FFE does not start charging if the battery is near full

[Anti_Climax]

I was wondering if anyone else has seen this behavior. I tried to search for similar topics but so many of the terms are too common.

I recently had my 2012 battery replaced with one of the new larger batteries as a warranty repair. The original battery had about 15kWh to "0 miles" with the 1kWh reserve and - due to wear - the first mile or two would drop the gauge from 100% very quickly.

Being in AZ with the heat I habitually plug the car in to my L2 charger to allow for battery keeping, remote climate start and 12V battery trickle charging

Now, with the new battery, quick/short trips often don't take it below 98% or 97% and I've noticed looking back through my charger logs that it has frequently not started charging. It first I thought it might be the latch on my J1772 - A problem I've seen with plugs from that cable maker - but a new cable didn't help, nor did the travel charger.

I've not had it fail to charge from a lower percentage and, upon noticing it seemed to be happening, I drove it a bit and retried - and it started charging fine.

There were no faults - aside from my charger notifying me that the car didn't start pulling power - and the contactors are still closing fine to start and drive.

Not a big deal and I can understand why it would not waste charge cycles for such a small amount of energy, but has anyone else seen this?

 

[NightHawk]

On your 2012 FFE, how low percentage wise compared to a full capacity new battery did your original battery get down to in order to get a free warranty replacement with the new higher capacity battery pack? Less than 50% of new capacity?

 

[triangles]

So for only 21% battery degradation (15/19) Ford replaced your nearly 6 year old battery? That doesn't seem right. There is no warranty against battery degradation on the FFE. Either someone screwed up or ford wanted an early battery back for research purposes. Either way congrats on the new battery.

Anyway it does make sense that won't charge if already nearly full. I don't know what the exact number is but I think the car sees 90% SOC as 100% full charged battery. It's possible due to any number of environmental conditions (mostly temp changes) that a sitting battery's apparent SOC can vary. I imagine driving your FFE a short distance may heat the battery enough to affect the apparent SOC such that the battery is still full as far as the car is concerned. Maybe that is apart of the programming changes Ford does when putting in the larger battery pack. Take this with a huge grain of salt. It's all conjecture on my part.

I can tell you if you need the maximum range I have observed with my '14FFE that if I use go times (I assume the same would happen with a remote start) that the car will charge for about 20-30 min after the go time ends resulting in the battery being slightly higher than fully charged. I.e. the car will indicate 100% charged for a few miles. The craziest is when I had parked the car at the airport and it was frigid when it was plugged in and charged but about 30 degrees warmer when I returned a few days later. I drove over 8 miles before the battery dropped below 100%! I don't think I had remote started. In this case I just think it was that it was cold when the battery was charged and then it got warm since battery capacity is sensitive to temperature.

 

[EVA]

That behavior squares with what I saw recently - no charging if the car is fully or very nearly fully charged.

For some unknown reason I unplugged the car after it was fully charged, and then plugged it back in. Nothing happened, the EVSE didn't do it's usual click to tell me juice was flowing. I thought the EVSE had gone bad. I tripped the breaker, still nothing. I kept plugging and unplugging the car, nothing. The thing wouldn't charge. I gave up and figured I would mess with it the next day. Sure enough, the next time we drove the car and plugged it in, everything worked just fine.

It was exactly what you described - when the car is very nearly completely charged or 100%, it can end up not charging at all. I think that's what you are seeing.