My fuse blew, and I asked if the engineers knew why. I just got an email back from them referring me to this page, which is probably brand new Temporary Charging Limitation | Tesla Motors TEMPORARY CHARGING LIMITATION Recommended Maximum Power (60A, 15kW) Thank you for purchasing a High Power Wall Connector and twin-chargers for your Model S. This combination enables the fastest home charging possible. However, we recently found an issue with our High Power Wall Connector that causes us to recommend you limit charging to 60A or lower to prevent nuisance fuse trips. We know this partially defeats our efforts and yours to enable very fast charging, especially those of you who invested in a full 80A-capable home installation. We are very passionate about charging fast and enabling a great experience, so please accept our apologies for this problem. We are working as fast as possible to repair this and enable the full 80A charging you were promised using a Tesla High Power Wall Connector. Is it safe? Yes. This issue is does not compromise the unit's safety in any way. Why is it limited? The internal fuses in the Wall Connector are too sensitive to small disturbances on the utility voltage. These fuses may falsely trip when nothing has gone wrong with the connector or vehicle, much like a household outlet that trips while using a hair dryer. Should a fuse trip, the unit will shut off and the car will not complete its charge. As a result, we're recommending you limit charging from a Wall Connector to 60A to ensure that your charge completes as planned. The vehicle itself is still capable of charging at 80A without any problems and you can do this at any other high-powered infrastructure (including all Superchargers) without any concerns. This issue is limited to High Power Wall Connectors operating at over 60A of current. When will it be fixed? By or before June 2013, at no cost. We will work with you and/or your wall-connector installer to upgrade your wall connector as quickly as possible. Again, we apologize for the inconvenience and are working as fast as we can to get your wall connector back to all that the original specification promised.
Disappointing to say the least. I call BS on their "disturbances on the utility voltage" excuse. The parts are fast-acting fuses, rated at 100A, max 300V. The fact they're blowing at < 80A means "defective parts".
Good to know. Thanks! Just got ours in, used briefly at 80A a few times but dialed it back to 60A because I figured 40A to one charger and 20A to the other OR 30A to each charger was a good middle point for efficiency based on guesses around the Roadster charger.
Glad my four year old Roadster HPC with the the Clipper Creek J1772 cable works perfectly at 70A on both my Model S and Roadster. Maybe Tesla shouldn't have tried to reinvent the wheel and just had Clipper Creek make their new HPWC.
Two questions: Are they sending e-mail to everyone with the HPWC, or are we just supposed to find it on the website or TMC? Should we be limiting it by dipswitch or on the center screen?
Limiting by the screen is what I'm doing. My install is really stellar tho: less than 3 feet of high gauge copper wire from the 100A fuse in the fusebox. I haven't seen an email about it. They really should email, I think.
I would hope Tesla has a way of sending messages or alerts directly to the car. A pop up notice the next time you get in the car would reach everyone (well, everyone with connectivity,)
That's a drag, but I don't have my HPWC yet anyway. If it comes before June-or-whenever, well, 60A is still 1.5 times the 40A I get now and, admittedly, more than I need. So I'll still be able to tell people "oh when I said it took me 2.5 hours to top off at night--nah, it takes less than 2 hours!" ;-) Then in June-ish, I'll be able to say "oh when I said it took less than 2 hours, I really meant it took a lot less--barely more than an hour!" Heh, they'll think my car is just becoming self-aware and improving itself over time. . . . (Yes, it's late and I'm punchy....)
I got no notification of this, but thanks for sharing. I'll limit to 60, maybe even shoot for 70. As mentioned, its still faster, so no biggy.
I was told <= 70A until "the next firmware" when my first HPWC blew a fuse when the car was set to 80A while running 4.2 firmware. Now with 4.3 I guess I should leave it at the 70A cap (or drop it to 60A given the recommendation). Guess it's a good thing I didn't "misread" next(4.2) as "4.3" and jump to 80A setting after updating. :|
Remember...problems like this are to be expected for the first year or so! Nobody's perfect. I'm happy about their communication on this, and happy about their commitment to working with us and "making things right."
Can I ask? Why do you need to charge so fast at home? Do you run your batteries down that far each day? I can't bring myself to charge in ON-peak hours because of the rates. Just curious, I'm not being sarcastic.
I would think only a few actually need to. I don't. It just seems like a convenience for the one or two times a year that I'd need it to avoid using the ICE.
You don't NEED to, but it's of course nice. I drove to the aquarium yesterday and came home at around 5PM with ~20 miles on the dash. Seeing the app tell me that it would be over 6 hours until I could go any significant distance inspired an internal sad face. 3 hours? More palatable. I did take it out for a quick run about an hour later though.
For me, its because the HPWC+MS85 almost completes the "game change" experience. Still no superchargers in the NW (yet) which will 100% complete the world shift. But with the HPWC I charge at 55 (rated) miles per hour (79A/232V) so I know within four hours or so no matter how long a drive I just completed I'm fully charged again. It removes the vestiges of range anxiety and "spousal acceptance factor". Thats worth the cost to me! ps. with all our hydro power in Oregon/Washington and a great electric co-op we are blessed with 8.5 cent per kWh electricity with no TOU. Sorry folks in CA but that too is part of the "game changer" for me.
That only makes sense if the car is the problem. Which actually makes sense, since the car is the thing that controls the power flow.
Personally, I don't need to right now, but there's some future-proofing in my decision to get twin chargers and the HPWC. Plus, two specific factors: (a) As with Al, I anticipate a couple of times a year when I may need it. (b) My other half is considering the Model X; if/when we have Tesla cars, faster charging would allow one of us to charge and then swap cables before bed so both cars are topped off. (We have different schedules--wildly different, right now--so this would work great for us, but even if we had identical schedules, it would work well.)