Long Term Airport Parking?

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yakers

Member
Joined
Dec 1, 2012
Messages
13
Location
Pasadena CA
Just wondering whether the charge runs down when parked for a week or so. I need to go to the local airport which is about 20 miles from my house. The car would sit, not charging, for a week. Don't know if the Focus has internal electrical drains which would draw down the battery if it sits for an extended period of time. On my 'regular' car I often disconnect the battery when parked at the airport to assure starting on my return. Not sure there is a way to do that on the Focus. How long will the Focus gold a full or half charge?
 
There will obviously be some parasitic drain due to car alarm and likely some internal every-once-in-a-while-checks (my guess).

There is also some minor self-discharge due to the nature of chemical batteries (Li-Ion are pretty good here).

One week should be no problem at all. I would not expect the above items to be noticeable with respect to range when you drive home. I have kept my car sitting for over a week without charging and it did not appear to have an effect on range for that charge.

At 20 miles, you should have no problem at all if you start with a fully charged car. Even when the low battery indicator kicks in I believe you should have 10 miles of range available. I have never even seen that indicator personally.

There is warning sound if you leave your headlights on, so at least you won't run into the case of: 1-Lights were on when I left home, 2-When I arrived at destination it was light outside, so I didn't know my headlights were on, 3-Car lacked warning sound so my battery was flat when I returned ( <--- this won't happen :) )

TSA will be more of a hassle than your car. ((hmm, was that supposed put me at ease?))
 
I recently left mine for a week. Several nights it complained of limited performance due to being cold. I left it 47 mile range and a week later, I had 47 mile range. Athe alarm, etc all run off the standard car battery. It drains overtime but apparently very slowly.
 
I returned last night from a trip where I left the car for 16 days at LAX (free terminal parking made $491 = $0 :D ) with zero noticeable loss in charge. Evocus was at 93% when when I left it and exactly the same when I returned. Of course, the weather is moderate here in SoCal so no worries there.
 
LAX currently offers free parking for EVs for up to 30 days at the two charge station locations at Terminals 1 and 6.
http://www.lawa.org/welcome_lax.aspx?id=58

Getting a charge, however, is risky these days as there are so many plug-in cars that there may or may not be an open spot to charge. It was fun while it lasted, but without a concierge service to rotate cars in/out that have/need charging I don't see the "free charging" as something you can rely on any longer when traveling via LAX unless they double or triple the current number of chargers to keep up with demand.
 
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