For customers still unsure whether they’re ready to make the switch to an all-electric vehicle, Ford is sweetening the pot.
Today, the company launched a new initiative called the “Ford Power Promise,” in which it will provide a suite of benefits to customers who buy or lease a new EV. And chief among them is a complimentary home charger for all new customers, as well as the costs of standard installation.
The charger that’s being offered is the company’s Ford Charge Station Pro, a $1,310 Level 2 charger that comes with a standard CCS1 connector. Ford declined to put a monetary value on the installation but said it would cover costs up to 60 amps of power and 80 feet of wire run. Customers who need to upgrade their home electrical panel before the installation, however, will need to cover those costs themselves.
For customers who buy or lease a new EV but already have a home charger installed, Ford will provide them with the cash equivalent of $2,000.
That’s a good incentive to try to poach a driver of another EV brand.
So since the majority of people will probably need the panel upgrade this is an empty offer for those that won’t be willing to spend $2k+ for the upgrade.
The only way I was able to get a charger installed was from my utility company’s rebate if I used their rate22 for the charger. So they paid to install the new meter and charger but I had to buy the charger. Since it has its own meter it doesn’t affect my home’s panel limit. I went with OpenEVSE for their ease of repairability and upgrades. I can swap any part out in a matter of minutes.
Came here to mention that they better be hooking me up with a panel upgrade too, which I know they won’t.
What panel do y’all mean - the circuit breaker panel?
Educated guess here, but yes. Your panel might only be designed to handle 200A and a bulk of that is typically used by your home already, primarily your major appliances and heating/cooling.
What are you talking about? 200A is a HUGE panel as it is. You’re going to have a hard time getting bigger than that on a residential connection. If you go balls to the wall with the big stuff in your house, you’d be looking at about 30 amps for AC, 50 for stove and oven (by the way, that’s all burners and oven running at the same time. Happy Thanksgiving?), 30 for a clothes dryer, and you still have 90 amps at 240 volts remaining.
Oh, and realistically that’s two 90-amp sets of 120 volts. And really, most people charge their car at night, when demand and rates are lower. Maybe your AC is going to run occasionally, but you’re probably not making that Thanksgiving feast while laundry is going
You forgot the furnace and water heater. If those are electric, it can easily max out a 200 amp panel.
Also, the fact that you’ll never use the full 50 amps on the range isn’t really important. There are calculations on how much you can overbook your panel. Once you hit that limit, electricians and code won’t allow it.
Admittedly I use gas for both those things, so yes, I did forget about them. The point largely remains: it’s highly unlikely that you’ll have all loads going at full blast, and for that reason the load calculation is far more complex than simply adding up the breakers. It also understands that circuits are generally only partially used, and that the worst case scenario is a nuisance, not a hazard.
Add to this if your home was built in the ancient times like before the 90s your panel usually only supported up to 100 amps. My house built in 1956 only has a 100 amp panel and if you have a electric oven those take 40 of those 100 amps which doesn’t leave much for a car charger. So when I remodeled my garage I removed the electric oven from our kitchen and installed gas just so I could avoid upgrading my panel and could dedicate 40 amps to the garage.
I know gas bad but my oven connects to my Home Assistant and it turns on and locks the kitchen ventilation to on while in use. Also have many air quality sensors.
Sure hope that you’re saving money using gas for your oven instead of electricity otherwise there’s no logic to how you did things…
Well $2000+ for the panel upgrade and $450 for the oven and black pipe to plumb the gas. So yes cheaper, also gas is cheaper than electric per BTU in my area. I may do my own panel upgrade in the coming years when I install solar.
Gas is also a big benefit when your power goes out. We still had hot water and a fireplace when we lost power for 5 days a few years ago after a big ice storm. Our stove is electric but we were able to use the BBQ to cook during that outage.
Lol, 100amp here.
Interesting. So maybe you need more power from the street (bigger cable trenched) and a “bigger” circuit breaker panel.
Further complicating matters for many Americans are HOAs, especially those with communal parking separated from the homes. Not only would I have to upgrade my panel, I’d have to pay to install a feed to my parking spaces. Thankfully for my region the law gives me the right to install this even if the HOA doesn’t cooperate, but laws vary and some people will have a very uphill battle.
