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How to Drive FEHP/FEH the Best Range and MPG

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51K views 335 replies 48 participants last post by  ptjones 
#1 · (Edited)
Here are the total of all the improvements that I have done to my FEHP.

Installed Gas Pods which I had on my CMAX, don't know if they made a difference. Raised tire pressure to 44 psi., the max tire pressure on the tire, they were 32psi according to my digital pressure gauge. I would expect 1/2 mile range gain or mpg in ICE Mode. I use EV Now Mode around town and EV later on trips.

I have been noticing that if you start the ICE to increase acceleration it will stay on until it reaches 128*F like the CMAX Hybrid did. It took about .8 miles to make it happen.
Installed Top Grill Cover and ended up taping all the way around the edge to seal it off to get the WT above 215*F

I installed the Grill Cover for the bottom and it blocks the sensors so I had to hole saw 1.25" holes for them to work. I hope these pics give you ideas for what can be done. It could take awhile to determine what kind of range improvement I get. I hope to install wheel covers shortly too. I'm using Velcro to fasten bottom Grill Cover so they can be easily removed. Screwed on the top Grill Cover because it doesn't need to be removed. Painted the backside of Grill Cover so letters look better and last longer.

Paul
Automotive parking light Vehicle registration plate Car Grille Automotive tail & brake light

Automotive tire Hood Motor vehicle Bumper Automotive exterior

To get the OT to work properly I drilled a 3/4" hole. I used a fountain pump 3/4" adapter that I screwed into a 3/4" hole, I will see how it works. It looks like I gained 2 miles in range and mpg. If you keep your car in a garage during the Winter the Grill Covers will keep your ICE, Trans/motors warmer and the inverter also to improve your range more.

Here are some pics of wheel covers that I'm installing. Backside of wheel with aluminum plug copper silicon rubber applied ready to install. Rim Gas Engineering Circle Machine showing backside of wheel cover with 1/4-20x 2" screw, 1" plastic spacer and fender washer. Wheel Automotive tire Tire Hood Motor vehicle Wheel cover installed. Wheel Tire Land vehicle Vehicle Automotive tire 1/4" plastic screw out toward edge to keep wheel cover from spinning when stopping hard with the brakes. Wheel Covers add 2 miles range and mpg.

I use Premium to improve mpg's by 1-2 mpg.

For EV Mode you should gain 4 miles and ICE mileage should improve 6 mpg.

Paul
 
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#214 ·
Today I filled up at work on Level 1 car supplied charger and the charge port light stayed on about 15 min. after the car said it was 100% SOC, 54 mile range with actual ScanGaugeII HVB SOC at 91.2% and after the plug light went out the SOC went up to 91.4% and 61 miles of range. I have seen this so many times that I consider it normal. I'm going 26 miles after work and will be able to see what the actual range is going to be.

Paul
 
#216 ·
Well I ended up with 54 mi. on that full charge. Yesterday had similar situation with starting out with 60 mi. range and after going home 7 mi. I still had 59 miles total range, but then I had to use the AC with my wife in the car, temps in high 80's and high humidity for 20 miles. This morning I ran out at 49.8 mi., two miles short of the charging station so I ended up using 1 mile of ICE.

Paul
 
#218 ·
Wondering about efficient driving strategy for 2022 Escape PHEV. I use all electric around home and on my short work commute. My question is when going on a 170 mile road trip should I start out in all electric and let car switch to normal hybrid after 40 miles or should I simple start out in normal mode? And, should I switch to all electric 30 miles from my destination? I intend to pay for level 2 commercial charging at my destination.
 
#220 ·
We just took a short road trip... ran EV for about 10 miles until out of town and on the highway, used the Hold charge mode to preserve our remaining charge, switched back to EV for the 5 miles in / out of the small town. As we headed home, we went back to Hold charge mode until we switched into EV mode as we approached home. What we have learned is we always want some battery charge available. For this drive, we had our dog on board, so when I went into a store, my wife could stay in the car with the dog, with the AC running. We arrived home with about 5 miles of range remaining... just what we wanted.

I may be confused, since we have 4 different PHEVs and they operate differently, but I think the hybrid mode will deplete your charge to zero. Try the normal hybrid mode for awhile on your trip, and if you see the electric range continuing to drop, you can switch to hold charge. For one of our PHEV, the manual clearly says to maintain a charge if we drive into mountains so that the battery and ICE can work together to get you up the hills. That's probably the one situation where we would use the mode that charges the battery if the charge was depleting.

Not saying this is the best approach, but we are very happy operating this way.
 
#221 ·
Not sure what your other PHEV's are but for me I only use EV Now and EV Later where I have control, Normal does what it wants to do. Only time I use Normal is by accident when I forget I'm in EV Later and turn off the car and then turn it on it reverts back to Normal. On the FWY I average about 50 mpg in EV Now and 57-60 mpg EV Now.

Paul
 
#222 ·
The PHEV HVB is partitioned, with a small portion used in hybrid mode when the main battery has run out.

Anyone concerned about battery aging near 0% or 100% should consider that time matters, too. If you run the HVB down at the start of a long trip, finishing the day's drive in hybrid mode, then plug in, you only spent a few hours at 0%, not days or months. Same with topping off at 100% before leaving on a trip that will draw the battery down; a few hours at 100% or 0% will not cause any noticeable harm!

And this is all before we talk about the buffers Ford builds in at high and low charge, so 0% and 100% are well within the technology's capabilities. Paul's constantly pushing EV range, and he drives a lot. Stay tuned!
 
#223 ·
This is true. 🙂 Currently have 23k miles, Aug. 13 will be one year and I should have 24k by then. Come to think though I have some long trips possibly coming up shortly, I never know for sure. With the FEHP using a ScanGaugeII to monitor the SOC the highest I have seen is 92.8% and this varies to as low as 90.8% for 100% charge according to the car's Display, don't know why the difference. I haven't seen a difference in the range yet from new. In Hybrid Mode the HVB SOC gets down to about 14% SOC so 21% of the HVB isn't used. I'm not sure what it is for the FEH, but if it is anything like the CMAX it only uses maybe 35% SOC of the HVB. With 273k mi. on my CMAX I did see some lose in HVB storage capacity, but it didn't hurt MPG's, it just filled up faster in regen.

Paul
 
#225 ·
I went to Minneapolis and back last week, about 2,331 miles and learned some new things.

1. I drove from home 5 miles up hill to I-85/I-285/I-75, 47 miles in EV Now before I ran out of charge.

2. Some Tesla owners think they own the the chargers and leave their cars there over night at charging stations. I had a strange situation with a Holiday Inn Express and they had a single level 2 charger which a Tesla was using when I got there at 10PM. It turns out the charging light was flashing and I assumed it was charging. I talked the front desk person and didn't know who it belonged too and he suggested I disconnect it and plug it into my car. I decided to wait and get up around 4am and if the Tesla was still there to disconnect it and plug it into my car so it would be charged up when I was ready to leave. The green charge light was still flashing, but when I plugged in my FEHP the light stopped flashing so the Tesla was charged up when I got there at 10pm. When I left at 7:40am the green light was flashing so I was fully charged and the Tesla was still there with the charge door still open. It turns out that the City had installed the charger on the Hotels property and the Hotel info said it was for guest and it didn't appear the Tesla was a guest's car.

3. I ran out of gas on the FWY about a half mile from gas station, but I had 16 miles of EV range, I was in EV Later. It switched to Normal, but I got the red message to stop and yet it was running in EV. I hit OK and tried to switch to EV Now but nothing would change so I just drove it to the gas station and filled up. When I started it up everything was working fine and it was in Normal Mode so I switched back to EV Later. I have run out of gas once before on purpose with no problems.

