85D First Impressions

[Park2670]

Thanks for the review. Glad you are liking the new car.

 

[S2X]

There was a couple taking delivery of a P85D right next to me that was there when I arrived and was still there when I left.

Another way to find out what color was purchased is to find out who picked up the P85D next to breser

I took delivery in September 2014 right before the "D" was release.
After the "D" was release I was trying to figure a way to get the "D" maybe retrofitted but it is what it is. My car did come with Autopilot without the extra cost.

 

[Andyw2100]

Another way to find out what color was purchased is to find out who picked up the P85D next to breser

I took delivery in September 2014 right before the "D" was release.
After the "D" was release I was trying to figure a way to get the "D" maybe retrofitted but it is what it is. My car did come with Autopilot without the extra cost.

If you took delivery in September 2014 that was right before the D was announced, not right before it was released.

The first Ds were delivered in late November or early December. I believe MarcG was the first forum member to take delivery of a P85D, and that he did so in early December--December 12, if my memory serves.

 

[S2X]

If you took delivery in September 2014 that was right before the D was announced, not right before it was released.

The first Ds were delivered in late November or early December. I believe MarcG was the first forum member to take delivery of a P85D, and that he did so in early December--December 12, if my memory serves.

oops, I meant "announced"
hopefully Tesla will make the "D" a retrofitted kit soon

 

[donv]

Good luck with that one-- given that they won't even retrofit parking sensors, I think the only "retrofit" to get a D is to buy a new car.

oops, I meant "announced"
hopefully Tesla will make the "D" a retrofitted kit soon

 

[Saghost]

oops, I meant "announced"
hopefully Tesla will make the "D" a retrofitted kit soon

I'm assuming this was supposed to be funny?

Tesla made major structural changes to the front end to accommodate the front motor; there's no way it will be retrofitted.
Walter

 

[eco5280]

It's actually pretty easy to retro some grunt under the hood. Step one, go to a strip mall with a few dollars and a dream. Step two:

 

[Electric700]

Great review Breser! Thanks for taking the time to do it :smile:.

 

[breser]

Took the 85D in to get XPEL Ultimate, Opticoat and Tint today. I had it over the weekend and I've found a few minor nits. I'm sending service an email to start planning what to do about them, but they're all very minor.

There's a clicking sound coming from the back seat area. Hear it whenever you go over a bump. I know they had my back seat out to get to some wiring, so I'm guessing they didn't get something back in just right.

Rattle in the dash around the drivers side outside vent. My S85 had the same issue. This comes and goes.

Refuses to charge at 80A on my HPWC. The S85 did so just fine. I turn it up to 80A, plug it in and it turns itself right back down to 79A. Really strange because I can't fathom what's helpful about turning it down by 1A. It refuses to let me turn it up from 79A when plugged in like the pilot signal is saying it's plugged into a 79A charger. I figure service can help me by seeing if this is just something that's happening with my HPWC or something to do with the car.

 

[Andyw2100]

Refuses to charge at 80A on my HPWC. The S85 did so just fine. I turn it up to 80A, plug it in and it turns itself right back down to 79A. Really strange because I can't fathom what's helpful about turning it down by 1A. It refuses to let me turn it up from 79A when plugged in like the pilot signal is saying it's plugged into a 79A charger. I figure service can help me by seeing if this is just something that's happening with my HPWC or something to do with the car.

My P85D does this on both my HPWCs, which are at two different locations. When I posted about it here, inquiring, I was basically told not to worry about it. Apparently the display truncates, and the 79 could actually be 79.9 or 79.8.

I almost never want to charge at 80 amps anyway. I generally charge at 56 amps. I've chosen to accept the advice here, and not worry about it. Do you think this is actually something to be concerned about?

 

[breser]

My P85D does this on both my HPWCs, which are at two different locations. When I posted about it here, inquiring, I was basically told not to worry about it. Apparently the display truncates, and the 79 could actually be 79.9 or 79.8.

I'm not just talking about the display of the amps while charging. I certainly saw my S85 bounce around and it wasn't always at 80A. But the selector to choose the charge rate goes to 79A and it greys out the up arrow. Never had that on the old car. That always stayed at 80A, even if the actual charge amps bounced around a bit.

I almost never want to charge at 80 amps anyway. I generally charge at 56 amps.

Umm why? There's a lot of superstition about charge rates that I've never really understood. The rate of a supercharge charge is so much faster than my 80A charge at home, I can't really understand what the benefit of charging at a slower rate is.

I've chosen to accept the advice here, and not worry about it. Do you think this is actually something to be concerned about?

No idea, it's just inconsistent with my experience and doesn't seem right. So I've mentioned it to Tesla.

 

[Andyw2100]

I'm not just talking about the display of the amps while charging. I certainly saw my S85 bounce around and it wasn't always at 80A. But the selector to choose the charge rate goes to 79A and it greys out the up arrow. Never had that on the old car. That always stayed at 80A, even if the actual charge amps bounced around a bit.

