This Confuses Me

[THAW]

live in fool's paradise that I'm saving money on gas at stop lights while I'm spending on the energy and equipment

Exactly.

And not just fake saving money, fake reducing resource use and lifecycle polluiton.

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[richk225]

Steve, have you ever tried to monitor your ESS state via the Cluster's Electronic Vehicle Information Center (EVIC)?

If you up or down arrow (the buttons on the left side of your steering wheel), it will come to a page showing the state of the ESS and why it's been disabled. There are dozens of reasons that are possible. Anything from too low of 'engine temperature' to 'battery charging' complaints. My favorite is "Battery Protection Mode", whatever the hell that is?

However, I'm the complete opposite of you. I play with my ESS all the time. It's sort of a different way to cope with red lights. Life is still being wasted while waiting at each and every one but at least now I play the silly Seven Second Rule (SSR) game predicting if I either should (or shouldn't) let the ESS shut the engine off when approaching the stop.

I find I'm way more situationally aware of the intersection dynamics were typically many are not so trivially or easily predictable. How long has the light been red? Are there left turn signals in all directions and if so are they favoring a particular traffic flow? How deep are the number of vehicles queued up? Are there any trucks or pedestrians to really slow things up even further? Does the traffic light cycles seemed to be computer monitored? Where am I at within the overall big picture?

So (for me) ESS provides less mind-numbingly intense boredom while wasting more of my accumulated lifetime doing nothing except just sitting in traffic watching other vehicles move? Have you ever noticed how many times the traffic cycles are timed such that the green is given to the flow with little to no traffic? Thus even stopping all vehicles that could otherwise naturally be moving?

If the gov't really wanted to save fuel and decrease emissions, they should put some effort into better traffic flow modeling. Granted, at high volumes during busy rush hours, fixed cycle times likely work better than predictive techniques. But either way when idling and going nowhere fast, I do enjoy the simple pleasure of a stopped engine at rest. No work being expended while waiting (other than my mind staying engaged with the flow pattern movement) is somehow a little more soothing, or at least much less frustrating.

ESS gives me something to be way more involved with during mundane commutes. Yet I tend to prefer route selection that minimizes the shear number of traffic lights vs shorter distance to destination. I'll chose much longer travel distance to bypass traffic congestion, sometimes by many dozens of miles, everytime. So ESS typically saves me little in my quest to avoid red lights altogether. Luckily living along the Colorado Front Range, my lifted JL on 35's gives me a lot more options to navigate around the chaotic urban rat race. Well, at least to some degree.

So I do everything I can to keep my ESS in good working order. I find typically that the only way to do that is to frequently charge my batts externally. There's just not enough joules available from the stock alternator to keep up with the ESS activity in anything near a typical commute. The charging cycle times are certainly diminished whenever the engine is stopped. And obviously the batteries are being further depleted on each and every ESS event. So the higher the ESS event frequency the worse the charging problem becomes.

I find that with ESS, I've become an EV driver without any electric motor. The only way to make it work reliably is to plug the batteries into an external 10 amp charger/maintainer. Worse, I find that to get it to really behave well, I have to charge each battery separately by disconnecting the negative terminals and charging each one independently. Even more work.

So in summary, you either have to work hard at either approach. You really have to do something to keep the ESS system from working at all, or even that much harder at keeping it working as intended. There is just no way where it will just work the way you want it too without performing some exceptional effort.

It is absolutely insanely impossible that ESS will ever work in your favor. Another grand bureaucratic idea were nothing but unintended consequences seem to prevail.

Jay

On your last sentence, you mentioned the bureaucratic idea.
I wonder if they took into account what it takes to make a battery and replace and recycle ???
Personally I think you would "Save the Planet" by not having another battery. 392 gets along fine without it

 

[richk225]

I would tell you that when the battery charge is low on my 392 Rubicon a message is displayed on the dash that the AUX switches are temporary disabled.

My wifes Grand Cherokee has a 3.6 with Auto start stop and the AUX battery has been dead for over 2 years and never any issues other than message for a second that ESS is disabled. I have kept an eye on the battery by checking voltage by meter and by the Jeep info screen

 

[its_overson]

The ESS warning light is an early warning system for other issues like engine misfires. If this light gets triggered while you are driving, it means that there is an issue somewhere and ESS has been disabled. This is what happened to me when I was having misfires, the ESS error light would turn on before the misfire count reached the threshold to throw an error code and light the CEL.

