hot weather too hot

[halfelite]

Is there a limit to how hot it can be that makes the car not run on battery. We have been hitting triple digits and I noticed for a full 45Min drive it never switched over to battery once even though it was fully charged. Then when it finally did the slightest acceleration would kick it back to gad.

[murphy]

Did you have the air conditioning on? The car uses cabin air to cool the battery.

If you did was there something laying on the rear shelf blocking the battery air intake?

[hybridbear]

Is there a limit to how hot it can be that makes the car not run on battery. We have been hitting triple digits and I noticed for a full 45Min drive it never switched over to battery once even though it was fully charged. Then when it finally did the slightest acceleration would kick it back to gad.

When the HVB gets too hot it will limit its maximum charge/discharge rate. The Energi vehicles will kick out of EV mode and go into a forced hybrid mode if the HVB gets too hot. I'm not sure what the threshold is, perhaps and Energi owner can chime in. I expect that the hybrid will also limit use of the HVB when it is too hot, just like it does when the battery is too cold. As murphy said, make sure that nothing is blocking the vents which pull cabin air across the battery to cool it. You also will want to run the A/C to cool the cabin so that cool air is being vented across the HVB. And try to park in the shade when possible.

 

The Focus Electric has liquid cooling, unlike the hybrid/Energi models with just air cooling. The Focus Electric will even send an alert to the owner when it detects the HVB getting too hot to tell the owner to plug in the car on hot days so that the car can actively cool the HVB rather than letting it get hot while sitting in the sun.

Edited May 17, 2014 by hybridbear

[halfelite]

Ac was running the whole time. Only thing I tried was turning ac down. Outside temp was registering 108.

[jimfish]

When I run AC/MAX the ICE runs 90% of the time. Must be a big pull on the system. ;)

[acdii]

Is there a limit to how hot it can be that makes the car not run on battery. We have been hitting triple digits and I noticed for a full 45Min drive it never switched over to battery once even though it was fully charged. Then when it finally did the slightest acceleration would kick it back to gad.

I see you have a 2013, has the update been done that reduces AC power consumption? Its the major power train update from last year. If you can go into EV above 65 then the answer is yes. When temps are high, the car does protect the HVB from overheating by limiting its use, so it must have detected the temps were too high for them.

[halfelite]

Yes I did the update. I hope we dont have to many days like that this year. I went from a 44 avg MPG on a tank down to a 31.4 avg with just the two days we hit triple digits.