“up to” 60 amps per the original snippet means you could do less if a load calculation needs it. Really, damn near any panel installed in the last several decades can take an additional 240V 20A circuit, which is still a lot of juice if you math out the kind of use you can get over a year.
If I buy an EV, it won’t be a smartphone on wheels. There is no way I’m giving these fuckers my driving data.
Every car is a smartphone on wheels if you bought it within the last 5-10 years.
Yeah, but the ones running on 3g don’t work as a smartphone anymore since the networks shut down. Basically anything more than 7 years old should be fine at this point.
You can still find cars dumber than shit now. Just go for the “lower trim” models. Those are normally cheaper and have simple dashboards, nothing internet connected, because ya know “they have less features”. As if that were a bad thing. Lol
You said “every car”, so I’ll assume you do mean every car, which is very much untrue. My 2016 Hyundai Tucson is a very much dumb car. It has a radio, CD player and Bluetooth. And that’s what I want essentially. I don’t want anything to do with those that are connected to the internet and get OTA updates. I’ll never buy those for as long as I can find the other ones. Cars like mine do exit and will continue existing, as a “low trim” model, which is
whywhat I always get anyway.I think you’re in for a rude awakening on your next car purchase. The low trim models are prime targets for data harvesting because they can make money off your data on the backend since you didn’t splurge for all the high-markup gizmos at the time of purchase. It’s just like smart phones and TVs, the less you pay up front, the more they find other means to make money off you.
How can a dashboard that has absolutely nothing “smart” about it collect my data? It’s only a radio that has Bluetooth, how’s that going to collect data and send it to the manufacturer?
The dashboard has nothing to do with data collection. That happens internally with various chips and ecu. The data being sent to the company servers don’t care about your dashboard, that’s handled by a different chip that has 3g/4g connectivity. In fact, you can buy a fancy tool that plugs into your obd II port on one end and a laptop in the other see real time data about how various systems are performing and what’s happening based on your driving.
I see. I’ve always thought the data collection is through those smart dashboards. So, thank you for the info. Also, isn’t 3g dead by now? Can those modems be ripped off the car, BTW?
I don’t know if 3g is completely dead at this point but it’s on it’s way out. I think those on-star enabled cars are using 3g but I could be wrong. As far as ripping those out, I doubt it since all of that is integrated into a single chip or it’s soldered on. Best that you can probably do is hope that it is relying on defunct network so it can’t communicate to the mothership anymore but you wouldn’t have a way to verify that.
Still not going to buy a massive and pointless electric truck. Give me a full EV Fusion, maybe.
Ford also makes an EV car, the MachE.
*SUV
I had to look it up; the Charge Station Pro is the one that allows bidirectional charging where the F-150 Lightning can serve as a backup to the home when plugged in, a great feature. The Mach E doesn’t have that capability, though, so it’s a wasted feature with that car.
I really liked the F-150 Lightning, but a full-size pickup with a crew cab doesn’t fit in my garage. I would have room to park outside in the driveway (and charger installation would be easier), but I don’t want to do that unless I have to.
The Mach E was nice, but I found the seats uncomfortable after about 30 minutes (the only part of the car I felt really was like a Mustang).
In any case I’m not in the market for a new car right now and don’t think I could afford a new electric vehicle with my current work situation.
GM had a similar deal when I bought my Bolt. It was pretty awesome, since my panel is on the other side of my house from the garage and it would’ve cost about $1500 otherwise. Lots of horror stories with the middleman they used (QMerit) and people having “non-standard” installations over silly little things though. Hopefully Ford has a little better implementation.
Can confirm with Qmerit. Needed a service upgrade (that was not possible due to unrelated factors).
Other options included disconnecting a different circuit, or installing a charger with load sensing. Both would’ve been about 15 minutes of work, and were an extra $600 on top of the $1000 that GM was paying.
Include an array of solar panels, then count me in.
That would be cool, but really? They could have also sold the car and nothing else. They do a promo that should make EVs a little more approachable for a lot of people, and you’re demanding a (probably) 5-figure addition to that?
