Cold weather problems

[Woody5575]

Does anybody know exactly what caused all of the dead Teslas in Chicago a week or 2 ago. it seems unlikely that so many people were caught unaware when temperatures dropped so much, and that doesn't account for the impossibly long lines/waits at the charging stations.

 

[Tam]

Does anybody know exactly what caused all of the dead Teslas in Chicago a week or 2 ago. it seems unlikely that so many people were caught unaware when temperatures dropped so much, and that doesn't account for the impossibly long lines/waits at the charging stations.

It's back to normal after a day or two.

Numerous factors:

Some stalls were down, then the whole station was down.

Down stalls creates long lines.

Cold weather would slow down the rate of charging or even stop the charging until the battery is warmed up. The cars were all warmed in line but it was so long and by the time you plug in, it's cold because there's not enough battery to warm it up any more.

That creates long lines and by the time it's your turn, your car is dead.

Dead car creates car graveyard.

The solution is to scale up for winter. Bring portable Superchargers to the incident.

Otherwise, stay home or if you stay in line, make sure your battery is full enough. But if it's full enough, waiting in line makes no sense!

Part of the issue was too many ride-sharing EVs. Increased demand means longer lines. A longer line is not a problem if you have 30% left in your battery gauge in summer, but for these winter cases, 30% waiting in line is not enough.

This does not require a high-tech solution but a money solution. There needs to be money to have enough working Supercharger for every Tesla arriving at the station even with zero miles in winter. There should be no cars waiting in line in Winter.

People learned quickly and switched to gasoline cars, especially for ride-sharing EV drivers who can switch their rentals at any time.

 

[father_of_6]

There are a handful of posts about this already that discuss and explain the issues thoroughly.

 

[Soul Surfer]

There seems to be some indications of many neophyte drivers, who arrived at the stalls at dangerously low SoC levels.

 

[LoudMusic]

 

[Snowball316]

I watched this the last night. Pretty much sums it up