Bought a 2017 !

[TempesT72]

I'm loving this little car as a comute rig. Got it for under 7k with just over 10k miles on her. And it still qualified for $3500 in tax credit. Won't be taking trips but she's great for a work car

 

[Anti_Climax]

That's a fantastic deal for a car with 10K in 7 to 8 years.

 

[TempesT72]

Well, I had my doubts about travel with such a short range. That is until I noticed it can Regen more power in 6 miles than I left with. It started with 97 miles range that morning and when I got to work it had 114. Possible road trip in the near future .. For Science !!!

 

[TempesT72]

Thinking an ST wing and a diffuser to help reduce drag next. Along with a grill re-design. No sense having that grill on these other than looking like a gas focus it started as.

 

[Anti_Climax]

The mileage changing just reflects your driving efficiency - doesn't have more energy, just realizes you're making better use of what's there. You may not want to change the body as these already have a very low drag coefficient by design. These do run battery cooling using the radiator and AC evaporator, which are designed with normal airflow through that grill in mind.

If you do end up making those changes, I'd highly recommend using Forscan to capture power draw over a given stretch of road with multiple cruise controlled passes, then compare more passes after modification. Would be curious how noticeably things change.

 

[TempesT72]

Curious how this system is calculating range. After running around town all day I returned home and the meter states 96 miles remaining. I'm equating it to a calculated average sim to fuel milage on a car. As for the grill. It's being replaced with I let/outlet channels. For passover heat draw. Really just experimenting

 

[Anti_Climax]

The battery management monitors the individual and combined cell voltages during charge and discharge, mapping the changes against the amount of energy that has been pulled from the pack. This allows it to maintain in internal "Energy to empty" value it can calculate against at various states of charge.

Separate from that, it tracks recent energy use and combines those along with some environmental data to give an estimated range from that remaining energy. I don't think anyone has cracked the formula it uses to average your recent driving, but it seems like it's like a running tally of efficiency over the last 50 miles or something.

Doesn't really matter that much - once you have a handle on the efficiency of driving various routes and the energy that's available at a given state of charge, you can make decent estimates based on what you know your driving *will* be rather than what it was recently.

It's honestly weird to me that I can hyper-mile a 120 mile round trip, that COMPLETELY drains the battery, but it will show a 200 mile estimate after recharging because the latter half of the trip was mostly downhill and far more energy efficient.

 

[TempesT72]

Long story short, it manages an estimate much like a gas car states your at an "34mpg avg" etc. compiles data based on several factors of current and last drive to arrive at a current avg mpg or in this case range. I understand the value shown isn't what I'm actually getting. What I'm looking at would be the odometer vs charge / fuel at empty comparatively stock vs mods. It could be better or it could be worse. With this car, they were designed as a normal gas powered focus and basically converted to electric. What may be efficient for gas doesn't mean it's the same for electric. Especially when cars are never purpose built or designed with pure efficiency in mind. Instead they want to make a vehicle that's pleasing to the eye for sales while trying to be efficient enough to meet a mental expectation. In other words they want enough style and just enough efficiency to make the consumer think "sure, that will work". My boredom experiment is simply testing what may or may not work to extend range even a little. While doing what so many ppl do in respect to "mods" to their cars. Everything is a balancing act. Add custom crap that may make range worse while finding a different modification to counter possible loss etc. Who knows, could be great, nothing at all, or even make it worse. The goal are the answers via trial and error in this case.