[Kstype]

 

[ChasingCoral]

You’ll also find it here with the rest of the teardown videos.

Sandy Munro is tearing a Lightning apart!

The videos are starting to flow out starting with the frunk:

www.lightningowners.com

 

[R.I.P.]

Fantastic to see exactly how they are putting these packs together. I took away one major positive, and one major negative from the video.

The positive. Serviceability. Ford is obviously looking, as with it's other trucks, to keeping these on the road for decades. These are highly serviceable packs that I could rebuild in my own shop. Kudos, and bodes well for these trucks being on the road for a long time.

The negative. The thermal management design in these things is one step above a LEAF; which does not have one. In the video they were polite, and did not hit the design too hard when they pointed out that it is a basic cold-plate design made worse by being separated from the battery by at least 5 thermal layers. The plate is on the bottom (heat rises), making it a decent system to warm the pack when needed, but lousy at wicking heat away under stress: such as DCFC and heavy draws.

This is the design problem people ran into trying to race-prep Mack-Es, so I had hoped that Ford was paying attention to the thermal bottle-necks in that vehicle.

You, like me, are not likely going to race our Mach Es or Lightnings, so why should we care? Here is why:

For truck owners, I think that there are few of us that have not pushed the workhorse hard enough to get the needle on the transmission temp gage to start to rise. It is what we do with trucks. In the case of the transmission, the hot parts are bathed in liquid, and that liquid is circulated through a radiator to control the temperature. This design assures that even when the transmission gets hot, most of the parts heat and cool together.

Move to the lightning and put the vehicle's pack under thermal stress: Towing, DCFC, or just driving fast on a hot day. Lith batteries create their own heat both while charging and discharging. The faster the transfer, the more heat. In Ford's design, the pouch cells are smashed together sitting on their edge, their large, flat heat creating sides all smashed together against other heat creating cells. As these cells get thermally pushed, their only escape from the heat is 5 layers under them at the cold plate. Since heat rises, I would expect the top of each cell to be 50 degrees or hotter than the bottom edge under stress, as a normal operating condition. This degree of temperature variance in each cell on a regular basis is not good.

Both the Tesla and the Ultium designs isolate cells with coolant between them. All other factors being equal, these packs will live a much longer life than those that are thermally abused.

So, that leaves me with this question; does the serviceability factor outweigh what will likely be a shorter battery lifespan? I honestly don't know the answer to that question. I guess we will find out.

P.S.
My biggest takeaway from this glimpse into the Lightning pack is this: Be as nice to my pack as possible, knowing it is "thermally challenged" when it comes to heat. Use the shortest DCFC session that will get me there, watch battery temps when towing, etc.

 

[ChasingCoral]

Fantastic to see exactly how they are putting these packs together. I took away one major positive, and one major negative from the video.

The positive. Serviceability. Ford is obviously looking, as with it's other trucks, to keeping these on the road for decades. These are highly serviceable packs that I could rebuild in my own shop. Kudos, and bodes well for these trucks being on the road for a long time.

The negative. The thermal management design in these things is one step above a LEAF; which does not have one. In the video they were polite, and did not hit the design too hard when they pointed out that it is a basic cold-plate design made worse by being separated from the battery by at least 5 thermal layers. The plate is on the bottom (heat rises), making it a decent system to warm the pack when needed, but lousy at wicking heat away under stress: such as DCFC and heavy draws.

This is the design problem people ran into trying to race-prep Mack-Es, so I had hoped that Ford was paying attention to the thermal bottle-necks in that vehicle.

You, like me, are not likely going to race our Mach Es or Lightnings, so why should we care? Here is why:

For truck owners, I think that there are few of us that have not pushed the workhorse hard enough to get the needle on the transmission temp gage to start to rise. It is what we do with trucks. In the case of the transmission, the hot parts are bathed in liquid, and that liquid is circulated through a radiator to control the temperature. This design assures that even when the transmission gets hot, most of the parts heat and cool together.

Move to the lightning and put the vehicle's pack under thermal stress: Towing, DCFC, or just driving fast on a hot day. Lith batteries create their own heat both while charging and discharging. The faster the transfer, the more heat. In Ford's design, the pouch cells are smashed together sitting on their edge, their large, flat heat creating sides all smashed together against other heat creating cells. As these cells get thermally pushed, their only escape from the heat is 5 layers under them at the cold plate. Since heat rises, I would expect the top of each cell to be 50 degrees or hotter than the bottom edge under stress, as a normal operating condition. This degree of temperature variance in each cell on a regular basis is not good.

Both the Tesla and the Ultium designs isolate cells with coolant between them. All other factors being equal, these packs will live a much longer life than those that are thermally abused.

So, that leaves me with this question; does the serviceability factor outweigh what will likely be a shorter battery lifespan? I honestly don't know the answer to that question. I guess we will find out.

P.S.
My biggest takeaway from this glimpse into the Lightning pack is this: Be as nice to my pack as possible, knowing it is "thermally challenged" when it comes to heat. Use the shortest DCFC session that will get me there, watch battery temps when towing, etc.

I haven't watched the video yet. Did that pack come off a truck with the Max Tow Package? Just wondering if the second cooling system in Max Tow-equipped trucks cools a second plate.

 

[R.I.P.]

They did not say. Ford states that max tow package adds a second cooling loop. If that second loop is on top of the pack, you would end up with a pack sandwiched by cooling plates. Still no cooling between pouches, but a far cry better than what was shown in the video!

 

[ChasingCoral]

They did not say. Ford states that max tow package adds a second cooling loop. If that second loop is on top of the pack, you would end up with a pack sandwiched by cooling plates. Still no cooling between pouches, but a far cry better than what was shown in the video!

Yes, that's exactly what I'm hoping it does. A cooling sandwich would be much better than just double cooling the single plate.