12volt

[SSedan]

2014 P85

So last night I ran the car down to 1 mile ran the heat hard to drain it idea being run it down to charge it back up and see what the range is, thought it was pretty cool it told me I was almost too far from known charging locations. Well today I got the 12volt warning........guessing the heavy heat load was just too much on the 12volt of unknown age, better now than January.
Nearest Ranger is more than 2 hours away, service center is 3 or 5 hours away with the 5 hour one being preferred, wait on hold over 20 minutes to get a nice young woman on the line that is NOTHING but a secretary, could not even give me a rough guess on 12volt replacement cost. She took my info and is going to have the Ranger scheduler call me, car has 75k no extended warranty so I am out of pocket on this..

I find this really disappointing, a year ago when I was looking at this car a call to Eden Prairie got me a knowledgeable person whom I later met in person when I brought the car in.

In this cold climate I can not consider the lithium replacement, so I am probably going to stick with stock but may consider self replacement.

Are there any other options I should be aware of?

 

[tga]

Coincidence, probably. The heater runs off the HV pack. The 12V battery isn't involved.

In this cold climate I can not consider the lithium replacement

Why? What does cold climate have to do with it?

 

[SSedan]

My understanding is that the HV pack charging the 12volt while sitting in the windswept parking lot at work that will be negative teens below zero every year and can hit mid 20s below would be a bad thing.

 

[tga]

My understanding is that the HV pack charging the 12volt while sitting in the windswept parking lot at work that will be negative teens below zero every year and can hit mid 20s below would be a bad thing.

Good point. I hadn't thought of that.

 

[SSedan]

In general it feels like a relatively small number of us are posting about below 0F use and it's additional concerns, the instant heat is a big plus though.

 

[SSedan]

Contacted the company that sells the lithium 12volts and the response was as non-technical and salesman like as possible, simply a statement they have shipped them to all climates and never had a complaint.

IMO with that answer they could have had customers who bought, then had a quick failure realized it was their mistake for trying to use the battery in too cold a weather and didn't bother with warranty replacement because it is the wrong part so why get another.

Not saying that is the case just was hoping for an answer not a salesman.

 

[Hank42]

2014 P85
In this cold climate I can not consider the lithium replacement, so I am probably going to stick with stock but may consider self replacement.

Are there any other options I should be aware of?

Hi there!

The 12V battery is a straightforward replacement - less than an hour job with no getting messy.
The hard part is locating a 12V battery with the reversed terminals. I have no idea why, but Tesla decided to go with a stock battery, and then make the manufacturer reverse the terminals. The 3rd party lithium batter is the only third party drop in replacement I am aware of - but it seems a bit $$ to me.

 

[SSedan]

Anyone get Tesla to mail a battery?

 

[ewoodrick]

2014 P85

So last night I ran the car down to 1 mile ran the heat hard to drain it idea being run it down to charge it back up and see what the range is, thought it was pretty cool it told me I was almost too far from known charging locations. Well today I got the 12volt warning........guessing the heavy heat load was just too much on the 12volt of unknown age, better now than January.
Nearest Ranger is more than 2 hours away, service center is 3 or 5 hours away with the 5 hour one being preferred, wait on hold over 20 minutes to get a nice young woman on the line that is NOTHING but a secretary, could not even give me a rough guess on 12volt replacement cost. She took my info and is going to have the Ranger scheduler call me, car has 75k no extended warranty so I am out of pocket on this..

I find this really disappointing, a year ago when I was looking at this car a call to Eden Prairie got me a knowledgeable person whom I later met in person when I brought the car in.

In this cold climate I can not consider the lithium replacement, so I am probably going to stick with stock but may consider self replacement.

Are there any other options I should be aware of?

Running the battery to 0 just to test it isn't a great idea. Running the heat at max while getting close to 0 is an even worse idea. Running the 12V battery to 0 is taking away one of its few lives.
In real life, it you are below 20% main battery, you should be switching to seat heating, not cabin heating.
Also, don't you have plug in at work for engine block heating? Lots of places do.

 

[SSedan]

No plug ins hundreds of emplyees, secure facility with fences, few folks used to run extension cords but that was stopped, what would that do for the 12volt anyway.

I am open to the idea I caused this but I have owned for almost a year and before that it sat on a Ford lot possibly as much as 8 months, so I would bet the battery is a couple years old anyway.
If I had gotten a proper service rep I would have asked them.

 

[Brass Guy]

If your car is a 2014, it's a little more difficult to swap out. The refresh moved the 12V to a much more accessible location.
I swapped mine (2013) out. It was a bit of a pain since you have to rotate it and pull it out and it gets heavy quick if you don't find the right angle. There's a video where someone removed the frunk tub (or maybe just the microwave box from it) and then you can push the battery up from below.

I don't think you harmed the 12V battery. Though the heater runs on HV, I'm pretty sure the blower runs on 12V. I think at some point the system stops charging the 12V, but my guess would be after the HV is too low to drive; so it probably didn't get run down at all from your procedure.

 

[Rocky_H]

My understanding is that the HV pack charging the 12volt while sitting in the windswept parking lot at work that will be negative teens below zero every year and can hit mid 20s below would be a bad thing.

