Car starts charging without prompt

[asomn]

I've got an odd issue.

The car will randomly start charging instead of waiting to be prompted or for off-peak time.

I've disabled all other integrations I'm running like Octopus Intelligent but the car will sporadically charge and start eating house battery and forcing grid usage instead of waiting until off peak time to charge.

Has anyone experienced this issue? What could I do to resolve this.

My guess is its a software issue as it appears to occur around the 15 minute marks of the hour (0/15/30/45).

 

[diddy84]

I experienced this issue today. I usually go into the app after plugging in to stop charge, and it’s okay afterwards. Today it kept starting charge this afternoon and I would have to stop it each time. I’ve sent an email to Octopus.

I don’t suppose you’ve got anywhere with it since you posted this the other day?

 

[asomn]

Hi.

Yes actually I found this today: Something keeps re-enabling the charger · Issue #514 · alandtse/tesla

I run home assistant too and have the same logs. It appears to be a Tesla issue and I've raised with them. It started happening after latest software update.

Suggest you raise with them too so they get more examples.

 

[Gareth Oakes]

I don't know what Octopus is but our Model 3 has started doing this after a recent upgrade to 2023.2.10. We are using the Gen 3 wall charger. It's a bit of a pain as it means I can't leave the car plugged in.

 

[asomn]

Definitely should raise to Tesla to add more data to their investigating and hopefully it will speed up the release of a fix.

 

[asomn]

For anyone interested, this is the response I've had from Tesla (please excuse my spelling mistakes):

This appears to be a "feature", not a "bug".

It is not a good change.

If you are charging a battery at home from solar or using a battery system for on-peak use generally, and forget to have settings adjusted in the car/app, or those settings for whatever reason are reverted, then you will unknowingly be consuming your power wall battery to charge your car.

Appreciate not everyone will know what Octopus Intelligence is, but they give you 6 hours of off-peak electricity as long as they can control when the charging starts during that time. They do this for multiple EVs not just Tesla. This latest change essentially makes that impossible with Tesla because Octopus doesn't control the charge limit.

I'm fairly new to Tesla, it's not a very impressive start but as a software engineer I can't say I'm surprised that this bug is now a "feature".

 

[Sir Surfalot]

our Model 3 has started doing this after a recent upgrade to 2023.2.10. We are using the Gen 3 wall charger.

I had the same yesterday afternoon in Australia (also Model 3 and same car firmware, and also Gen 3 wall connector). Noticed the car was charging when it shouldn’t have been (we are on a kW demand electricity tariff and it is ruinous to charge - or do anything else with high current draw - during their peak period).

I use an iOS app called Wall Monitor, and looked in that and it seems that the wall connector rebooted (in Technical Information/Uptime) at the time the unexpected charging session started. So what I think is the car saw the charger go away and come back then started charging.

My wall connector is running firmware 22.45.1 (again taken from the Wall Momotor app, but the wall connector’s setup web pages let you see it too) and has been for a couple of weeks now. Maybe it is the wall connector firmware, rather than necessarily the car firmware, (or at least a random reboot of the wall connector) which is causing these unexpected charging session starts?

 

[asomn]

I've monitored my wall connector via an api and it stayed on continuously during the period the car was trying to charge.

 

[Sir Surfalot]

I've monitored my wall connector via an api and it stayed on continuously during the period the car was trying to charge.

Sorry, if that was in reply to me (above), maybe I didn’t explain it very well…

* Car was plugged in, charger on, not charging (but battery below charge limit).
* Charger seems to have rebooted (car/cable/etc wasn’t touched but charger uptime reset to zero)
* Charging started unexpectedly - as soon as the charger had finished rebooting.

The charger stayed on just fine after that. Had an uptime of a couple of weeks before this mysterious restart (actually the uptime was all the time since the charger got its most recent firmware update), and uptime is now just over 24 hours now since that one unexplained reboot - and no other misbehaviour.

 

[paulhand]

I'm having exactly the same issue with my MS and Tesla wall charger here in the UK. My wall connector is also on 22.45.1 and car is also on 2023.2.10. I have reset my Tesla App password to disconnect any random API connections and now can't even get back onto Intelligent Octopus (which is also apparently another known issue, which Octopus say is at the Tesla end).

 

[paulhand]

Spoke to Tesla - they looked at the car logs and said that the car showed a scheduled charge at the times it started but that there was no flag to suggest it was an external call from another app. The SC suspect it may be an issue with the gen3 wall charger and have referred the data to the charger team. Will advise I’d any updates … the more people who report this, the more data they get they told me.

 

[diddy84]

I found that it happens if you ‘wake’ the car by going into the app. This never happened before; you could stop the charge when initially plugging in and visit the app whenever you liked. Once you plug in just don’t open the app, or if you do make sure you stop the charge immediately. If you have the widget on your phone, that should indicate if the car is awake and charging, or asleep. So you don’t have to go into the app to check.

 

[Squibbly]

I have also started having this problem. I've been using Intelligent Octopus since September and it's been great until a couple of weeks ago when I noticed the car charging in the evening after I had plugged it in. I agree with diddy84 that is seems to start when you go anywhere near the app, which wasn't a problem previously.

I've seen it start randomly three times this evening so did a bit of googling and came across this on the chargehq.net site. I am running 2023.2.12 currently.

Given the extra costs I'm incurring, I've opted for using the vehicle schedule until there is some resolution.

 

[raft]

I am so glad I found this thread because Tesla Service keep saying there is no issue. I have a ne LR-TM3 (Dec '22) doing exactly the above. My other 2019 LR-TM3 does not do this so I was convinced it is a hardware/car issue.

