Featured Escape PHEV reviews

That was what I read in Escape Forum. It did make is sound like only a 1.5L 3-cylinder engine used in the regular ICE Ecoboost engine was affected. From that, I deduced that the HEV 2.0L inline 4 or PHEV 2.5L inline 4 are not affected by the recall. But the link to Ford's official page I posted in #19 clearly states that "2.5L HEV/PHEV engine failures". It sounds like some of PHEV are affected. Or, is this linked page recall a different issue than the recent recall?

 

I finished the second charging session on my new 2022 Escape PHEV. Here is what I found out.

• Ford OEM L1 EVSE has a phantom drain when connected to the wall without being plugged into a car.
• The overhead for charging is quite high. More than 20%.
• It has a very convenient MAX charge level setting on the scheduled charging.

I left the OEM Ford L1 EVSE plugged into the kill-a-watt meter after the last charging session 4 days ago. It was not plugged into the car. Still, after 4 days, the kill-a-watt meter had registered 0.13kWh of power used. With the previous Toyota OEM L1 EVSE, this number was more like 0.01kWh/day. Not a huge draw, but still ~3 times more than Toyota's. I think I will be unplugging the EVSE from the wall from now on.


For the first full charge from 0%-100%, I measured the electricity consumed at the wall recorded by the kill-a-watt meter to be 13.4kWh. This number was bigger than I was anticipating for the 14.4kWh traction battery with some built-in buffer. This excess number seems to be related to the large overhead kWh that is used to maintain the charging, such as the fan and other electronics of the BTM system. I did not record it, but I remember seeing the total kWh charged was listed to be 11kWh. This number is reported by the Charging Monitor App and the value does not get saved after the EVSE is unplugged from the car. But, if my memory is correct, then ~2.4kWh of electricity is used for the BTM and not charged into the traction battery. That is 22% overhead.

For my second charge session, from 42% SOC.


It completed the from 42% to 100% charge (58%) in ~6.5hr using 6kWh reported by the app. The app reporting only gives a single whole number for the kWh used, so it could be anywhere from 5.5kWh to 6.5kWh if it is rounded. But the actual energy used at the wall recorded by the kill-a-watt meter for this charge session was 7.57kWh. That's 26% overhead.





I could never measure the actual kWh charged into the traction battery in my previous PPs, so I do not know the actual overhead for the charge session on Toyota. But on my PP's winter charging with the traction battery heater enabled did draw a substantially higher amount of electricity from the wall than possibly went into the traction battery. So, maybe >20% overhead charging by L1 EVSE during winter is normal. In any case, I will have to take into consideration this overhead consumption of electricity when calculating the actual cost/mile for EV drives.

And one feature that is new to me is that the charge schedule on Escape PHEV can be set with a specified MAX CHARGE LEVEL. Unlike PP, the schedule function can be set for a particular location, and MAX Charge LEVEL can be set from 50% to 100% in 5% increments. This feature can keep the upper buffer of the traction battery bigger than default if one does not need the maximum EV range after each charge session.



Still learning, but the phone app (FordPass) and in-car infotainment system SYNC3 are straightforward and so far no glitches to be encountered. That fact alone is a better experience than my attempt to use Entune or Toyota App. The both FordPass app and fob have a remote engine start functionality. I have not tried using them on my Escape PHEV yet. I will have to see how it works. Maybe it works better than PP's remote climate control.

 

There will always be conversion losses on the 2 electrical current trips - first it's AC into the battery - then again when the car converts the battery DC to typically 3 phase AC for power usage. dancers have to pay the piper.

and if you think Ford has huge parasitic losses - try a Tesla. Not just being the rolling computer that it is, but think of all those cameras - all the way around now usable as a type of video centry. Plus - if/when temps go sub zero - there goes a bunch of energy to assure the battery is warm.
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