ford tough".

Gustaf

 

here in Sweden where basically all houses have a 3 phase 400 V grid connection

Man, I wish.  I can only imagine the glorious cnc machines I would plug into that.

Thanks for documenting your experiences.  This is a pretty neat car and I like hearing how it does in a cold climate.

Yes, the 3 phase is nice. too bad my garage is too small to fit machines (and my lot is too small to build a "real" workshop).

At least I get to have a 3 phase welder and 3 phase compressor.

FordPass is getting updated, in Europe on Android we now have 4.11 available but it is reported as buggy, so I think I'll wait for the 4.12 that is just released in the US. For now departure times work again on 4.10 at least.

Gustaf

Months go by...and the miles.

We have passed 16 000 kilometers or 10 000 miles some time ago and the electric horse has really become en everyday fact of life.

During the summer we sort of repeated the first long drive, going to central Sweden again (Stockholm region). This time with no sleeping break on either way and with more routine on charging stops. Since Tesla has opened up some Superchargers in Sweden, we tried that once. Apart from the charge port in the wrong place it was smooth.

Especially the trip back home was perfectly planned with well timed charge stops, one for morning coffee, one for lunch and one for afternoon coffee. I can´t really say we lost a minute compared to driving the ICE for that 10 hr trip.

The other week I had a quick customer appointment 250-ish kilometers away and that means a charge stop somewhere is needed. Since I couldn´t count on charging at my customer and I wasn´t sure on the timing I took the Kuga. As it turned out, we finished just before lunch so I sat looking at an empty fast charger while eating my burger. And then I had to stop on the way home to refuel the Kuga. What a waste of 10 minutes! ;-)

As we speak, the pony is at the dealer for the long awaited updates - the general one (21P22 I think), main contactor welding one and getting a second keyfob. But...there seems to be an issue with the frunk remote opening. I was given a Kuga PHEV loaner (Escape for you guys I guess) and now it seems I´ll be driving it home today too. It´s a nice car though. If only it had real AWD and could tow the car trailer I´d be tempted to swap out the diesel Kuga too.

Gustaf

OK, if anybody cares ;-)

We are still driving the PHEV loaner. The cable our dealer/service center ordered to fix the update was apparently the wrong brand (???), new one is on order but if that doesn't work, the say they have to swap the entire Sync 4 unit. No time estimate on that.

I'm starting to hope it really will be much updated when we eventually get it back. I mean, the only "issue" we had was an erratic PAAK (and only one keyfob). The 22S41 high voltage contactor welding is a "possible" issue and of course I want that fixed before we are stranded. But...we have now been without the pony for a week and we are starting to miss it.

The real bonus would be if they can magically update it to the advertised MY2023 1500 kg tow weight but I doubt that. Although it would mean I have to update my drivers licence it would be sweet since that means we can, sort of, tow the camper...

Gustaf

It's my understanding that the high voltage contactor welding only comes from really serious abuse, but of course that's what people often do when they first get in an EV for the first time :) 

I wonder what changed with the tow rating?

I feel that we are quite nice to this one, it is in Whisper mode all the time and I rarely use full acceleration. That said, Kajsa has her driving test in a few weeks time and then she might be out on her own...but maybe with a limited key ;-)

I have seen no information on what changed with the tow rating - I have feeling it is software if anything at all - more a market adjustment since more and more competitors are rating their EVs for towing and as we in Europe use braked trailers we are used to having one car that will tow. "Nobody" has a truck or pickup just for towing and hauling loads.

Gustaf