Explaning ESS to a middle schooler

[Kllrbee]

This thread is proof people would much, much rather piss and moan than actually do anything about it.
When I bought my Jeep 2 years ago I didn’t like the ESS. Wanna guess what I did?

I opened the hood, disconnected the plunger, put some electrical grease in the now exposed connectors, taped them off and closed the hood.

No fancy programmer needed and the ESS has never been a thought since.

Same here. There are multiple ways around it without a programmer. To be honest, the actual operation of the ESS didnt really bother me as I drove a manual and live in the country, so it almost never called for it. The way in which it was designed on the Wrangler is the problem.
Youve got a parasitic leech in the Aux battery thats sucking the life out of your Main battery. And getting to the Aux for replacement is a total pain. Its not as easy as just saying "oh I have a programmer and just turn it off, or I unplugged it" and thats it, youre done. That Aux is still in tandem with your Main slowly but surely draining it.
This as well as many other things is why I got rid of the Jeep. The engineering has taken a nosedive. But many, many people just deal with it and come up with work arounds which shouldnt be needed in the first place.

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[AFD]

This thread is proof people would much, much rather piss and moan than actually do anything about it.
When I bought my Jeep 2 years ago I didn’t like the ESS. Wanna guess what I did?

I opened the hood, disconnected the plunger, put some electrical grease in the now exposed connectors, taped them off and closed the hood.

No fancy programmer needed and the ESS has never been a thought since.

If you're going to recommend that people disconnect a hood plunger to defeat ESS, then you might want to mention the caveat that doing so will also disable the remote start functionality for those that have the x2 button on their fobs.

 

[Vinman]

If you're going to recommend that people disconnect a hood plunger to defeat ESS, then you might want to mention the caveat that doing so will also disable the remote start functionality for those that have the x2 button on their fobs.

My factory remote start works fine with the x2 button on the keyfob.

 

[Fudster]

@jeepoch

Thanks for coming to the thread Jay. You are always well balanced and smart about how you approach subject matter: you should write for a newspaper.

There are so many ways to look at ESS. Mine, you appreciated was intended, using science, to explain how a pure ESS system might save energy by taking advantage of the inertia of a cranked engine requiring little additional energy from liquid fuel to recharge an ESS depleted battery--certainly less fuel than that alternatively saved by not having to charge an ESS battery, but wasted while an engine runs idle at a stop light.

While people should of course examine such systems in terms of their true benefit to society, which would force us to factor in the green footprint of battery creation and disposal, and the system components, and its design, wear and tear costs, etc., my view was like that taught in an intro to college microeconomics class, where unrealistic assumptions about the world are deliberately made so that certain forces of supply and demand can be understood by the student without the complexity of other albeit real world factors influencing them and complicating the foundation concepts attempting to be initially taught.

The whole concept of energy capture so well first discussed on the thread by @driventoadventure, facilitated by computer control, complex gearing systems and regenerative breaking was driven home (at home) by a recent discussion on how the South Pole station captures the heat from their generator's electric creation, to heat the facility.

https://www.jeffreydonenfeld.com/blog/2012/12/the-south-pole-power-plant/

ESS systems are no less fodder for the social sciences. I imagine parallels can be drawn to the resistance to change experienced by many historical paradigm changes (the very horseless carriage that got us here) and ways of life people were forced to accept for the (so called) good of the many.

 

[Eischman]

Mine stopped working like 4 months ago, it always says "Battery is Charging" even on a 2-hour road trip??
...and I don't care

 

[Kllrbee]

Youll care when the Aux drains your main battery prematurely and your dead in the water. Thats exactly what its doing. The ESS not working or being disabled is just like putting a band aid on a broken leg. It doesnt fix the underlying problem which is the idiotic design of it by the engineers.

 

[driventoadventure]

How would a mechanic know if it's a benefit to the significant majority of users?

It is a concession to the potential maintenance aspects of the ESS, and how Mechanics are more likely to have the most relevant feedback on the maintenance differences of vehicles with and without ESS.

 

[multicam]

Tell the middle schooler that it saves about $60 of gas during the time it takes to wear out your $90 aux battery.

 

[Jebiruph]

It is a concession to the potential maintenance aspects of the ESS, and how Mechanics are more likely to have the most relevant feedback on the maintenance differences of vehicles with and without ESS.

A mechanic would only be aware of the extra cost of maintaining the ESS related components and would see it as additional cost and not a benefit.

 

[driventoadventure]

Tell the middle schooler that it saves about $60 of gas during the time it takes to wear out your $90 aux battery.