I typically only charge once per week with standard process to get home Friday, plug car in and hit stop on charge and then Saturday morning when PV's are firing up hit charge. This was my routine with my 2019 LR-TM3 and works perfectly.

With the new car from first week I did this and woke next morning to a car that had charged to full without me starting it. I thought initially must have been an error on my end, but then it did it again 3 more times. The last time I installed Home Assistant to log what was going on and saw that the car woke at around 3:30 am and charged to full.

I have made contact with service and they don't seem to believe there is an issue with this car. They have blamed my third party apps that I have had for years without issue and despite me changing my account password, the behavior continued. With plenty of time wasting this is what I can reproduce:

1. Plug car into the tesla wall charger
2. Car starts charging and I hit stop on the the tesla app
3. I leave the car until it goes to sleep (all lights including light at charge port turn off)
4. Open the car door or wake with Tesla App or wake with other 3rd part apps

With this sequence the car wakes up and starts charging (wall charger lights go, car says charging on the internal screen and on the phone app). This does not happen with my old LR-TM3 (it simply wakes and the charge light immediately goes to blue). When I presented this to service they wanted me to allow the car to continue to charge as I normally would stop it. So this evening I did the above and the car started charging but after 1 minute the car stops charging on its own. Now admittedly I have never allowed the car to continue to charge but at least three times the car has charged itself overnight without me instructing it to do so and having no schedule charging or departure time set in the car.

I think I know what response I am going to get from the technician - there is nothing wrong.

The other weird thing with the car is it will not display any contacts with surname after Ta. I only have 100 entries in my address book and if I put any letter in front of the ones not displaying they will then display. Other thing is if I dial a number of one of the ocntact not showing, it displays the name of the contact in the car (i.e. the car has the contact in its address book but just not visible when you search for it). I have an iPhone 13 with latest OS.

Could I ask if anyone has a new TM3 (latest model) and a wall charger, could you please perform the steps above and let me know what your car does and if you have similar issues with the address book.

Thanks

 

[stuiew]

This issue has been happening to me for a few weeks now with both of our cars (Model 3 LR 2021 and SR 2022 – both on 2023.2.12) when connected to my Gen 3 wall charger. I don’t have any third-party apps running, I just manage my charging manually via the Tesla app based on what my Solar producing.

I will plug my car into charge and then at some point during the day I will stop the car from charging using the app. This is normally done in relation to my solar output, so generally it will be later in the day once solar output has dropped and I won’t start charging again until the next morning. A few weeks ago, after stopping the car from charging one evening I woke up the next morning to my car almost fully charged. I suspect at one point in the evening I must have opened the app and the car has started charging again. Ever since then I have been having problems, I will also add that I haven’t had any problems like this in the past.

As others have stated I can simply make the charging restart by waking the car up via the app or by opening a door. I have logged a call with Tesla about it last week and they haven’t been able to provide too much information. I have replicated the issue quite a few times and provided them the dates and times to investigate.

This morning my LR received an update to 2023.6.8 and the issue is still occurring.

 

[khyros]

interesting I'm reading this - I thought the octopus app was driving me crazy.
I have set up a 23.30 schedule on my Tesla - but previously this had interfered with the smart charging - for example if I got slots earlier than 23.30 the car wouldn't start charging despite the octopus app set up the schedule.

 

[diddy84]

This issue has been happening to me for a few weeks now with both of our cars (Model 3 LR 2021 and SR 2022 – both on 2023.2.12) when connected to my Gen 3 wall charger. I don’t have any third-party apps running, I just manage my charging manually via the Tesla app based on what my Solar producing.

I will plug my car into charge and then at some point during the day I will stop the car from charging using the app. This is normally done in relation to my solar output, so generally it will be later in the day once solar output has dropped and I won’t start charging again until the next morning. A few weeks ago, after stopping the car from charging one evening I woke up the next morning to my car almost fully charged. I suspect at one point in the evening I must have opened the app and the car has started charging again. Ever since then I have been having problems, I will also add that I haven’t had any problems like this in the past.

As others have stated I can simply make the charging restart by waking the car up via the app or by opening a door. I have logged a call with Tesla about it last week and they haven’t been able to provide too much information. I have replicated the issue quite a few times and provided them the dates and times to investigate.

This morning my LR received an update to 2023.6.8 and the issue is still occurring.

I am having a similar issue where the car keeps on starting to charge even though I have stopped it and it is outside of the intelligent octopus’s charging schedule. It’s becoming a nightmare as I’m paying peak rate for the electric as well as my battery being drained.

I have spoken to Octopus and their support team is looking in to it.

 

[milesr3]

Plugged my car in earlier today to schedule a charge tonight and just noticed that it had also randomly started charging 2 hours ago at peak rates. I did not open the Tesla App to wake the car.

 

[diddy84]

Plugged my car in earlier today to schedule a charge tonight and just noticed that it had also randomly started charging 2 hours ago at peak rates. I did not open the Tesla App to wake the car.

Exactly the same happening to me mate. The only work-around I have atm is to set the charge to start in the app at 23:30. The octopus app has a slot starting from 23:00 but I doubt it will start until 23:30.

Not sure whether it’s an octopus thing or a Tesla thing. It started happening to me in earlier this year but stopped. Now suddenly started again since last week.

 

[milesr3]

Mine has been doing this for a while now. I thought it was a bug with the car/app because it would start charging when you opened the app and woke the car. Yesterday it had started charging entirely on its own.

I’ve also set a scheduled start time for charging at 23:30 and this worked with the few slots I needed last night.

I have raised the issue with Octopus as well.