4. I averaged 55 mpg going 2331.3 mi./42.34 gal = 55.06 mpg

Paul
 
#226 ·
I cross rotated my tires but didn't have the time to clean reinstall my wheel covers and on my 7 mile trip home from work I used 7 mi. of range, normally only use 5 mile. The next day I installed wheel covers and mileage went back up. :)

Just a reminder on what are the most important Modes of operations to get the most range/lowest cost.

1. Coasting in Neutral is close to 100% efficient as opposed to regen with around 80%.

2. Free Charging at Level 2/ Level1.

3. Charging at home or work where you are paying for the electricity.

4. Regen

5. Paying $1/H at Level 2 charging station.

6. buying gas.

7. Paying$1.50 or more at charging station.

8. The worst idea is using the ICE to charge the HVB.

There maybe other possibilities and if you have any other ideas I will add to my list.

Paul
 
#230 ·
1. Coasting in Neutral is close to 100% efficient as opposed to regen with around 80%.
help me understand this. We are talking about coasting and not stopping right? If we are talking about breaking, what is the difference? As long as we break and stay within regen, what's the difference?

I guess with the terrain around here it's hard to understand why someone would need to do this. There is a decent size hill at the gym, I useally attempt to coast down it to recharge. Are you saying to put it in N? Is the HVB still going to charge? And it's safe for the car??
 
#227 ·
Does anyone use the "L" button when coasting to a stop or needing to slow down? I notice when I use the center "L" button during these times the regen indicator shows a higher / deeper recharge rate. Wondering if there is any correlation to this method. You can almost one-foot drive without having to use the brake until the very end.

Another example is if I'm going down-hill and the car is speeding up, I'll often switch in and out of "L" to maintain the speed I want, then leave it in "D" whenever I need to accelerate.

There have been a few times that I've actually seen the estimated miles of EV increase while doing this.

Even thought the brakes regen it feels like I get a more prolonged regen vs using the the brakes (at least according to the dash indicator).
 
#228 ·
Possibly. The whole idea behind L gear is to set a lower gear so the engine is running at a higher rpm. Either to give more engine braking going down hill, or higher power/torque going up hill.

With the ecvt, only the gas engine is behind that "gear ratio" though. The main electric motor is connected to the wheels at a set ratio.

It's possible when in L gear, the regen is set more aggressive in when it will pull power. Like even when coasting. Or full regen at 25% brake press rather than 50% press in D. Manual doesn't say anything about it though.

What it does say, is it will spin the engine (with no gas) to provide more engine braking to reduce the need to brake with the traditional pads. That could be making it easier to brake and stay in regen since it's engine+regen braking in L vs just regen in D.

Hopefully they actually build and deliver one to me this year so I can actually check out its behavior in person.
 
#238 ·
Possibly. The whole idea behind L gear is to set a lower gear so the engine is running at a higher rpm. Either to give more engine braking going down hill, or higher power/torque going up hill.

With the ecvt, only the gas engine is behind that "gear ratio" though. The main electric motor is connected to the wheels at a set ratio.

It's possible when in L gear, the regen is set more aggressive in when it will pull power. Like even when coasting. Or full regen at 25% brake press rather than 50% press in D. Manual doesn't say anything about it though.

What it does say, is it will spin the engine (with no gas) to provide more engine braking to reduce the need to brake with the traditional pads. That could be making it easier to brake and stay in regen since it's engine+regen braking in L vs just regen in D.

Hopefully they actually build and deliver one to me this year so I can actually check out its behavior in person.
The manual actually states that running in L will result in lower fuel economy.
 
#229 ·
Thanks Golluk! It would be interesting to see if there is any merit to this method or not for sure.

One other thing with @ptjones post number 8 (The worst idea is using the ICE to charge the HVB.) - can someone help provide a further explanation?

For example, if I'm driving down the highway at 70-75MPH and EV Battery is at 0 miles why would this become inefficient?

I can understand when at lower speeds or off the highway where the ICE still turns on/off even at 0 miles and regen is a possibility - but the ICE won't shut down at that speed regardless when the battery is delegated - so why would it be inefficient to charge in this scenario?

