eMotorwerks JuiceBox Smart Charging and Model 3 Incompatibility Update

[Charlie_T]

For Model 3 owners having trouble using the eMotorwerks JuiceBox Smart Charging feature, I received this email from eMotorWerks today:

“Thank you for your participation in eMotorWerks Rewards program.

We appreciate you identifying your Tesla Model 3 in your JuiceNet mobile app. As a result, as of Tuesday August 21st, we have implemented special handling of your smart charging events to accommodate Model 3s. You will notice that your car may reduce its charging rate during the night, but not shut off entirely, before returning to a higher charging rate.

This is due to Model 3s not currently following the J1772 charging port standard. Similarly, we strongly recommend use of your Tesla's time-of-use settings, rather than your JuiceNet settings, if applicable. In both cases - smart charging events and time-of-use settings - the Model 3 will not "wake-up" due to instruction from an EV charging station.”


The Smart Charging program website is https://emotorwerks.com/rewards .

 

[bahree]

This is interesting and thank you for sharing. I also have a JuiceBox Pro 40 and never had this issue. But that might also be because we don't have ToU here and I never noticed or tracked it as a result.

Do you have any more details on what spec the car isn't implementing?

 

[Charlie_T]

This is interesting and thank you for sharing. I also have a JuiceBox Pro 40 and never had this issue. But that might also be because we don't have ToU here and I never noticed or tracked it as a result.

The Smart Charging feature of the JuiceBox is supposed to turn on or off charging when the car is plugged in in order to charge when the cheapest and greenest electricity is on the grid. eMotorWerks then provides you with cash rewards, provided to them from the power company for saving the power company money. With the Model 3, however, if the JuiceBox temporarily turns off charging when power is expensive and then later turns it back on, the Model 3 will not wake up to charge. That is why eMotorWerks provided the workaround mentioned in their email. A related issue is that if you set the JuiceBox to charge at a specific time - say at night - it will not be able to wake up the car when charging is supposed to start. That is why they suggest setting the charging time in the Model 3 and not in JuiceBox.

The email says that the car is not following the "J1772 charging port standard", which is how it communicates with most public charging stations. eMotorwerks has said that Tesla will be fixing this problem by the end of the year.

 

[vashwood]

I just noticed this as well. At first when I used my older car in my Juicebox profile, my Model 3 would not finish charging since it would have to be woken up first. And when I added the Model 3 to my Juicebox profile, it would not seem to follow my Juicbox TOU settings.

Are you just using both the Juicebox TOU and the Model 3 TOU?

 

[Msjulie]

This is due to Model 3s not currently following the J1772 charging port standard.

I have an old-school juicebox (no wifi or timer) - the car has charging scheduled itself, must be the magic. No trouble with the charger otherwise - charges the Audi A3 e-tron and previously the leased Fiat 500e w/o issues

 

[tommolog]

Looks like Tesla and eMotorWerks are working on a resolution. In the meantime, you can still use a JuiceBox without issues, because they have implemented a temporary workaround until Tesla updates their software: I got this from eMotorWerks.


Attention: Tesla Model 3 Drivers

Unfortunately, the Model 3 does not currently comply with the J1772 charging port standard right now. However, Tesla has been aware of this issue, but we do not yet have an estimated time frame from Tesla when it will be resolved by a future firmware update.

Meanwhile, instead of your JuiceNet-enabled charging station disallowing charging, such as outside of your desired time-of-use (TOU) period or for smart charging events, your charger associated with a Tesla Model 3 will operate at approximately 2kW for these periods to avoid a failure to charge your vehicle.

In the interim, we ask that you use the Tesla app timer to enable your charging session to begin at your desired times and deactivate your JuiceNet Timer for now.


Additional context:

When you are using your JuiceNet Time-of-Use (TOU) settings or participating in a Smart Charging Event, the Model 3 may not commence charging when expected. This means that it may not “wake up,” despite your JuiceBox permitting power to flow to your EV. In the event you use the JuiceNet TOU timer, your EV will charge at 2kW before your TOU period and at your full charging rate during your TOU period. For smart charging events, we handle this issue by not pausing your charging entirely, but rather by reducing the charging rate by approximately 2 kW until the smart charging event is completed.

 

[compu85]

We noticed that too - an acceptable work around. It's too bad they could only go down to 9 amps, the J1772 minimum of 6 would be even better for our time of use plan.

-J

 

[vashwood]

Is it still working for everyone? It was working until recently. Now my juciebox stopped the 2kw charge and the model 3 goes to sleep. Not sure what changed

 

[srs5694]

I've got a Clipper Creek HCS-40 with the JuiceNet add-on card installed. I've only had my Tesla for about a week, and I've only tried TOU charging with it once, but it did work that one time.

 

[Charlie_T]

Is it still working for everyone? It was working until recently. Now my juciebox stopped the 2kw charge and the model 3 goes to sleep. Not sure what changed

The Juicebox reduces the amps provided to the Model 3 during Charge Events instead of turning it off completely because if it turned it off completely the car would not wake up when a higher current was provided after the Charge Event was over. If the amps provided to the car are low when it stops charging, sometimes the car's own power level (in the Charging screen on the car) is left at a low amperage after the charge. The next time you go to charge it doesn't increase to the higher amperage the JuiceBox is providing. I have had to reset the power level in the car back to 40 amps manually to fix this issue on a few occasions. Mostly it works correctly however.

 

[Ryan777]

The Juicebox reduces the amps provided to the Model 3 during Charge Events instead of turning it off completely because if it turned it off completely the car would not wake up when a higher current was provided after the Charge Event was over. If the amps provided to the car are low when it stops charging, sometimes the car's own power level (in the Charging screen on the car) is left at a low amperage after the charge. The next time you go to charge it doesn't increase to the higher amperage the JuiceBox is providing. I have had to reset the power level in the car back to 40 amps manually to fix this issue on a few occasions. Mostly it works correctly however.

Been having the issue pop back up lately. Car isn’t charging at night.

 

[Big Earl]

Been having the issue pop back up lately. Car isn’t charging at night.

My 500e didn't charge a few times when plugged into the JuiceBox and using time of use charging. Seems to be an occasional bug in the JuiceBox.

 

[srs5694]

I've done a little more testing with my Clipper Creek with a JuiceNet board installed. It seems that the car will charge fine if it happens to be awake when the power is applied, but not if it's asleep. I haven't tested this, but I'd hypothesize that waking the car up via Tesla's app, TeslaFi, or some other third-party tool should work around the problem. In fact, that might be a good way to get JuiceNet devices to work better with a Tesla -- give them access to Tesla's data feed in much the same way TeslaFi does, then have the JuiceNet board wake up the Tesla just before it wants to charge the car. In addition to changes to JuiceNet, this would require some extra configuration, and it would fail if a network link goes down, so it's not without problems. It's also based on the assumption that my hypothesis above is correct.