That's correct, but could be elaborated on a little bit. Other than running completely dead being about the most damaging thing for lithium ion batteries, charging them while extremely cold is probably the second most damaging thing. Most other types of equipment that uses lithium ion batteries has temperature sensors in it so that it will just refuse to charge at all until the battery is warmer. My battery powered Black & Decker leaf blower does that. My Zero S electric motorcycle does that. For systems that don't have any battery pack warming, it's either prevent it from happening, or let it happen and cause some irreversible damage to the battery. And this doesn't even have to be really cold temperatures. 30-some degrees Fahrenheit, like just barely around the freezing point is too cold for recharging. So anywhere that gets to teens and 20's temperatures and just has a 12V battery that can't be warmed up will be killing that battery if the car forces recharging on it.

 

[SSedan]

I got another reply from the company that stated the climate would be hard on it but argued that since the HV pack will be warming itself and such the 12-volt isn't likely to get all that cold. I might risk that if I lived somewhere at only saw teens but with teens below zero every single year and the completely open windswept area the car is parked at work and unheated parking at home I really don't think I want to try this.
Ranger is supposed to call me today, if it is $125ish as I hear it for the battery or $220ish as I have seen(maybe YouTube?????) for them to install it, if they will send a Ranger for that price I will just have them do it, otherwise I might see if they will ship me one. I am plenty capable of the work, having done complex internal engine work, and ring and pinion swaps on other vehicles in the past, but if $220ish get it done by them in half an hour or so, I have a honey-do list a mile long I will focus on. Going to go try and pull 50ft. of 2gauge shortly though that is for my car not on the honey-do list.

If they tell me $400 for a Ranger and don't want to ship me a battery to do it myself I might just try the Lithium because I am confident that after me specifically asking about my climate the company would stand behind it if I killed it quickly.

 

[Rocky_H]

I got another reply from the company that stated the climate would be hard on it but argued that since the HV pack will be warming itself and such the 12-volt isn't likely to get all that cold.

Wow. No, that person doesn't know what they are talking about.
(1) The Tesla battery doesn't sit there and warm itself all day long. It lets itself get down below freezing because it isn't being used.
(2) The 12V battery is in a different part of the car, not very near the main battery pack anyway, so even if the main battery pack is getting warmed, the 12V is not.
(3) When the car is sitting for many hours, and the main battery pack is not being heated, it will still go through a few of those cycles of recharging the 12V battery, because discharging from a lithium ion battery while cold isn't bad for it. So it will charge up the 12V while it is very cold while the main pack still isn't even heating itself!

 

[SSedan]

I didn't completely buy the story. I do think there is potential the 12volt stays above ambient but not the 45+ degrees I would need it to but I also don't know how quick and severe the damage done by cold charging is.
They did allow that it will be degraded but I don't know how badly.

 

[zap fizzle]

I have read on this site that the 12V battery is not supported (charged) by the main pack after the main pack drops below 5%.

I haven't tested this, but if it's true, it could account for why discharging your main pack has killed your 12V.

 

[SSedan]

I am having trouble getting a Ranger scheduled, I am trying to be patient because every time I call it involved 20minutes on hold and "we will have them call you" and Friday I made sue they knew I was OK with email. If I can't schedule an appointment from the Ranger down toward Chicago I will call Minneapolis again and see if I can either get a battery shipped or I will go visit my sister and buy a battery in person.
This summer's service experience is the complete opposite of last summer, I can only presume the Model 3 is overwhelming them.

 

[SSedan]

Today another un-returned voicemail to Chicago Service with phone number and email left and then I called Eden Prairie Parts department to see about getting one shipped or picking one up, after an honest 30minutes on hold I hung up, that is the third time in under 2 weeks I have spent more than 20minutes on hold.

Chicago is 3 hours with no traffic(yeah right) Eden Prairie is probably 4:15 but my sister lives near there so I can visit and spend a night, maybe take one of my daughters to visit her cousin.

 

[SSedan]

Last night I got someone from Eden Prairie to return emails when I asked about coming and buying a battery and they could see in the system a flag for mobile to call me back and. Well it is after 4pm the next day and no call............

So would the poster who disagrees with me posting something other than blind praise please tell me why 11days in from initial call and no scheduled appointment yet is amazingly wonderful?
I am hours away from a Ranger and a Ranger is how they want to handle it, I expect them to try and lump it into a trip up for others(2hour drive each way), at this point I have to either hope that happens before the car is dead or I need to go get a battery.

 

[SSedan]

So yesterday afternoon after still not getting a call back I reached out to the one person who was responding to me again and within an hour or two got a call back from a woman who's demeanor or rushed and very short made me think this finally did get attention from someone further up the food chain.
Scheduled for Tuesday, which will be I think 18 days after my initial call, given my distance from Ranger base camp I am pleased to hear they would be in the area within a week of actually scheduling, this was a concern I had with not getting calls back I did not think they would be able to do it in a day or two because it only makes sense to try and group some appointments. I don't like cutting it so close to the estimate of 3 weeks or so to when the battery actually dies, I know this is a loose estimate.

Quote is reasonable at $150 for the battery, $60 in labor. I am capable of the work but since I can not get anyone to say they will ship a battery, driving to get one would have been a headache.