This is a big reason why states with annual safety inspections (like here in VA) will not pass a vehicle with a warning light on. It’s not necessarily the “known” they fail for. It’s the potential “unknown”.

So, my response to the original question would be. Keeping the light off reduces the risk of failing annual state inspection.

 

[SargeDiesel]

The ESS warning light is an early warning system for other issues like engine misfires. If this light gets triggered while you are driving, it means that there is an issue somewhere and ESS has been disabled. This is what happened to me when I was having misfires, the ESS error light would turn on before the misfire count reached the threshold to throw an error code and light the CEL.

I would think, atleast in theory... even if you have the ESS manually turned off, it seems you should still get "other issues" type error messages... atleast I hope so.

 

[SargeDiesel]

With deference to Jerry's legitimate reason post immediately above https://www.jlwranglerforums.com/forum/threads/this-confuses-me.123060/page-3#post-2568158 to justify taking the steps that you did, that said--and this perhaps was the essence of my point--you buying tech to set it and forget it would have been handled for you by the vehicle by keeping Fuse 42 intact and letting the vehicle do the setting (if not forgetting) for you; the latter reminded by the ESS off EVIC light in the dash.

My fuse 42 remains unmolested as well as my batteries... atleast for now... lol so currently all of my Jeeps parts are in tact and functioning as designed.

 

[richk225]

I would think, atleast in theory... even if you have the ESS manually turned off, it seems you should still get "other issues" type error messages... atleast I hope so.

I can tell you at least with the Grand Cherokee there was no ESS light blinking when the AUX battery went dead or ever from all I can recall is a short message on the info screen stating it was disabled.

 

[AndySpill]

I would think, atleast in theory... even if you have the ESS manually turned off, it seems you should still get "other issues" type error messages... atleast I hope so.

Michael, I might be missing your point but I think Jerry's @Jebiruph referring to disconnecting Fuse 42 (or jumpering N1 and N2, his originally method) to keep the EVIC warning light in the dash, that informs the driver that ESS has been turned off, from illuminating....

and you are referring to the ESS off switch(?)

Turning that switch off, manually or with tech, would still allow the ESS off light to appear in the EVIC as the early warning sign of issues perhaps not even related to ESS that Jerry describes with a Fuse 42 and Aux battery pull.

 

[SargeDiesel]

Michael, I might be missing your point but I think Jerry's @Jebiruph referring to disconnecting Fuse 42 (or jumpering N1 and N2, his originally method) to keep the EVIC warning light in the dash, that informs the driver that ESS has been turned off, from illuminating....

and you are referring to the ESS off switch(?)

Turning that switch off, manually or with tech, would still allow the ESS off light to appear in the EVIC as the early warning sign of issues perhaps not even related to ESS that Jerry describes with a Fuse 42 and Aux battery pull.

Andy,

No worries... it was more of a question than me making a point.

I was curious if when ESS eliminator tech is used and the ESS "off" button has been pushed/remembered... would/do you still get the error codes like @Jebiruph mentioned ?

(In my scenario, f-42/aux batt both in place).

 

[Jebiruph]

The ESS warning light is an early warning system for other issues like engine misfires. If this light gets triggered while you are driving, it means that there is an issue somewhere and ESS has been disabled. This is what happened to me when I was having misfires, the ESS error light would turn on before the misfire count reached the threshold to throw an error code and light the CEL.

This is referring to whether or not to remove fuse 42 when disconnecting the aux battery. The answer is to remove the fuse so the warning light is not on all the time and still alerts due to other issues.

 

[AndySpill]

Andy,

No worries... it was more of a question than me making a point.

I was curious if when ESS eliminator tech is used and the ESS "off" button has been pushed/remembered... would/do you still get the error codes like @Jebiruph mentioned ?

(In my scenario, f-42/aux batt both in place).

