2 Newbie Questions

[WannabeOwner]

Tried one of the charger leads and nothing

Seems unlikely this is the case but just to be sure:

Model-3 can only charge from CCS connectors.

Majority of Supercharger Stalls have been converted to have both the old Tesla Proprietary lead and also the newer CCS lead. Some sites have not yet been fully converted and they have just a couple of stalls converted

As such Model-3 can only charge at stalls that have TWO leads.

Woodhall Southbound only has 2 stalls converted, Model-3 cannot charge at any of the other stalls.

And then it is important that you use the CCS lead - its the one with the bigger, chunkier, double-headed plug on it.

 

[NorfolkMustard]

Have you successfully supercharged before?

 

[NorfolkMustard]

A good short video showing the difference between the cables and old/updated stalls here.

The confusion by new owners is understandable, especially since the old S/X cable looks identical to the type2 cable all M3s have in their boot from tesla. Unless you know some stalls have 2 cables, you're not going to go looking for one if the stall you happened to reverse into only has 1 cable and the cable looks like it will fit.

Unless the delivery centre you collect from has a supercharger onsite (e.g. Heathrow) there really should be a dummy supercharger stall at all delivery centres. It just takes a second to point and say "by the way, use the stalls with 2 cables, and use this cable at the top"

 

[Roy W.]

Day 4 with shiny Model 3 - still loving it - arrived Woodall Services on M1 near Sheffield at about midnight.
Tried one of the charger leads and nothing. Phoned two numbers I found (not easily, I might add) one said try webchat in office hours (great!), so I tried ‘emergency roadside assistance’ - maybe not an emergency, but stick on M1 at midnight with two daughters, I tried it anyway.
Got a ‘we are busy helping others will be with you shortly’ message and decided after 7 minutes to hang up, drive back into main Services area where the big standard chargers were (back down the wrong way of services Exit lane I might add).

Slow charged for half an hour then limped home.

Absolutely fuming. Tempted to return my car, which I otherwise live to bits.

Why isn’t there an easy to find number for charging issues?!?! It’s the biggest fear together with why isn’t there someone to answer emergency roadside assistance calls immediately? Can’t imagine Tesla are inundated at midnight with emergencies or something is wrong.

When I charged at Woodhall on 23 August, on my way from fetching the car from Stockport, I found that one of the two CCS dual-cable stalls was out of order. I plugged in and nothing happened. I then moved to the adjacent stall and it was fine. Did you try both of the CCS stalls?

 

[WannabeOwner]

The confusion by new owners is understandable, especially since the old S/X cable looks identical to the type2 cable

I haven't looked at it closely, but from memory the Supercharger Type-2 plug has a "notch" so that it won't fit other cars ... to avoid any confusion.

If the Model-3 has the appropriate notch-slot too?? that's an opportunity missed and a bit of a foot-shoot

 

[NorfolkMustard]

Yeah, is it this little triangle at the top of the middle pin?

However, that's only been added to the bottom cable in dual-cable stalls. it's not there on the single cable stalls.
You can see the difference in Bjorn's video above

e.g.

Single cable stall

dual-cable stall

Also, if you're one end of a row of 16 stalls - the stall has one cable and you don't know there are 2 different stalls - you're going to plug it in, it will fit but won't work and you just think it's broken. If only you'd gone down the other end of the 16...

 

[NorfolkMustard]

And for completeness, here's the CCS on dual-cable stalls

 

[WannabeOwner]

the stall has one cable and you don't know there are 2 different stalls - you're going to plug it in, it will fit but won't work and you just think it's broken.

That's going to catch out pretty much all new Model-3 owners surely? People reading the forums will be in the minority ... and even then you need to have read the right message amongst all the other posts ...

My recollection was wrong, sadly, I thought all existing Type-2 Supercharger cables had the "Won't fit in a normal Type-2 port" lug