Electric Truck Thermal Video
After getting some temporary plates for the Ford Ranger EV, I was able to take it out for a test drive.
Unfortunately, the range was only about 12 miles.
It could be that part of the reason it’s so low is that the truck is running on lead-acid batteries. That type of battery is notorious for poor performance in the cold.
So, I wondered what temperature the batteries would be at AFTER going for a drive. After all, drawing current from the batteries SHOULD warm them up a bit. When I got back from the ride, I pulled out my thermal camera (FLIR ONE attachment for smart phone: https://amzn.to/2CtxBNf) and filmed the batteries and also the motor and controller.
Although the battery cables and terminals were slightly warmer, the batteries themselves were still right around air temperature, which has been at about 32 degrees F lately. When I looked at the motor and controller, those were slightly warmer. The real concern for those would be summer heat, but since they have liquid cooling built in, I don’t think that will be a problem.
The truck would have originally had all the batteries INSIDE a box under the truck. I did a little research and found that this truck has heating pads that would have been installed on and between all the batteries. I really hope those heating pads are still inside the box. When I pull off the box to upgrade to lithium batteries, I can repurpose the heating pads to keeping the lithium batteries at the proper temperature.
That’s all for now!
Until next time, stay charged up!
-Ben
