250Kw Supercharging nuances?

[jlixfeld]

I’ve got a MYP that I’m on my first long road trip with. Trying to make it from Toronto to Quebec City. I left Toronto at 100% (charged to 100% in anticipation of the road trip. Normally charge to 90%) and got to Kingston with about 130km remaining. Plugged into the 250Kw charger and it went immediately up to 250kW and then dropped and dipped and dropped. What I thought would be a 20 minute full charge has turned into a 45 minute ordeal. Now, at 479km of range, I’m getting 9Kw.

The car started preconditioning itself about 1.5hrs before we reached the charger.

The guy next to me said he was getting pretty abysmal speeds as well.

Re-plugged into the same charger, no change. Moved stalls. No change.

Is there some supercharger foo clue that I’m missing?

 

[Ciaopec]

I’ve got a MYP that I’m on my first long road trip with. Trying to make it from Toronto to Quebec City. I left Toronto at 100% (charged to 100% in anticipation of the road trip. Normally charge to 90%) and got to Kingston with about 130km remaining. Plugged into the 250Kw charger and it went immediately up to 250kW and then dropped and dipped and dropped. What I thought would be a 20 minute full charge has turned into a 45 minute ordeal. Now, at 479km of range, I’m getting 9Kw.

The car started preconditioning itself about 1.5hrs before we reached the charger.

The guy next to me said he was getting pretty abysmal speeds as well.

Re-plugged into the same charger, no change. Moved stalls. No change.

Is there some supercharger foo clue that I’m missing?

Why are you doing a full charge? Required for the next supercharger/destination? After about a 50% charge the rates drop and you find yourself waiting 45 minutes. Charge to about 50% and move on if a full charge isn't required. Your preconditioning is also causing more energy use. I just shoot for a point close to the next supercharger and about 20 minutes out change to actual supercharger then the preconditioning begins.
None of your stops (I assume Cornwall, Montreal,St Eulalie) require more than about 55% except Kingston at 58%.

 

[glide]

I’ve got a MYP that I’m on my first long road trip with. Trying to make it from Toronto to Quebec City. I left Toronto at 100% (charged to 100% in anticipation of the road trip. Normally charge to 90%) and got to Kingston with about 130km remaining. Plugged into the 250Kw charger and it went immediately up to 250kW and then dropped and dipped and dropped. What I thought would be a 20 minute full charge has turned into a 45 minute ordeal. Now, at 479km of range, I’m getting 9Kw.

The car started preconditioning itself about 1.5hrs before we reached the charger.

The guy next to me said he was getting pretty abysmal speeds as well.

Re-plugged into the same charger, no change. Moved stalls. No change.

Is there some supercharger foo clue that I’m missing?

There is a charging curve. You’re going to get 250kW max for a very limited period of time.

As you get closer to 80% “full” expect speeds well below 100kW at best.

As you get closer to 100%, it’s not even worth being plugged in.

I’m sure someone has a chart posted on the forums for what speeds you should be expecting. There is no such thing as a 20 minute empty to full supercharger stop.

 

[IROAR]

You will notice the same slowing as you approach 90% while home charging. The goal in this type of travel is to compute the shortest time from point A to point B You will find charging to something less that 100% will get you to your destination must faster.

 

[Ciaopec]

I’ve got a MYP that I’m on my first long road trip with. Trying to make it from Toronto to Quebec City. I left Toronto at 100% (charged to 100% in anticipation of the road trip. Normally charge to 90%) and got to Kingston with about 130km remaining. Plugged into the 250Kw charger and it went immediately up to 250kW and then dropped and dipped and dropped. What I thought would be a 20 minute full charge has turned into a 45 minute ordeal. Now, at 479km of range, I’m getting 9Kw.

The car started preconditioning itself about 1.5hrs before we reached the charger.

The guy next to me said he was getting pretty abysmal speeds as well.

Re-plugged into the same charger, no change. Moved stalls. No change.

Is there some supercharger foo clue that I’m missing?

PS. You may want to experiment with percentage battery vs km. It's probably more accurate .

 

[Vines]

I like to use A Better Route Planner for trips where I want to plan ahead what to do with my charges.

When I put in your road trip it says to charge to 90%, then charge 15 minutes in Kingston, 22 minutes in Montreal and you will arrive in Quebec in 9 hours and 9 minutes with 10% battery.

A Better Routeplanner

As others have pointed out when road tripping for speed, you never want to charge to 100%. The ideal situation is to charge just enough to arrive at the next charger with 5-10% remaining, then see 250 kW charging for maybe 5-8 minutes followed by a taper down as state of charge increases. If you are still charging at 75 kW or so and another charger is within range, then you probably are charging too long where you are.

 

[GtiMart]

As others have said, the faster way to read trip a Tesla is to surf from charger to charger with as low a SOC as you're comfortable with. More stops = faster. Look at this graph that shows roughly the power you get at various SOC. Clearly it's faster when the battery's empty.

Tesla Model 3 On SuperCharger V3 — Adds 50% Range In Under 12 Minutes! (Charts!)

 

[jlixfeld]

I appreciate the ideologist of charger surfing. It make sense, and while maybe I approached the super chargers as “hey, let me get as much charge as I can so maybe I can forgo stopping at another one and overall shorten my trip” the reality is that when I plugged the charger in, it said something like “10 minutes to continue trip”. Even while the charge rate dropped from 250kW to 20-30kW, it still said “10 minutes” and kept saying “10 minutes” for a good 30 minutes. Then it said 9 minutes for about 15 minutes, etc, etc. The charger stops took way way longer than what we were expecting based on west the nav system said it would.

On our way home, I’ll be sure to take much more detailed notes!

What a trip!

 

[RTPEV]

Since I tend to trust ABRP's predictive ability better than the Tesla nav system, I usually pay more attention to its recommendations than the nav system (and it has a little less of the Windows "copying file -- time remaining" jumpiness. But even so, as I'm pulling into the Supercharger, I make note of the SOC % that ABRP recommends I get to in order to make it to my next stop. When I reach that SOC % while charging, that's when I know I can leave. I don't really pay attention to what the car, or even ABRP is saying about how many more minutes (typically though, I get to that point before I'm ready to leave!)

I have very high confidence in ABRP's predictions, and thus I have no qualms of setting a 10% SOC arrival target (5% for home). After letting ABRP calibrate to my driving style, I find it's rarely off by more than 2-3%, and I'm always monitoring my progress on the energy graph en route so I know if I'm on track or not. Of course all bets are off in the cold weather! Even though ABRP supposedly takes cold weather into account, I've found its accuracy in the cold is a bit off. I would up my arrival SOC to 15% or 20% in the winter.

 

[GWord]

I appreciate the ideologist of charger surfing. It make sense, and while maybe I approached the super chargers as “hey, let me get as much charge as I can so maybe I can forgo stopping at another one and overall shorten my trip” the reality is that when I plugged the charger in, it said something like “10 minutes to continue trip”. Even while the charge rate dropped from 250kW to 20-30kW, it still said “10 minutes” and kept saying “10 minutes” for a good 30 minutes. Then it said 9 minutes for about 15 minutes, etc, etc. The charger stops took way way longer than what we were expecting based on west the nav system said it would.

On our way home, I’ll be sure to take much more detailed notes!

What a trip!

Might have been a charger that needed maintenance? I think you'll find, over your course of ownership, that you will typically get the expected charging curve barring external variables. One item to note is that the xx minutes to go timer ticks off in 5 minute increments. So even in the best case, it will show "10 minutes to go" for 5 minutes.