Yes, I believe that's exactly what mine does as well. The next time I plug in, it shows 79 as the available charge rate. I think I could bump it up again at that point, but as soon as it starts charging it would adjust down to 79, and then I would not be able to adjust anything until I unplugged again. (It's been a while since I've messed with any of this, so I may be a little fuzzy on it. I've just left it alone, and let the max show as 79 for a couple of months now.)

Umm why? There's a lot of superstition about charge rates that I've never really understood. The rate of a supercharge charge is so much faster than my 80A charge at home, I can't really understand what the benefit of charging at a slower rate is.

It's not superstition. I'm taking the advice of people here who seem to know what they are talking about. In this case it was largely Cottonwood, but others confirmed, and what was said made sense to me. The general idea is that charging at the higher amps results in more heat and more stress on the various components of the system. I installed everything so I'd have 80 amps available if I ever needed to charge quickly, but most of the time I have absolutely no need. So rather than put unnecessary additional stress on the system, even though it is designed to take it, I choose to stress the various components less and charge at a lower amperage, resulting in less heat. I chose 56 because with dual chargers they are both being used at 56, but lightly used. At 40 amps, only one would be used. Again, 56 was the number Cottonwood recommended, and it made sense to me.

Also my understanding is that the superchargers completely bypass your onboard chargers, as it is a completely different charging system. I believe your dual onboard chargers convert AC current into DC current to charge the battery. I believe the superchargers bypass your onboard dual chargers and charge the battery directly with DC current. I'm sure someone that understands this better than I do can and will explain it better, but the bottom line is that the way your HPWC charges your Model S and the way a supercharger charges it have very little to do with each other. So the fact that the Supercharger charges your battery much faster than your HPWC would at 80 Amps is completely irrelevant. (And for what it's worth Chademo chargers charge essentially the same way the Superchargers do, so comparisons with them would also be irrelevant.)

No idea, it's just inconsistent with my experience and doesn't seem right. So I've mentioned it to Tesla.

I'll be interested in hearing what they say, as I believe I'm in the same boat.

 

[NOLA_Mike]

Not in keeping with the thread topic but I also have the capability of charging at 80A at home and keep mine at 30A unless I need a quick charge. 30A provides more than enough charge/hour to have the car completely charged each morning.

My reason is that I have a 25 kW natural gas powered whole home generator set to automatically start up and switch over if I lose utility power. This could happen in the middle of the night or at a time when no one is home and I don't want any more than the 7.2 kW load the car puts on it at 30A. I have 10 tons of A/C (3 separate units) and if bad timing strikes all three could be running at same time. If the car were also pulling 80A we would have an issue...

 

[breser]

It's not superstition. I'm taking the advice of people here who seem to know what they are talking about. In this case it was largely Cottonwood, but others confirmed, and what was said made sense to me. The general idea is that charging at the higher amps results in more heat and more stress on the various components of the system. I installed everything so I'd have 80 amps available if I ever needed to charge quickly, but most of the time I have absolutely no need. So rather than put unnecessary additional stress on the system, even though it is designed to take it, I choose to stress the various components less and charge at a lower amperage, resulting in less heat. I chose 56 because with dual chargers they are both being used at 56, but lightly used. At 40 amps, only one would be used. Again, 56 was the number Cottonwood recommended, and it made sense to me.

I understand the theory. I still believe it's superstition. It's well understood that allowing a battery to get too hot is not good. But Tesla has a climate control system for the battery. It cools it. Which brings me to the reason I brought up the supercharger.

Also my understanding is that the superchargers completely bypass your onboard chargers, as it is a completely different charging system. I believe your dual onboard chargers convert AC current into DC current to charge the battery. I believe the superchargers bypass your onboard dual chargers and charge the battery directly with DC current. I'm sure someone that understands this better than I do can and will explain it better, but the bottom line is that the way your HPWC charges your Model S and the way a supercharger charges it have very little to do with each other. So the fact that the Supercharger charges your battery much faster than your HPWC would at 80 Amps is completely irrelevant. (And for what it's worth Chademo chargers charge essentially the same way the Superchargers do, so comparisons with them would also be irrelevant.)

I brought up the supercharger because of the charge rate being so much faster, it must be producing more heat in the battery. At maximum a 80A HPWC can deliver 19.2 kW, lowering your charge rate to 56A brings you down to 13.44 kW. The supercharger delivers up to 135 kW. The cooling system has to be designed to handle cooling the battery at a rate over 10 times what you're doing and still roughly 7 times an 80A HPWC charge.

A big part of the reason I think this is superstition is because if charging faster was really bad for the battery I'd expect Tesla to tell us as much. They don't. In fact they tell us to supercharge as much as we want. In the range reduction thread over on the Battery forum I've seen people talk about all sorts of different theories. I've yet to see any of these theories line up with data. People that slow charge aren't having less battery degradation. From what I've seen it's really hard to draw a conclusion.

