CCS with bundle of wires won't go over 50kW even on 250kw SC [resolved with longer battery pre conditioning]

[bradtem]

I finally installed my gen4 charge controller with bundle of wires from 2muchsun on my late 2018 model 3 mid range and got the Tesla OEM adapter.

All went well and have done two software upgrades. It works, but seems to be limiting me to 50kW. That's with two tries on a 250kW supercharger, and a 150kW EA station. The first time it warned me I didn't precondition enough. But I did it for 10 minutes the next two times and no warning. I also waited a while though not more than 10 minutes to see if the rate would increase.

Anybody seen this? I would even tolerate slow ccs but slowing SC is a problem. Level 2 works fine as might be expected.

No other diagnostics. Cool weather. (I presume there is a warning if it throttles due to overheating). Others at the chargers were getting normal rates. Not doing 150kW SC which share power.

 

[smatthew]

How full was your battery?

 

[bradtem]

How full was your battery?

Under 50% of course, though only a small amount under. I know the rate is dropped above that and full rate likes even less, but this is not usual for this SoC

 

[ElectricIAC]

Cold battery?

 

[bradtem]

Not particularly. 10 minutes of preconditioning first as I said, 60 degrees weather. Also no improvement while charging, though I only have it 10 minutes. I can try to do it with longer precondition when I discharge more but I have never seen it be this slow when under 100 miles. Normally I do precondition longer on road trips. I don't normally fast charge in this city of course

 

[ElectricIAC]

Software?
Any friends with an adapter you can borrow?

Something like this really should either just work or not work.

 

[bradtem]

Software?
Any friends with an adapter you can borrow?

Something like this really should either just work or not work.

Don't have the release number here. Could get it from teslafi, but it just updated again last night with the latest. 2nd upgrade after installing controller. Seems an adapter fault would issue a diagnostic but if I can find somebody I can give it a try. Many here in South Bay to be sure

 

[bradtem]

Software?
Any friends with an adapter you can borrow?

Something like this really should either just work or not work.

To get specific, I am on 2022.20.19 today, was on .18 for the prior two charges. It was the upgrade to .18 that reflashed the controller after I installed it (I held the upgrade up for a long time to do the install.) So that's not a recent one as I thought it was, most model 3s are now on 2022.36.6

But at the same time I had not heard of people with this software rev getting wattage limited. I don't know why Tesla is holding me back. Probably my negative review of FSD. I am set as eager for updates.

 

[ucmndd]

10 minutes is not nearly enough preconditioning time for a cold battery (yes, 50-60 degrees is “cold”). Not even close. Precondition and drive the piss out of it for a solid 30+ minutes if you want accurate results.

 

[DiyEvRepair]

Yes to get higher charge speeds you need lower SOC and higher pack temperature.

 

[bradtem]

Yes to get higher charge speeds you need lower SOC and higher pack temperature.

To get max speed you need a longer precondition and (modestly lower) SoC, but in my experience I have gotten well over 50kwH in this situation before, or so I recall. I can see records in my Teslafi charge logs of higher current with 40% and even 50% SoC. It does not log pack temperature, though. Nonetheless I will attempt a longer precondition to see what happens.

 

[ElectricIAC]

Really gonna need more data points here.

 

[bradtem]

Really gonna need more data points here.

Well, right now I am maxing at about 156 amps, SoC 44% (SC or CCS adapter)
In the past I have seen:

SoC 54% -- 248 amps
SoC 33% -- 433a (same 250kw charger as above)
SoC 41% -- 383a
SoC 78% -- 140a

Anyway, I haven't kept a log of how much precondition there was on all of these. Yes, Tesla says it can take 30 minutes in the winter when below freezing, but my feeling is that at 60 degrees with a 10 minute precondition (and 10 minutes of heating while charging) it should do more than 150 amps. But I will have to do another test to find out. May be some time as my next trip is to a hotel with destination charging. My free supercharging sadly ends Sunday with 1,000 wasted due to covid.

 

[davewill]

Did it sit at exactly 50kW for a significant amount of time? If this were a cold battery situation, I would expect to continuously change as the battery warmed and charged.

 

[bradtem]

Did it sit at exactly 50kW for a significant amount of time? If this were a cold battery situation, I would expect to continuously change as the battery warmed and charged.

Yes, this is what concerned me. I charged for 10 minutes and saw no improvement. I did less on the others. (I am not filling up the battery because then I can't experiment again for a while until I deplete it.)

 

[Thp3]

I went to Electrify America 150 kw charger. I got 88 kw with the Tesla CCS adapter on my Model Y AWD. My SOC was around 30% and I had been driving for three hours on the expressway so the battery was warmed.

 

[bradtem]

I went to Electrify America 150 kw charger. I got 88 kw with the Tesla CCS adapter on my Model Y AWD. My SOC was around 30% and I had been driving for three hours on the expressway so the battery was warmed.

Did you precondition? I have seen reports of people doing much better than that in your situation, but they preconditioned.
For me, while I would love to be able to pull 150-200kW from the CCS chargers and thus use them whenever they make sense, the main plan is usually to prefer SC (though maybe not when they are 60 cents) and use the CCS to fill out the network. Even 50kW would do the job there. But if my change limits my SC to 50kW I would need to revert it.

 

[Jeremy3292]

There seems to be a lack of clear information in this thread. At risk of stating the "obvious" depending on your level of knowledge...

1. A charging station with an "up to 150 kW" or "up to 350 kW" rating tells you nothing as those kW ratings are 99.99% of the time based on an 800V architecture car. All Tesla's are 400V architecture (MS/MX slightly higher). What is most important is the max amps on the nameplate of the station.
2. A station with "up to 150 kw" will only give you around 80 kW max for our Teslas as it is most likely limited to 200 amps. The same can be said for the "up to 350 kW" stations. They will give you around 200 kW max as they are most likely 500 amps max.
3. Preconditioning your battery is of utmost importance to get the max kW from a station. 10 minutes likely isn't long enough based on a 60 degree ambient temperature. 90+ degrees outside? Yeah, 10 minutes is plenty.
4. State of charge ("SoC") is also of utmost importance. Anything more than ~20% and you won't see the max kW from the station.
5. Additionally, some EA stations say 500 amps on the nameplate but are throttled to only 350 amps, which further complicates the issue. I have seen this firsthand at my local EA station where I never got above 133 kW multiple times.

If you perform/ensure all of the above, you can get ~200 kW from the CCS adapter. I had the Korean Tesla one and now the NA one and have had no issues.

Did you also confirm there are no issues charging at a Supercharger and your issue is solely related to CCS?

 

[kilpatds]

I've gotten over 100 on 150-kW class chargers (I think ~110 pretty commonly. 125 on a recent one I checked)... Just only get 150-180ish when I'm on a 350kW.

125kW max (per EAs report) at 350V-nominal voltage suggests a 350-amp max....

 

[MP3Mike]

I had been driving for three hours on the expressway so the battery was warmed.

Just driving on the expressway, without navigating to a charger to trigger preconditioning, will likely not result in a warm battery, at least as far as charging is concerned.