Chicago area superchargers failing in cold

[DBeckwith]

I don’t disagree, but it’s worth noting that all of the complete station outages have been in the suburbs.

Yes, however, the superchargers follow the transportation corridors, there's more people living outside the city, it is easier jumping onto the expressway and a higher percentage of city dwellers have no cars .

I respectfully disagree with your conclusion it lessons the need for more L2.

I'm not arguing against more superchargers. I'm saying they should be for road trips and other high demand needs. An expanded L2 infrastructure is better for most everything else.

We have greatly neglected L2 charging and in my humble opinion we are seeing the fruits of the neglect now.

 

[David99]

I was trying to supercharge on New Years Eve a few years back and it was in the -20s. My charge was low enough the battery pack heater wouldn't come on and the supercharger was reading the pack was too cold to send a charge. That left me getting no charge at a functional station.

I'm not sure if Tesla ever fixed this bug, haven't been in the situation myself since then.

That bug has been fixed long ago. When the battery was below 0 Celsius it cannot charge. A software bug prevented the battery heater to turn on when plugged into a supercharger. It worked fine when plugged into an AC charger. But again, that issue was fixed long time ago.

 

[jsight]

Remember that when comparing to other states and cities, that the Chicagoland area is 10M people.
Maybe it should have 10x the infrastructure.

I'm really surprised that there aren't more large stations in the area already. LA has far more stations and a lot more large stations. Both would be really helpful right now.

Hopefully this serves as a wakeup call and they start planning some.

 

[David99]

I'm really surprised that there aren't more large stations in the area already. LA has far more stations and a lot more large stations. Both would be really helpful right now.

Hopefully this serves as a wakeup call and they start planning some.

population in LA is 13 mil, plus 4 million in the adjacent Orange County. Chicago 2.7 million. There are also more EVs per capita in LA. Yes we need more chargers in Chicago, but it's not a comparison.

 

[AWDtsla]

That bug has been fixed long ago. When the battery was below 0 Celsius it cannot charge. A software bug prevented the battery heater to turn on when plugged into a supercharger. It worked fine when plugged into an AC charger. But again, that issue was fixed long time ago.

It's plausible there was some sort of regression in cold weather. How often does Tesla regression test this stuff anyway? This should not have happened:

FWIW I still see crappy thermal behavior in my Raven, 5 years on now I don't expect it to be fixed. The algorithm for heat scavenging is semi-broken in software. If you can fix software at Tesla DM me, otherwise it's not worth trying to describe.

 

[buddhafree]

It's plausible there was some sort of regression in cold weather. How often does Tesla regression test this stuff anyway? This should not have happened:

FWIW I still see crappy thermal behavior in my Raven, 5 years on now I don't expect it to be fixed. The algorithm for heat scavenging is semi-broken in software. If you can fix software at Tesla DM me, otherwise it's not worth trying to describe.

The Tesla in this video was flooded before. Nobody wants to buy flooded ICE cars because they get never-ending electrical issues. It's likely the same for an EV.
The service mode showed few issues with heating. I guess it affected car ability to heat up the battery.

 

[David99]

The car had some issue from flooding so I don't know how good of a reference this is. I don't have an S any more. Never had any issue with it heating except that one instance many years ago at a supercharger.

It's plausible there was some sort of regression in cold weather. How often does Tesla regression test this stuff anyway? This should not have happened:

FWIW I still see crappy thermal behavior in my Raven, 5 years on now I don't expect it to be fixed. The algorithm for heat scavenging is semi-broken in software. If you can fix software at Tesla DM me, otherwise it's not worth trying to describe.

 

[Big Earl]

Another day of long delays in Chicago.

Some winter tips for new EV owners:

Install home charging if you can, preferably 240 volts

If you can’t charge at home, charge at the end of a longer drive

Be sure to condition/heat the pack before charging by navigating to a Supercharger

Don’t park overnight at a low battery % and expect to charge in the morning. If you need to charge in the morning, precondition from the app for 20 minutes before driving, and navigate to the Supercharger.

Turn off Sentry Mode so your vehicle will sleep when you aren’t driving

 

[AWDtsla]

I don't have an S any more. Never had any issue with it heating except that one instance many years ago at a supercharger.

