Hi new owner.

Just bought a 2014 ffe about two months ago. Pretty happy with it so far. Been lucky enough to only have to drive it in nice weather. Curious what sort of range reductions people see when they have to use heat or ac and windows defroster. Any responses would be appreciated

To my knowledge, the way the Guess-O-Meter (range indicator) works, is when you turn on climate control, the new range displayed is what you would get if you keep the climate control on the whole time. The weather has been in the triple digits out here lately, and I see the range drop 40 miles on a full charge for my 2017 with the larger battery. 120 to 80. Thats one third. So for the smaller battery, I would think a drop of 1/3 would be about 78 to 53 miles?

As you consume battery, the mileage drop decreases, and I think that if you had AC on, that as the car cools down and uses the compressor less, then the mile drop would also decrease. Same if the ambient air wasn't as hot.

Another effect I've noticed is that if you start off on a fairly warm to hot day not using the A/C and then decide to turn it on, say for highway driving, that the reduction in range is less than expected. I've turned on the A/C in this circumstance and only seen about a 10-15 km reduction in range compared to 30-40.

Part of this may be due to the cabin not being as hot as it was sitting in the sun locked up, but I also believe that the A/C compressor may already be on to help with cooling the battery and motor, so the added load of cooling the cabin is not as great a difference.

If it’s in the 90s and my car has been plugged in for any reasonable amount of time, I can count on having NO a/c for the rest of the day. :-(

Brocktoon said:

If it’s in the 90s and my car has been plugged in for any reasonable amount of time, I can count on having NO a/c for the rest of the day. :-(

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That sounds like you have a full failure. This time of year I'll get in and have the battery heat soaked to 115F or more and still get AC in 10 to 15 min at most.

When my coolant diverter was broken, the battery would not cool at all, which would keep the AC locked to the chiller block instead of the cabin evaporator.

Anti_Climax said:

That sounds like you have a full failure. This time of year I'll get in and have the battery heat soaked to 115F or more and still get AC in 10 to 15 min at most.

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This means that you have to wait until you get cool air? Mine always instantly blow cold.

I have poor 2014 23kwh FFE and i have installed heated front window, so i dont need to use blower heater in winter. Yes, it is cold to drive, but at least i get my range. I can not even think about turning on heater. We have cold winters in Lithuania (-4 farenheit at times).

On summer on the other hand i can always use A/C without significant range drops.

Anti_Climax said:

That sounds like you have a full failure. This time of year I'll get in and have the battery heat soaked to 115F or more and still get AC in 10 to 15 min at most.

When my coolant diverter was broken, the battery would not cool at all, which would keep the AC locked to the chiller block instead of the cabin evaporator.

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Thanks. Yesterday it was pushing 100 degrees here. Because the car had not been plugged in overnight and was parked in the garage, I was able to use the a/c all day when I drove with no problems.

If my car had been in the garage but plugged in and charging, I would have had no a/c for the rest of the day’s.

Can you clarify what “full failure” means in your reply when my a/c works, just not after the vehicle has been plugged in and charging?

Full failure in that something is literally broken with the battery cooling.

There is a loop that goes Diverter, chiller, pump, filter, on-board charger, battery heater, battery, return.

The diverter allows the coolant return to either go right back in through the chiller or dump out to the rest of the system and bypass the chiller on the way back in. Depending on the outside temp the vehicle will use the radiator to drop the temp instead of using power and running the AC compressor to cool.

During charging, the on-board charger is dumping heat into that loop along with any battery warming. Because my diverter failed in the position that bypassed the chiller, the loop would heat, get past the temp where the radiator can't get it cool (most of the time in AZ) and the car would start running the chiller, which was still being bypassed. Even better, the AC would be pulling several kW from the wall, which had to go through the on-board charger which was dumping MORE heat into that same loop.

If you suspect you have a similar failure, you may be able to test. There are bubble tubes that connect to the coolant reservoir and during normal operation they will dribble a small amount while the pumps are running. Since the bubble tube is behind the pump, you can set the diverter to go through the chiller and ramp up the pump a little. Then you can pinch the hose that's coming out the bypass side (the one that shouldn't have any flow, not fully closed) and see if the flow from the dribble hose increases.

If the diverter is positioning correctly, there should be zero change. If it increases, that means coolant is flowing in the bypass when it shouldn't be and pinching the hose is forcing it to go through the bubble tube for lack of a path out. You can do something similar on chiller return to confirm the diverter is not stuck in the middle, as well as on the battery loop itself to see if the impeller or filter are having issues.

I'll see about typing up a guide for this.