Quote:
Originally Posted by Piotrsko
You may want to search for the typical minimum battery draw. For example according to Ford, the typical draw on my F250 for "keep alive" is 100 to 250 ma. For me that is the target, so maybe every 9 months I consider either starting it or boosting the batteries
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120ma is pretty low for car standards, but the thing is the battery is small in them compared to most other vehicles. The F250 battery is quite large, probably like an 80ah one, so 200ma draw would take around 17 days to draw the battery really low. If it's a diesel and has 2 batteries, you can double that figure. Generally it's best to start a vehicle that's sitting every 1-2 weeks or monthly for worst case. If the battery goes under around 12v there's physical damage happening to the battery that isn't reversible.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MetroMPG
Nice problem to have, I guess!
What's the business, if you don't mind saying? (I'm guessing related to your username?)
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https://www.facebook.com/groups/derbyws
That's my facebook group. I've only been in the market for around 7 months at this point, but derby season kicked up since it got warm out and haven't had too much of a break to do much of anything else. I'm sure it will die down since the orders come in waves. I also make atv parts and sell them on ebay, pig tails, adapters, small harnesses, etc.
I guess my business is about the exact opposite of what ecomodder is about lol.
I played around a little more with the car, nothing too specal, 8 mile trip night time and no traffic, went 35mph and tried to get it to cycle the gas/ev mode. It seemed to do really well but once the engine got warmed up fully it didn't want to turn the engine off any more. Maybe I wasn't in the "normal" mode yet since I didn't come to a complete stop for 5 secs. The mpg wasn't out of this world or anything for such a slow speed, got home with 55mpg on the scan gauge and state of charge slightly higher than what I started with. I also messed around with a little pulse and glide, 30mph to 40mph. It did well then right before my corner it refused to turn the engine off so it ran the whole distance to my house for the last 1/4 mile. If it ran off battery only it would probably have indicated closer to 60mpg but have a lower SOC for the hybrid than what it started with.
Too bad the hybrid battery didn't have enough capacity to get to the post office and back, about 10 miles. Around 50% or so of my trips or so could be done on pure electric if that was the case, then converting to a plug in hybrid might be worth it at that point and then the EV mode would make sense to eat up battery instead of fuel on the lest little bit before my house on longer trips.