If you had a Raven then you didn't notice the problem if you didn't know what to look for. I assure all the Ravens have a problem. Battery is significantly colder than it should be all the time due to lack of heat scavenging due to bad series/parallel valve configuration on most drives. Older cars were fine. If there was only a way to report software bugs to Tesla...

 

[N4HHE]

Are the Chicago gangs stealing copper from superchargers?

Or putting chewing gum on the connector?

 

[FLRifleman]

Agree 100%. We overemphasize our ICE bias of equating gas stations with superchargers. However, over 90% EV charging is done at home. I think it is a bigger bang for buck and more equitable building out level 2 chargers at residences, work and motels.

In my own personal road trip experience since 2018, it appears no significant motel L2 expansion. In fact many have shut down. Imagine how many supercharger visits could be eliminated if every motel had overnight charging.

That's the personal responsibility of the vehicle owner. They're responsible for making sure they have charging in place before they buy the vehicle. If they are unable to do that, then they should just stick with a gas car. A modicum of critical thinking and common sense isn't too much to expect here.

 

[israndy]

In this video they think the issue is when you arrive at the Supercharger your car would freeze while waiting your turn and then it would take an hour of running the battery heaters before the charge would start, so that’s why they said “My Tesla won’t charge” and abandon them.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1747363092189655317

I wonder how many people thought about going to a Level 2 charger instead of waiting for hours and hours. Also wonder if the cars would run the heat in addition to the battery heaters once they were plugged into the Supercharger. I can't imagine leaving my car if the heat was on, but apparently people did, as mentioned above. And blocking spaces with your now dead car, how did this happen? We need more first hand accounts.

 

[Goobers]

I wouldn't be surprised if it was just taking time to heat up the battery (without charging) and thought it didn't work at all.

 

[israndy]

Not just Teslas being covered by the news outlets during the frigid snap:

 

[Supcom]

There seems to be a lot of blaming the victims here.

 

[jsmay311]

population in LA is 13 mil, plus 4 million in the adjacent Orange County. Chicago 2.7 million. There are also more EVs per capita in LA. Yes we need more chargers in Chicago, but it's not a comparison.

Way off on both population counts. Although I'm sure you're right about the per-capita difference.

I'm really surprised that there aren't more large stations in the area already. LA has far more stations and a lot more large stations. Both would be really helpful right now.

Hopefully this serves as a wakeup call and they start planning some.

There is a 52-stall station planned near O'Hare.

Otherwise, apart from this debacle, there generally haven't been significant congestion problems in Chicagoland like there have been in L.A., so the demand for dramatic expansion hasn't been there in the same way. But there has been steady expansion of locations and total stalls in recent years:

Total Chicagoland Supercharger locations (stalls) by year:
2014: 0 (0)
2015: 1 (8)
2016: 1 (8)
2017: 2 (24)
2018: 5 (72)
2019: 11 (144)
2020: 13 (162)
2021: 17 (208)
2022: 20 (240)
2023: 28 (340)
2024: 32 (400)

 

[SO16]

Was just on the local Grand Rapids MI news. Showed actually more non teslas having issues. Made it look like all EVs everywhere in winter will have issues. Showed a couple Uber drivers stating they will be going back to gas.

Definitely need to add more charging locations in Chicago. And when it’s this cold, should try to keep a minimum of 20%.

 

[alexgr]

There are 10 SC sites in the Twin Cities metro. 2 out of a total of 108 stalls are out of order this morning. Temps have been in the single digits above and below 0 for the last 4 days, not much different than Chicago. Last night while reading this thread I checked the app and 2 of the 10 locations were “short wait”.

So, it's not cold, or not just cold, that creates the problems.

 

[Bikeman]

People dropping the charge handles and not re-attaching them into the holder really bugs me. They do that in the summer. But dropping the handles into the snow when they're done in the winter is a horrible practice and clogs the contacts with ice.

 

[Farmer]

People dropping the charge handles and not re-attaching them into the holder really bugs me. They do that in the summer. But dropping the handles into the snow when they're done in the winter is a horrible practice and clogs the contacts with ice.

Agree completely. I would think it could be a problem if the charge handle and contacts are still a bit warm from the prior charge then they land in the snow, melting it some before the inevitable refreeze in the contact port holes.