I imagine that the conditions that might generate an EVIC light indicating ESS has been turned off by the vehicle, or the error codes associated with that, regardless of what causes that EVIC light to come on, including some non ESS related issues like Jerry @Jebiruph describes, are unaffected by the state of the operator controlled ESS off button, and/or what if any tech has been used to control the state of that ESS off button.

 

[AndySpill]

On your last sentence, you mentioned the bureaucratic idea.
I wonder if they took into account what it takes to make a battery and replace and recycle ???
Personally I think you would "Save the Planet" by not having another battery. 392 gets along fine without it

It's an excellent point.

Take Teslas for example--which I have nothing against except that their true cost in green footprint to produce, if not then operate more cleanly, isn't fully reflected in their purchase price.

I'm not looking for hard working consumers to pay more for things than they already do, but any economist worth their weight in salt will tell you that unless prices reflect true cost, people won't be motivated to make the wisest purchase decisions.

To create and dispose of Tesla batteries, just by one of one example, comes at its own cost.

None of what I say implies lack of resolve on my part that we need to move off of a fossil fuel standard.

 

[richk225]

It's an excellent point.

Take Teslas for example--which I have nothing against except that their true cost in green footprint to produce, if not then operate more cleanly, isn't fully reflected in their purchase price.

I'm not looking for hard working consumers to pay more for things than they already do, but any economist worth their weight in salt will tell you that unless prices reflect true cost, people won't be motivated to make the wisest purchase decisions.

To create and dispose of Tesla batteries, just by one of one example, comes at its own cost.

None of what I say implies lack of resolve on my part that we need to move off of a fossil fuel standard.

I understand what you are saying. The other day there was a special on about alternative power and just how much it costs to produce one wind turbine and the years that it would take to recoup the money, but it`s not about the money it`s about using less fossil fuels
They also showed a facility that can go through a EV battery and replace the dead cells and sell it as a reconditioned battery, just like they do with car, industrial batteries, and even my Goddaughters OneWheel battery crapped out I replaced it with a battery that was remanufactured and had more power and added mileage to the ride time. Times are changing that is for sure

 

[jeepoch]

Also, at some point in the battery saga the issue of mining 'rare-earth' elements are going to haunt us just like the depletion of pumping (including fracking) out fossil fuels.

Rare elements are generally found in the earth as ore which requires the processing of many (many) tonnes of material to extract small amounts of the 'stuff'. To what degree will this continue until it's usefulness no longer meets demand? Recall, it's called 'rare' for a reason.

The recent push to eliminate ICE is based on an idea that simply transfers the control of energy production. One that is based on the desire to migrate the distribution of material that is converted into energy at the vehicle to one that is converted (and more centrally managed) at the generating station power plant. Batteries are nothing more than an alternate mechanism of energy distribution. So it really comes down to comparing the amount of energy stored in a tank of petrol to a battery for a similarly comparable vehicle for a particularly specific purpose.

Currently, even with the latest technologies they don't match well. Battery energy densities today simply don't yet hold near the same amount of energy at the vehicle as their gasoline tank counterparts.

Furthermore, the environmental arguments are only but a subterfuge. The output of any form of emissions is simply moved from the vehicle's tailpipe to the centralized generating station. Along with the burden of transporting all this along an overwhelmed and aging power grid.

Don't get me wrong, the need of transporting energy via fuel tanker trucks to gas stations is much (much) less efficient than high voltage lines. But as of today, the infrastructure still favors the physical transportation of gasoline. Until the power grid becomes as reliable as tankers, EV drivers will still be required to haul around portable generators and gas cans in their trunks.

We consumers are unfortunately caught in the middle of this energy redistribution paradigm shift. Kind of a similar one that our great grandfather's fought between the switch over from the horse and carriage to the motorcar.

It is inevitable that the electric motor will indeed eventually phase out the internal combustion engine. But until the battery is as viable as a tank of gas, this transition will be painful. We the portable, mobile society consumers demand a better alternative than what it's replacing. Unfortunately today all we're getting is a tonne of hype.

Batteries are no better than petroleum and may become even more precious (expensive) over time as the rare-earth and other toxic elements are mined away and become even more rare.