I've tried this a few times and have not seen a not seen a noticeable drop in MPG. It also seems to charge at the 240v rate from what I can tell so it doesn't take too long to regain a charge over a long trip.
 
#233 ·
Thanks Golluk! It would be interesting to see if there is any merit to this method or not for sure.

One other thing with @ptjones post number 8 (The worst idea is using the ICE to charge the HVB.) - can someone help provide a further explanation?

For example, if I'm driving down the highway at 70-75MPH and EV Battery is at 0 miles why would this become inefficient?

I can understand when at lower speeds or off the highway where the ICE still turns on/off even at 0 miles and regen is a possibility - but the ICE won't shut down at that speed regardless when the battery is delegated - so why would it be inefficient to charge in this scenario?

I've tried this a few times and have not seen a not seen a noticeable drop in MPG. It also seems to charge at the 240v rate from what I can tell so it doesn't take too long to regain a charge over a long trip.
Because the ICE is only 25-30% efficient as compared to 80-95% charging HVB or regen.

Paul
 
#232 · (Edited)
fbov" To be fair, coasting isn't free - parasitic losses are unavoidable - but it's the best thing you can do. Note that I define "coasting" as the throttle position that gives me 0 EV/ICE and 0 regen. You won't find me in neutral. "

I find you really need to be good to pull this off with the Accel pedal. I just keep my hand on the trans shifter just shifting back and forth is easy. For me it has turned into a habit. In neutral stepping on the brakes doesn't charge the HVB. In neutral with the ICE running will charge the HVB. Just remember to be in drive before you step on the brakes. I don't use L because of the possibility of losing energy that could be regened into the HVB.

Paul
 
#234 ·
you really need to be good to pull this off with the Accel pedal
My 2020 has an advantage, numeric power display. In practice, I'm happy to see a 1-2 kW of regen, which may not be resolved by the bar graph. (My apologies; I don't have a pic taken when coasting, this is negative-split mode.)

Vehicle Wheel Car Speedometer Motor vehicle
 
#240 ·
I got a new range record today of 63 mi. with full charge and 28k miles on Odometer. Interesting ScanGaugeII had 91% charge and I have seen as high as 94%.

Vehicle Personal luxury car Car Electric blue Plant

Last night I charged up at a ChargePoint at a hospital next County over that was free last time I charged there. Now it is $3 for 2 hrs which is more than what Premium cost for the same distance. It's a waist of money to pay more than $1/hr to charge your HVB. It does appear that the number of free Charging Stations are going down. It is surprising that even with high gas prices it cost more for high percentage of charging stations.

Paul
 
#241 ·
Made another trip to FL and back, about 880 miles in one day, I usually use EV Later which means I put it in EV Later to start with and the car runs in EV Now until the HVB gets down to 75% and then switches to EV Later. I remember 3 trips where I ran in EV Now to see what range I could get on the FWY. One trip on SR16 I got 44.5 mi. with temps in 40-50*F, second trip on same route 46.5 mi. with temps in 60's*F and third trip I-85/I-285/I-75, 47 mi. with temps 70-80*F, I do better on Interstates driving faster drafting Semi's vs going slower on SR and not drafting.

Paul
 
#243 ·
I can share an example of how NOT to get good mileage. I was down around 2km of EV range, so decided to run in charge mode for a short 3 km drive. Averaged 19L/100KM. Would make my 4L V6 Ranger blush. Under normal conditions though, fuel efficiency has been amazing, and I haven't even tried to be efficient with it yet.
 
#246 ·
Interestingly I've noticed when trying to use ev charge mode on the highway at 80mph just for fun, I actually lose battery. Every time more power is required the blue line adds power to the white line on the gauge and it usually happens frequently on grades/wind and traffic. The only way I can keep my battery for later is with ev later mode. It seems to make the powertrain use the gas engine in all but the most demanding conditions like full throttle.
 
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