-20F (-29C) Range

Since we’ve had two days of about -20F (-29C) where I live now, I thought I’d check and see what kind of range decrease I can expect there. Most of the winter range tests available don’t go anywhere near this cold.

My commute to work is 12 miles. About two of those are 30mph and the rest 60mph country roads. On a typical spring/summer day, I get about 2.7-2.8 miles/kWh. For the past two days, I’ve got 1.6. 2023 Mach-E GT, driven in OPD in Whisper mode.

That’s a 40% decrease.

Also the car is unable to maintain cabin and battery heat. At home, it is parked in an unheated, uninsulated garage around 0F and plugged into a 120V 15A outlet. At work, it’s parked outside and plugged into a 8.6kW AC charger. Departure times are set and the car is preconditioned about 5 minutes before I leave. When I leave, the power meter shows no restrictions, but about 10 minutes into the drive, I’m down to about 2/3 power.

The car also doesn’t seem to want to charge at -20F. Both yesterday and today when I arrived at work I plugged the car in, but it does not start charging. Yesterday it worked immediately when I unplugged and plugged it back in at noon when it was sunny and about -10. I’ll try that again today. I’m unsure if this is related to the car or the charger.

You have a short drive. The range reduction will seem worse compared to if you had a longer drive. It always uses a lot more power at first as further into a longer drive the climate use usually goes down a bit. Although that’s quite cold so it may not taper down much unless the sun is out.

You must have a pre 2023.5 model? They changed how it warms the battery and increased the coolant heater size after 2023.5. It’s unfortunate they kind of messed that up originally but at least they took steps to correct going forward and hopefully learned their lesson.

@MikeMustangFan
Not sure if it’s a 23.5 or 23. How can I tell?

Car was leased in April of 2024 and had been on their lot since December of 23 or so.

Rowe said:
@MikeMustangFan
Not sure if it’s a 23.5 or 23. How can I tell?

Car was leased in April of 2024 and had been on their lot since December of 23 or so.

I bought mine around the same time. Mine was built in November 2023.

I believe the build date is inside the door on the sticker with the tire pressures etc. Anything including or after 07/2023. (Maybe even some 06/2023)

What year is your car? I have a '23 and find the same thing. Anything below about -15C is where it starts to struggle at highway speeds. As I understand it, the '23s and prior have a 5kw heater. The '24s and up have a 7kw heater. 40% extra heat is a big jump, but it will also be a decent hit to range. The '25s have a heat pump too, but that won’t help in those temps.

So that being said, if you only have a 15a charger, it won’t even be able to run the heater at full rate, much less charge the battery.

@Nuri
It’s a '23, unsure if 23.5 or earlier though.

Charging is primarily done at work where I have a free 8.6kW charger, I usually get home with ~75% battery remaining and plug in so it can precondition the car better than just off of battery.

@Rowe
That’s a great way of doing it. It doesn’t get quite that cold here so I can’t test beyond about -20C at night here. But it should have any issues charging at that temp. The only thing that ‘might’ apply could be if it warmed the battery before charging.

@Nuri
2023.5 and up is when it changed. Additionally, my 2023.5 when I’m driving just seems to use excess heat from the inverter and motor to slowly warm the battery up. (Unless heading to a fast charger, then it uses the coolant heater as well). I was driving in -15 yesterday and did multiple fast charges after highway and city driving. I never had any heat supply issues.

@MikeMustangFan
How are you able to tell how much load is on the heater? One of my biggest complaints about my MME is the lack of info and gauges. Sure would be nice to know if the inverter and motors are heating or being heated. Same with the battery.

@Nuri
It takes a little fiddling with an app, but you can get a Bluetooth OBDII reader, and use an app on your phone. I have an iPhone and use ‘carscanner’ app. It has a CarPlay app even so I can view the data easily on the large screen while driving.

Among other things, I can see the temps of the motor, coolant, battery, battery inlet etc., and power draw for the car as a whole, and the coolant heater specifically. It even shows what ‘mode’ the battery is running in. Either ‘EQ’ mode which seems to take motor and inverter heat as I mentioned, or ‘heat’ mode which uses the coolant heater to heat the battery.

There is information on Mach E forum about setting it up, the OBD reader isn’t very expensive.

@MikeMustangFan
I keep thinking about buying an obd reader. Just seems like something Ford really should have thought about. Every other EV on the market has all kinds of visuals to see where the energy is going. We get… nothing.

I’ve had zero issues charging on both a regular 110v outlet and 10kw 220v charger at home. I have been through numerous -30C days this year and even when plugged in at home on my good charger and preconditioning done, I can expect a 1/3 loss in range roughly (I drive 90% highway) and if I am on 110v I can expect a range loss of 2/3 since it will not heat the battery or cabin at all. I’ve noticed my cabin temp preconditioning very much lacking at my home charger on these -30C days in which when set to warm, it feels like it’s maybe 10C inside; I’m guessing it is dedicating most of the preconditioning to warming the battery vs the cabin itself. And I have zero charging restrictions since power is only 0.09 CAD per kW. I’m a bit miffed by this but not overly bothered.

@Thorn
I expect the charging issues are related to the charger. The company that made them does not have the best reputation.

Preconditioning with a 120-volt power will not work.

If the heater is 5kw it would pull 41.7 amps to function with 120-volt power.

Zya said:
Preconditioning with a 120-volt power will not work.

If the heater is 5kw it would pull 41.7 amps to function with 120-volt power.

It does work, at least to some degree. My garage is about 0F right now, and the car sitting at 0F not plugged into anything would usually start having restricted power. With it plugged into a 120V outlet overnight, I have no power restrictions when I leave in the morning.

If the heater is 5kw it would pull 41.7 amps to function with 120-volt power.

5kW is the maximum power of the heater. It can very easily run at reduced power.

@Rowe
My Mach-E is set to 6 am departure, The car starts the preconditioning at 5:14 am pulling 6.5 kW using a total of 5.66 kWh. This is with a 34F temperature.

It will use battery power to heat the inside of the car with 120-volt power and use battery storage to make up for the power need to preheat the inside of the car, but it will not precondition the battery.

Your 120-volt power has about 1.5kW available for running a 5kWh heater.

Are you located in Michigan?

Kitt said:
Are you located in Michigan?

Minnesota

I’m in Chicago. My commute typically uses 7-8% of my battery one way. In today’s -8F/feels like -18, it used 10-11%. I park my car outside in the driveway and precondition before departure.

I am looking to get a Mach-E and live in South Dakota. My question is… since I don’t have a charger at work, will the battery run out sitting in the cold at the office on these -20F days?