A little back-of-the-napkin-math using round numbers on the smallest engine option - note my engine is not the 2.0t so I am making assumptions based on memory and quick googling

Assuming the 2.0t gets 25mpg at 2500rpm going 75mph: (75/25)/(75/60) assumes that the vehicle uses about 2.6 gallons per hour at 2500 rpm, and when idling at about 800rpm it can be about 0.01387 gallons per minute, or .832 gallons per hour. Assuming $4 per gallon (not using premium, and using the lower-end of the cheapest regional average fuel cost) you are looking at 1622 minutes of idling being equivalent to $90. It is hard to find any concrete science behind the topic, especially since I am not up to wasting hours doing so, but the only information I can find suggests that the average American spends about 3520 minutes per year waiting at stoplights. So, assuming that only half of those are spent using ESS, that average person would need about 0.92 years of usage to break even with a single aux battery.

Now, this is just some very simplistic deductions, but I am sure that if someone took the time to actually calculate it out, then they would find a much quicker ROI, but it seems like many aren't willing to, and I am not going to because I just don't care enough.

 

[driventoadventure]

A mechanic would only be aware of the extra cost of maintaining the ESS related components and would see it as additional cost and not a benefit.

That's my point? Mechanics who chime in typically say it doesn't have a maintenance impact.

 

[Chugiakguy]

Same here. There are multiple ways around it without a programmer. To be honest, the actual operation of the ESS didnt really bother me as I drove a manual and live in the country, so it almost never called for it. The way in which it was designed on the Wrangler is the problem.
Youve got a parasitic leech in the Aux battery thats sucking the life out of your Main battery. And getting to the Aux for replacement is a total pain. Its not as easy as just saying "oh I have a programmer and just turn it off, or I unplugged it" and thats it, youre done. That Aux is still in tandem with your Main slowly but surely draining it.
This as well as many other things is why I got rid of the Jeep. The engineering has taken a nosedive. But many, many people just deal with it and come up with work arounds which shouldnt be needed in the first place.

Kllrbee, if I could give you 1000 thumbs-up here, I would. Because you explain, better than I did or could, just why this ESS system is so profoundly stupid and detrimental, to whit, the fact that it is parasitic on the main battery, and degrades the performance and life of the main battery, all for a 'feature' that most of us do not want and will go out of our way to never use.

 

[multicam]

A little back-of-the-napkin-math using round numbers on the smallest engine option - note my engine is not the 2.0t so I am making assumptions based on memory and quick googling

Assuming the 2.0t gets 25mpg at 2500rpm going 75mph: (75/25)/(75/60) assumes that the vehicle uses about 2.6 gallons per hour at 2500 rpm, and when idling at about 800rpm it can be about 0.01387 gallons per minute, or .832 gallons per hour. Assuming $4 per gallon (not using premium, and using the lower-end of the cheapest regional average fuel cost) you are looking at 1622 minutes of idling being equivalent to $90. It is hard to find any concrete science behind the topic, especially since I am not up to wasting hours doing so, but the only information I can find suggests that the average American spends about 3520 minutes per year waiting at stoplights. So, assuming that only half of those are spent using ESS, that average person would need about 0.92 years of usage to break even with a single aux battery.

Now, this is just some very simplistic deductions, but I am sure that if someone took the time to actually calculate it out, then they would find a much quicker ROI, but it seems like many aren't willing to, and I am not going to because I just don't care enough.

I’m basing my number on tracking 30,000+ miles of driving and hand calculating each tank, half with ESS and half without, and I found that it’s not worth it. To quote from my thread:

“Over the course of 30,435.5 miles, the difference between 17.8 mpg and 18.0 mpg is 18.99 gallons, or $54.12 with the current gas prices near me. Not worth it.”

I ended up replacing my main and aux battery shortly after I completed that analysis. Paid about $90-$100 for the battery.

You did a lot of math there buddy but I had already done it for you

Here’s the thread with my analysis:
https://www.jlwranglerforums.com/fo...n-analysis-2-years-122-tanks-30k-miles.73702/

 

[Fudster]

Tell the middle schooler that it saves about $60 of gas during the time it takes to wear out your $90 aux battery.

Hey Tanner:

As you in essence point out, any fair assessment of whether an ESS system is financally worth it has to counterbalance the savings in gasoline and smog (the latter difficult to quantify), if any, with all the system's costs (green and out of pocket): from batteries to battery disposal, to the ESS battery prematurely aging the main battery, to the cost of the ESS system to buy and maintain, etc.

As I think you appreciate, my focus was trying to show how we can tap the forces of inertia to conserve energy. Initially I tried to wear the hat that said "only physics." But you'll be glad to know I also covered areas with the kid where ESS falls short not only for the kinds of things you mention, but in the JL's current failure (at least in my model) to capture energy found in places like better gearing and regenerative braking.

 

[Heimkehr]

...you'll be glad to know I also covered areas with the kid where ESS falls short not only for the kinds of things you mention, but in the JL's current failure (at least in my model) to capture energy found in places like better gearing and regenerative braking.

Mm. How well did your 6th grader absorb the explanation? And is it going to be on the test?

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