It's not even really clear that there is much battery degradation at all and that the issues might have more to do with the algorithm doing a poor job of estimating battery state when it's not charged high enough often enough to trigger balancing of the pack.

So I think messing with the charge rate is just a waste of time. I leave it set to the maximum and don't worry about it.

This is of course different than state of charge. I've been charging to 80% because it's more than enough for my normal driving needs. I of course charge to a higher state of charge if I need it.

 

[Andyw2100]

I understand the theory. I still believe it's superstition. It's well understood that allowing a battery to get too hot is not good. But Tesla has a climate control system for the battery. It cools it. Which brings me to the reason I brought up the supercharger.



I brought up the supercharger because of the charge rate being so much faster, it must be producing more heat in the battery. At maximum a 80A HPWC can deliver 19.2 kW, lowering your charge rate to 56A brings you down to 13.44 kW. The supercharger delivers up to 135 kW. The cooling system has to be designed to handle cooling the battery at a rate over 10 times what you're doing and still roughly 7 times an 80A HPWC charge.

A big part of the reason I think this is superstition is because if charging faster was really bad for the battery I'd expect Tesla to tell us as much. They don't. In fact they tell us to supercharge as much as we want. In the range reduction thread over on the Battery forum I've seen people talk about all sorts of different theories. I've yet to see any of these theories line up with data. People that slow charge aren't having less battery degradation. From what I've seen it's really hard to draw a conclusion.

It's not even really clear that there is much battery degradation at all and that the issues might have more to do with the algorithm doing a poor job of estimating battery state when it's not charged high enough often enough to trigger balancing of the pack.

So I think messing with the charge rate is just a waste of time. I leave it set to the maximum and don't worry about it.

This is of course different than state of charge. I've been charging to 80% because it's more than enough for my normal driving needs. I of course charge to a higher state of charge if I need it.

When I was talking about reducing heat I wasn't referring to trying to protect the battery, but rather the various components in the charging system. For example, the components in the dual chargers themselves (bypassed when supercharging) and also the components in the HPWC. I wasn't even thinking about the battery itself.

Perhaps Cottonwood will chime in, as I don't feel particularly qualified to discuss this as I'm basically just parroting back what I've read, and my rudimentary understanding of it.

 

[breser]

When I was talking about reducing heat I wasn't referring to trying to protect the battery, but rather the various components in the charging system. For example, the components in the dual chargers themselves (bypassed when supercharging) and also the components in the HPWC. I wasn't even thinking about the battery itself.

Perhaps Cottonwood will chime in, as I don't feel particularly qualified to discuss this as I'm basically just parroting back what I've read, and my rudimentary understanding of it.

Well I'll admit that I think Tesla hasn't designed the UMC or the HPWC nearly as well as they should have. But I'm not going to lower my charge rate just to lower their warranty claims. If they didn't design things well enough to handle the stated charge rates then that's their poor decision.

It's my understanding that the onboard chargers are in the battery cooling loop. So they should be protected by that. So the only unprotected systems are the HPWC and/or UMC. Which really should be designed to not require cooling.

- - - Updated - - -

My reason is that I have a 25 kW natural gas powered whole home generator set to automatically start up and switch over if I lose utility power. This could happen in the middle of the night or at a time when no one is home and I don't want any more than the 7.2 kW load the car puts on it at 30A. I have 10 tons of A/C (3 separate units) and if bad timing strikes all three could be running at same time. If the car were also pulling 80A we would have an issue...

That sort of reasoning makes sense to me.

 

[brianman]

My P85D does this on both my HPWCs, which are at two different locations. When I posted about it here, inquiring, I was basically told not to worry about it. Apparently the display truncates, and the 79 could actually be 79.9 or 79.8.

Just another data point. All 3 of my HPWCs (1 early one replaced, and 2 currently active) display(ed) "79/80" when charging on my Sig.

 

[NOLA_Mike]

Are all new Model Ss coming with the automatically closing charge port door or is that a P85D only thing?

 

[breser]

Just another data point. All 3 of my HPWCs (1 early one replaced, and 2 currently active) display(ed) "79/80" when charging on my Sig.

If you mean 79 out of 80. Then no that's not what I'm complaining about. I'm getting 79 out of 79. For some reason the car is limiting the maximum charge amps to 79 with my HPWC.

- - - Updated - - -

Are all new Model Ss coming with the automatically closing charge port door or is that a P85D only thing?

D only (so both P85D and 85D get it).

Electrically opening, self-closing charge port door on Dual Motor Model S (delivered with Dual Motor Model S)

I'm certain that will change at some point.

 

[MarcG]

The first Ds were delivered in late November or early December. I believe MarcG was the first forum member to take delivery of a P85D, and that he did so in early December--December 12, if my memory serves.

Indeed, good memory Andy!

BTW Ben, if you want to keep the color concealed (or Tesla is asking you to do so), I would be careful about posting photos in full color on Twitter...
I would even venture to say that Twitter has more exposure than TMC :biggrin: