Charging issue: Supercharger ok, Tesla Destination charger ok, but UMC not, nore any public Type 2

[AustinP]

Hi,

I've had the car for 2 year now, almost 50k miles/80k km. I've been traveling to France, Germany, Netherland, Belgium and have always been able to use the type 2 cable at public chargers, or the UMC.
UMC is picky so at times, if the plug is not grounded or their is a neutral problem, it will directly turn red as soon as you plug it in a socket that has some fault.
What I have since we left for our vacation is that the car does not want to charger unless I use a supercharger or a destination charger from Tesla.
I've tried many different plugs, standard schuko or red high power, and experience the following: UMC is green, so happy with the socket chosen, but then as soon as I plug it in the car, it turns red and the car complains there is no power on the source.
The same behavior happens with Type 2 public chargers: as soon as I plug them, the car warns about problem with the source power.
I've called road assistance to check, they looked at the logs and don't find errors. Their belief is that my type 2 cable is broken and that the power outlet I connect the umc to are not ok. I've tried different public chargers, some using my type 2 cable, some with their own cable.
We're traveling to our vacation resort, so I tried in Austria and now in Croatia. Same problem.
We arrived last night and today I'll drive to the closest destination charger and hopefully get a charge there.
I did reboot both screens but I believe the charging bit is not linked to those computers.

Has this happened to anyone?

 

[pvh]

Hi,

I've had the car for 2 year now, almost 50k miles/80k km. I've been traveling to France, Germany, Netherland, Belgium and have always been able to use the type 2 cable at public chargers, or the UMC.
UMC is picky so at times, if the plug is not grounded or their is a neutral problem, it will directly turn red as soon as you plug it in a socket that has some fault.
What I have since we left for our vacation is that the car does not want to charger unless I use a supercharger or a destination charger from Tesla.
I've tried many different plugs, standard schuko or red high power, and experience the following: UMC is green, so happy with the socket chosen, but then as soon as I plug it in the car, it turns red and the car complains there is no power on the source.
The same behavior happens with Type 2 public chargers: as soon as I plug them, the car warns about problem with the source power.
I've called road assistance to check, they looked at the logs and don't find errors. Their belief is that my type 2 cable is broken and that the power outlet I connect the umc to are not ok. I've tried different public chargers, some using my type 2 cable, some with their own cable.
We're traveling to our vacation resort, so I tried in Austria and now in Croatia. Same problem.
We arrived last night and today I'll drive to the closest destination charger and hopefully get a charge there.
I did reboot both screens but I believe the charging bit is not linked to those computers.

Has this happened to anyone?

Did you check if there is anything blocking one of the holes of your chargeport? DC uses different pins then AC uses.Maybe at the destination charger you were lucky....

 

[Anssi]

Hi,

I've had the car for 2 year now, almost 50k miles/80k km. I've been traveling to France, Germany, Netherland, Belgium and have always been able to use the type 2 cable at public chargers, or the UMC.
UMC is picky so at times, if the plug is not grounded or their is a neutral problem, it will directly turn red as soon as you plug it in a socket that has some fault.
What I have since we left for our vacation is that the car does not want to charger unless I use a supercharger or a destination charger from Tesla.
I've tried many different plugs, standard schuko or red high power, and experience the following: UMC is green, so happy with the socket chosen, but then as soon as I plug it in the car, it turns red and the car complains there is no power on the source.
The same behavior happens with Type 2 public chargers: as soon as I plug them, the car warns about problem with the source power.
I've called road assistance to check, they looked at the logs and don't find errors. Their belief is that my type 2 cable is broken and that the power outlet I connect the umc to are not ok. I've tried different public chargers, some using my type 2 cable, some with their own cable.
We're traveling to our vacation resort, so I tried in Austria and now in Croatia. Same problem.
We arrived last night and today I'll drive to the closest destination charger and hopefully get a charge there.
I did reboot both screens but I believe the charging bit is not linked to those computers.

Has this happened to anyone?

My UMC cable broke after 2 years, but that obviously affected only UMC charging.

Destination uses the standard Type2 interface, so it should be affected too?

 

[AustinP]

My UMC cable broke after 2 years, but that obviously affected only UMC charging.

Destination uses the standard Type2 interface, so it should be affected too?

That's the odd part of the issue.
Destination chargers are indeed type 2 AC. Not DC at all
So the internal AC chargers work but only if they talk with a tesla wall connector, like at destination charger facilities.

 

[AustinP]

DeC used have been able to charge at full speed, 22kw so both chargers are ok.
As suggested by someone else here, it looks like communication between car and UMC or public chargers are compromised somehow, while with a tesla power wall it works.

 

[GSP]

Sounds like a problem with the car. If you take the car and UMC to a service center they should be able to reproduce the problem and fix it.

Be sure to tell them you also have the problem with multiple Type 2 cables and charging stations.

Good Luck,

GSP

 

[AustinP]

Thanks. Tesla is doing there best to assist, as it turns out there is no service center in this country.
Logs say car is fine.
They are shipping a new UMC, I hope this one will, like the DeC be able to charge.

Thanks for your replies

 

[AustinP]

So the new UMC arrived very quickly on Friday.
We were away all day so only got it on Saturday.
Although this one tries better (car starts then stop charging), it also fails.
Three red blinks on the UMC points to a connector issue between UMC and car, according to manual.
Info sent to Tesla, we'll see Monday what are the next steps.

 

[scottm]

Problem is with the car..

Clean the charge port. Clean all the little pins too, carefully.

Swabs, compressed air.


Correcting what somebody said above... all charging uses same pins.. A/C sources that use UMC or HPWC and DC / level 3 and SuperChargers all use the same pins on the charge port. The two big pins carry the power. The little pins carry "data" (resistor load as per J1772 standard - signaling if you really want to know how it works. Yes, Tesla follows this standard. )

 

[gaswalla]

I had this issue.. it was the onboard charger. (the 10kw charger, some cars have two)
It's definitely an issue with your car.
You got surprisingly very poor service from Tesla service - they should know better
you will be dependent on superchargers (bc that bypasses the onboard chargers) until this is fixed
surprised, though, that destination charging is working

 

[AustinP]

I've started cleaning the pins with swabs and just blowing air: they sure are dirty. But, still no charging with UMC.
I'm afraid of doing something wrong and losing the SuC and DeC charging, which are my only safe harbors out here. The country, Croatia, although serviced by a few SuC's to allow traveling is not in the core counties they support, as Tesla's road assistant told me on the phone. And so they won't send a ranger either.

So indeed I've mixed feeling about the support. They did send me a replacement UMC and very quickly, but their opinion, and I partially can understand it, is that my car is not immobilized: I can charge it. They also were genuinely sorry for my situation and the inconvenience it brought to our vacation plans. Still, result is a very stressful time here. I'm lucky my wife is very supportive and coaches me to let go and relax.

 

[AustinP]

To close the story and maybe help others.
During our journey back from our holiday, supercharging became also problematic. Either very low speed or no charge. Even when it started normally, when checking later, it did reduce charge to extremely low power (1kW).
Fortunately, moving to other stalls (often trying multiple stalls) would solve the supercharge. It might have been a coincidence, but the issues where often on stalls with the older handles.
Anyway, back home, SeC took me within a couple of days, although they were quite busy. Great service!
They could not figure out where was the issue from the logs. So they changed the charge port, and that was not the problem. They then changed also the electronic & cable behind, but still no charge.
Eventually, they replaced the high voltage junction box, and that seems to have solved it.