14-50 charging slowly

[joshpinkman]

just had a 240v outlet put in and am using the 14-50 adapter to charge but it's only pulling 16 amps. The guys that installed the outlet checked it again and everything is working properly. On the tesla app it says it getting 240v, 16/16 amps.

 

[RedXowner]

I too had a 240v, 50amp outlet installed at my garage. Car will charge at 40amps if I want it to, but the car defaults to 30amps whenever it charges overnight. That's fine with me. I set the car to be charged and ready to go by 530am, and it always is. In fact, it usually finishes up by 430-445 or so. But the car lets me speed it up to 40amps if I choose to do that. I rarely have. When charging, normally my car shows charging at 30/40amps and 7kW. 40amp charging kicks it up to 10kW. If yours says 16/16 amps, my guess is that the limitation is not the car. it's either the cable or the outlet. The outlet has to be at least 50amps to get a 40amp charge rate. According to another post, the car will only charge a a max of 80% of the amperage of the outlet itself.

 

[Rocky_H]

First, let me address what it's not:

it's either the cable or the outlet. The outlet has to be at least 50amps to get a 40amp charge rate.

No, it's not. The car and charging cable has no way to see what is inside the outlet of the wiring (other than voltage drop check mentioned below). It knows what adapter type is attached, and that has an indicator circuit that tells the car what the maximum amps are. But that would never indicate 16 amps max.

If yours says 16/16 amps, my guess is that the limitation is not the car.

It probably is. One thing I don't think it is would be that the car will check the voltage level before charging, and compare that to voltage level after it ramps up the charging current. If there is a really bad or loose connection somewhere, that can be very resistive and show a large voltage drop. But the symptom of that is that the car will drop to 3/4 of what the max indicated charge level was. So that would show up as 24/32 amps, for instance.

But 16/16 is an indicator symptom of a different thing. The newer versions of all of their models have their onboard chargers built with different numbers of internal modules that handle 16A each. So the 32A charger is 16 X 2, and the 48A charger is 16 X 3. And if one of those internal circuit boards in the charger dies or is defective, the car will at least fail gracefully in using the remaining ones instead of just not working at all. So since your car is saying 16/16, I think one or more of the modules in your car's internal charger is dead.

 

[RedXowner]

That's why I was careful to say "my guess is..." I'm not an electrician, but I am a very happy owner of a Tesla that works as designed. And my assumption is that if there is a component failure in the car, most of the time (but probably not always), there will be some sort of indication on one of the instrument panels that there is a component failure. If there is not such a message to the operator in this case, I would recommend to add to the next update that when a 16A charging modules (or any other electronic module) dies/fails/stops operating, there should be a message to the operator and a recommendation for what to do about it.

 

[Rocky_H]

If there is not such a message to the operator in this case, I would recommend to add to the next update that when a 16A charging modules (or any other electronic module) dies/fails/stops operating, there should be a message to the operator and a recommendation for what to do about it.

That is a good point, that it's such an obvious symptom indicator that it should be able to know that and display a message about it.

 

[sjokomelk]

What color is the ring on the charging port when you are charging? If it is blinking yellow, the plug is not seated correctly in the charging port, and you are limited to 16A. If so, unplug and plug in again trying to push the connector a bit further in.
If it is blinking green there is something else wrong.