Clearly, the overall answer has to lie elsewhere. Neither of these two solutions are sustainable over time. We're all just bickering over the amount of denero we all have to pay until a sound solution is discovered.

My appeal is to continue to provide both options for as long as possible in order to reduce the amount of burden to society. Eliminating ICE prematurely will certainly cause more power grid blackouts as EV deployment increases. Competition clearly allows for more time to adjust. Forcing a single solution before it's viable is not a responsible direction.

Fuel cells, or even squirrels on tread mills may be a better answer overall. Batteries in my opinion are going to be more trouble than gasoline.

If you don't agree, just wait until you go sell your EV with a depleted battery. You're resale value will tank worse than trying to sell a dead horse.

Jay

 

[AndySpill]

Also, at some point in the battery saga the issue of mining 'rare-earth' elements are going to haunt us just like the depletion of pumping (including fracking) out fossil fuels.

Rare elements are generally found in the earth as ore which requires the processing of many (many) tonnes of material to extract small amounts of the 'stuff'. To what degree will this continue until it's usefulness no longer meets demand? Recall, it's called 'rare' for a reason.

The recent push to eliminate ICE is based on an idea that simply transfers the control of energy production. One that is based on the desire to migrate the distribution of material that is converted into energy at the vehicle to one that is converted (and more centrally managed) at the generating station power plant. Batteries are nothing more than an alternate mechanism of energy distribution. So it really comes down to comparing the amount of energy stored in a tank of petrol to a battery for a similarly comparable vehicle for a particularly specific purpose.

Currently, even with the latest technologies they don't match well. Battery energy densities today simply don't yet hold near the same amount of energy at the vehicle as their gasoline tank counterparts.

Furthermore, the environmental arguments are only but a subterfuge. The output of any form of emissions is simply moved from the vehicle's tailpipe to the centralized generating station. Along with the burden of transporting all this along an overwhelmed and aging power grid.

Don't get me wrong, the need of transporting energy via fuel tanker trucks to gas stations is much (much) less efficient than high voltage lines. But as of today, the infrastructure still favors the physical transportation of gasoline. Until the power grid becomes as reliable as tankers, EV drivers will still be required to haul around portable generators and gas cans in their trunks.

We consumers are unfortunately caught in the middle of this energy redistribution paradigm shift. Kind of a similar one that our great grandfather's fought between the switch over from the horse and carriage to the motorcar.

It is inevitable that the electric motor will indeed eventually phase out the internal combustion engine. But until the battery is as viable as a tank of gas, this transition will be painful. We the portable, mobile society consumers demand a better alternative than what it's replacing. Unfortunately today all we're getting is a tonne of hype.

Batteries are no better than petroleum and may become even more precious (expensive) over time as the rare-earth and other toxic elements are mined away and become even more rare.

Clearly, the overall answer has to lie elsewhere. Neither of these two solutions are sustainable over time. We're all just bickering over the amount of denero we all have to pay until a sound solution is discovered.

My appeal is to continue to provide both options for as long as possible in order to reduce the amount of burden to society. Eliminating ICE prematurely will certainly cause more power grid blackouts as EV deployment increases. Competition clearly allows for more time to adjust. Forcing a single solution before it's viable is not a responsible direction.

Fuel cells, or even squirrels on tread mills may be a better answer overall. Batteries in my opinion are going to be more trouble than gasoline.

If you don't agree, just wait until you go sell your EV with a depleted battery. You're resale value will tank worse than trying to sell a dead horse.

Jay

Jay:

I agree with a lot of what you said here, usually say on the forum, and regardless, respect your thoughts, intelligence, and ability to express ideas.

But when you write

The recent push to eliminate ICE is based on an idea that simply transfers the control of energy production. One that is based on the desire to migrate the distribution of material that is converted into energy at the vehicle to one that is converted (and more centrally managed) at the generating station power plant.

Aren't these centralized power production facilities migrating to technologies that (if not in their creation or even demolition after their useful life) emitting less green house gases during their active life than oil or coal burning plants? And even if they are burning fossil fuels or transition fuels (e.g. natural gas, which burns cleaner but still admits a ton of CO2) aren't such centralized facilities far more efficient than a decentralized model of energy production where there would be more, but less efficient energy production facilities?

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