First Time Charging - is this Normal?

[joedds]

Just picked up my Model 3 long range only 4 days ago. Love the car so far. I installed the new software update on 12/25/19. Did my first charging at this morning. When to the closest Supercharger location near my home. There was only one other car charging in a bay of 12 superchargers (although the Tesla app said that 5 of 12 were available, mine was the only car there, weird). We were separated by 10 charging stations, so I don't think we were on a shared line. My car had 45 miles of charge left when I plugged it in. Charging started at 141kW, but within a few minutes, dropped down to 19kw and never went above 24kw for the next 2 hours until charging was completed. Is this to be expected for the future or is only because this was the first time I charged?

 

[DriveMe]

I don’t think this is normal, but it could be just a bad Supercharger stall.
Next time try a different stall. Also make sure to push the plug really hard when you are inserting it. On a new car it might be hard to insert it properly. Also make sure to warm up the car and its battery by driving it for half an hour or so before Supercharging and by setting the Supercharger as your driving destination in the navigation system, that will activate the battery preconditioning. If the problem continues, contact Tesla. Good luck!

 

[ilyak]

TL;DR: not normal, with a warm battery, you should expect a gradual taper after ~50% but you should not go anywhere near this low until after 90%

Sounds like a bad stall. Since you were able to get the normal rate right off the bat, the issue is probably not with your car, but with the bank of chargers feeding that stall or the connector. Take a look at u/Wugz’s excellent post on charging curves on reddit; this is what you should expect under ideal circumstances. If you’re at a mostly empty charger and you’re getting significantly below these speeds, try moving over a couple of stalls. And if you do consistently see the car drop off like that at different chargers, it’s worth scheduling an appointment.

P.S. give abetterrouteplanner.com a try. It does the math for you to find optimal charge times for your trip.

 

[Tam]

...Charging started at 141kW, but within a few minutes, dropped down to 19kw and never went above 24kw for the next 2 hours until charging was completed...

The kW does briefly peak then drops after that so that behavior is normal.

However, I don't think it would drop down that far to 24 kW when it is not near full so the numbers are not normal.

As @DriveMe and @ilyak suggested, try another Supercharger stall.

When your Supercharger works as advertised, the best time-saving practice is to charge to 80% because, after that, it just takes a much longer time. Sometimes, just charging from 99% to 100% might also take about a whole hour too so I am not sure it is worth the waiting time (it's ok to waste time while I am in bed, but not while I am running on the road).