Any success in getting low SC rates addresses?

[Kgdietz]

Coming up on 5 years with my ‘15 70D and still love the car. The only downside is that at 62k miles it is now essentially no longer a road trip car. The reason is the supercharging is so slow.

I sealed my driveway yesterday so couldn’t get to my charger. I drove over to a supercharger this morning and charging ramped to 50kw and rapidly fell. That’s at 60 degrees with the charge at 30%. I we’ll know that supercharging depends on charge level and temperature but this is way worse than in similar conditions in the past.

so, do I just limit myself to fairly local driving or have people had success in getting these issues addressed by Tesla? I don’t want to spend a ton of effort chasing them if it’s just going to go, “that’s normal...”

ken

 

[Kgdietz]

To be clear, this is not an isolated thing it’s gotten worse over the last 12-18 months and is true at all superchargers, paired or not. I just went from 80 mile range to 200 and it took 90 minutes. Not workable for a road trip.

 

[SSedan]

I haven't heard of anyone getting any sort of positive resolution.
"That is normal"

 

[Electric700]

Kgdietz, mine is older than yours by a year and I recently saw 124 kW (briefly though). Rates have generally been sustainable near 105 kW for a 10 - 50% battery SOC, ramping down from there.

Some things you can try:
-Move to the next Supercharger connector over
-Making sure your car's battery has warmed up, especially if it has recently been colder
-Try selecting the Supercharger as a destination; your car should automatically preheat the battery if necessary

If these steps don't resolve your issue, I would contact them and escalate this if they say it's normal to have yours charging at 50 kW near 60 F and at a 10 - 50% charge level. You can report everything through the app.

 

[cduzz]

Coming up on 5 years with my ‘15 70D and still love the car. The only downside is that at 62k miles it is now essentially no longer a road trip car. The reason is the supercharging is so slow.

I sealed my driveway yesterday so couldn’t get to my charger. I drove over to a supercharger this morning and charging ramped to 50kw and rapidly fell. That’s at 60 degrees with the charge at 30%. I we’ll know that supercharging depends on charge level and temperature but this is way worse than in similar conditions in the past.

so, do I just limit myself to fairly local driving or have people had success in getting these issues addressed by Tesla? I don’t want to spend a ton of effort chasing them if it’s just going to go, “that’s normal...”

ken

Superchargers really only work well when the battery is hot. They work really well when you've been driving for hours and the entire battery is warmed up and at operating temperature and actually low (5-20%) charge.

This situation your battery is probably 30-50 degrees too cold to supercharge well, and 10% too full to really charge well. The car will use some of the power from the supercharger to warm up the battery, but by the time it warms it up enough to really blast energy into it, the battery's been charging for 20-30 minutes at a lower rate and so is at 50-60% of capacity and well into the "too full to safely maximum charge" taper.

I think in the past tesla allowed higher rates of charge at lower temperatures, but I think they've probably also discovered that every once in a while when you charge that way you cause a cell or 3 to self-destruct and every once in a once in a while you end up with a thermal runaway. For instance, even at only 40 degrees overnight I see regen limits.

The TL;DR is basically, on road trips I've found superchargers to work spectacularly well; on a "filling up the car like I would a gasser, within 20 minutes of turning it on in the morning" they work quite poorly. And this is leaving aside all the other voodoo that goes with supercharging, like if you're sharing a stall or if the charging rate has been nerfed for any of the 30 different reasons that can cause the charger to reduce the charger rate.

 

[Florida Fun]

To be clear, this is not an isolated thing it’s gotten worse over the last 12-18 months and is true at all superchargers, paired or not. I just went from 80 mile range to 200 and it took 90 minutes. Not workable for a road trip.

I am in the same boat. My car (a 70) is 3 years old this month and has 30,000 miles on it. I took it in to the repair place today and they are telling me there are no issues with Supercharging. They were able to getting 189 mi/hr. I typically get 140-165 mi/hr in 70 degree weather in the early/middle parts of the charge. I used to get 400 mi/hr (last summer). But I'm not going to be willing to take a road trip where I have to spent 85 minutes to charge every 3 hours. I've asked them what my options are to "escalate" my complaint.

 

[JustADude]

It's because of the update they pushed last June.

All free facelift cars are affected.

The general equation is
Chargerate + SOC% = 100 +/-5

So at 30% you will get 70kw
At 50% you will get 50kw
Etc

 

[cduzz]

It's because of the update they pushed last June.

All free facelift cars are affected.

The general equation is
Chargerate + SOC% = 100 +/-5

So at 30% you will get 70kw
At 50% you will get 50kw
Etc

My early 2016 90D gets 113kw (briefly) if the battery is hot and the charge is low. It will hold above 100 up to 35ish %. I've checked and my car has the early 90 battery pack. I got the car with 45k miles, at 55k miles about 1/3rd of that under my ownership has been on superchargers.

Now, my regen has indeed been super-nerfed until the battery is 75+ degrees; even today with the ambient temps in the 60s I have reduced regen; that's an indicator that the supercharging will be similarly terrible until the battery is fully up to temperature.

 

[SSedan]

I have seen Regen nerfed when temps have been 48-54 for 36 hours so yeah the Regen temp threshold was raised..
I haven't tried supercharging since it warmed up but in winter hours into a driven I was still only seeing like 40kw, used to see 11X

 

[cduzz]

I have seen Regen nerfed when temps have been 48-54 for 36 hours so yeah the Regen temp threshold was raised..
I haven't tried supercharging since it warmed up but in winter hours into a driven I was still only seeing like 40kw, used to see 11X

And supercharging can dump *far* more power into the battery than regen, so if your regen is nerfed at 60 degrees, it's hopeless to expect to get any decent charging rate from a supercharger that wants the battery to be 100 degree (all 'mercan units).

The tl;dr is that superchargers are awesome for charging from 15% to 80% while on the road (their stated purpose) and quite a bit less awesome at taking a stone-cold car from 50% to 90% on your way to work in the morning.

When I was driving to work every day, I'd drive past a supercharger and charge for free at work. If I didn't have free charging at work, I'd still drive past the supercharger on the way to or from work, and charge at home, because my time is more valuable than the hour it'd take me to charge the car otherwise at the SC. Superchargers are not gas stations...

 

[AmpedRealtor]

This is how Tesla operates. Tesla front loads wear on the battery for marketing purposes (performance! fast supercharging! long range!) and a few years later, without notifying you, Tesla dials back your range, performance, and supercharging rate to ensure your battery lasts through the warranty period. If you have a problem with that, Tesla's response is to sue them (check #batterygate thread for these actual responses given to owners by service).

Tesla updated its new vehicle warranty requiring owners to accept software updates, and specifically excludes degradation in range, performance, and charging speed for any reason including as a result of software updates.

^^ This is all any potential customer needs to know about what's going to happen to their battery as it ages, and what to expect from Tesla.

Elon Musk is a shyster and Tesla is not the company you think it is.

 

[cduzz]

This is how Tesla operates. Tesla front loads wear on the battery for marketing purposes (performance! fast supercharging! long range!) and a few years later, without notifying you, Tesla dials back your range, performance, and supercharging rate to ensure your battery lasts through the warranty period. If you have a problem with that, Tesla's response is to sue them (check #batterygate thread for these actual responses given to owners by service).

Tesla updated its new vehicle warranty requiring owners to accept software updates, and specifically excludes degradation in range, performance, and charging speed for any reason including as a result of software updates.

^^ This is all any potential customer needs to know about what's going to happen to their battery as it ages, and what to expect from Tesla.

Elon Musk is a shyster and Tesla is not the company you think it is.

Friend, anyone kvetching about tesla being a lying cheating company misunderstands the nature of all companies. Everyone's swallowed the Milton Friedman line that companies and executives acting for those companies have a strict responsibility to only enhance shareholder value. As such, you must assume that any company will do whatever it can get away with (illegal or immoral included, if the payoff is big enough) to make money. Ford, Lexus, General Motors -- they're not your friends. Just look at how BMW and VW both lied and cheated to make diesels pass emissions tests. Look at how General Motors made defective ignition switches then covered it up. Ask toyota about their stack overflow maximum performance mode. Ask the propulsion engineers at Takata about ammonium nitrate's stability. The cars "fixed" by dieselgate are tragic ruins of their original state, though the gubberment did twist arms and make the manufacturers pay back some of the "stolen" value.

In the real world, no other company has yet to make a car with the performance characteristics of even a super-nerfed tesla S, at least if you include the current purchase price of such a vehicle. Which is a better car, a super nerfed P85S or an e-golf? Have you looked at the depreciation on any $80,000 car from 2013? Wanna run a wallered out 2012 signature against a 2018 lexus with a shakey shake boom boom power train? The boom boom car probably sucks hard (then blows) compared -- hit the gas, let the spinning metal and oily bits think for 0.5 seconds before "down shifting" or whatever before the car starts accelerating.

Now -- does some of what tesla did super suck? Heck yes. Do they have some obligation to make owners whole? Probably. Will they? There's a slim to medium chance they will; they're clearly tinkering with new battery packs to address this issue. Why would they? Probably because having crap like this overhanging their reputation will work against their selling vehicles like the Semi where after-sales support is an enormous part of the equation.

 

[sorka]

To be clear, this is not an isolated thing it’s gotten worse over the last 12-18 months and is true at all superchargers, paired or not. I just went from 80 mile range to 200 and it took 90 minutes. Not workable for a road trip.

That's because it has nothing to do with superchargers but rather software updates that have drastically slowed charge rates.

So glad I'm still on V8.

 

[sorka]

This is how Tesla operates. Tesla front loads wear on the battery for marketing purposes (performance! fast supercharging! long range!) and a few years later, without notifying you, Tesla dials back your range, performance, and supercharging rate to ensure your battery lasts through the warranty period.

But not if you're still on V8

 

[sorka]

That's because it has nothing to do with superchargers but rather software updates that have drastically slowed charge rates.

So glad I'm still on V8.

So sad that I'm no longer on V8. Car charges way slower and USB music is so broken that it is nearly useless

 

[Electric700]

Charging is working well for me with the latest software, but I don't use USB music. Perhaps try creating an appointment through the Tesla app so you can show them, and they can check your Supercharging logs (try starting from a 10 - 20% charge state).