A couple days ago, while cruising along the freeway at 70mph my Model S abruptly shut off with no warning, claiming that the battery power was too low. There were no limit lines until the split second before it shut off. However, there should have been plenty of range remaining - the indicated battery charge level was 16%. It wasn't cold either - the outside temperature was 57 F.
Fortunately this happened just a few blocks from home. So, several minutes later upon completing my unscheduled cardio workout, the car was back home and plugged in so it could charge up. However, there was an error message on the dash saying "charge level will be restricted" and it wouldn't pull any more than 5 amps. Upon reaching an indicated 19% SOC it stopped altogether, claiming "charging complete".
After unplugging and plugging in a few times, and then switching to a 120V trickle charge, a few hours later I was finally able to coax it up to 20% at which point it was able to start charging normally again.
So, there were two problems: (1) running out of juice at 16% SOC, and (2) the car was reluctant to get past 19% SOC after running out.
This was actually the second time this has happened. The first time was a couple weeks ago. It has gone below 16% a handful of times before but has never run out suddenly like this, and there were always limit lines to warn me that it was getting low.
I called the service center, and they checked remotely and said the vehicle isn't reporting any issues with the battery. I'm taking it to the service center next week, so we'll see how that goes.
I've always been very careful with the battery, or so I thought - attempting to stay within the 20-80% area as much as possible, and using range mode - so I certainly didn't expect this. Has anyone else experienced running out with significant remaining range? Any idea what could have gone wrong here?
Last edited: