If you fast charge, Tesla will permanently throttle charging

[maximizese]

Dunno, but I'm satisfied with 75-90kWh.

Lucky you, but some folks are seeing much slower charging rates. Over the last 5 months, I've seen speeds as high as 128kW and as low as 8kW, though the low was likely due to a faulty Supercharger stall. On average, my initial charge speed is around 68kW which is okay for me. I try to arrive at the SuC with 8-20% SOC and charge for 20-40 minutes to get around 60-75% SOC. Once I'm charging below 44kW, my thought is that my time is better spent driving to the next SuC where I can hit a much higher speed with a lower SOC.

None of this was an issue one year ago, but the software updates over the last year has made road trips slower and a lot less predictable. If I'm driving more than 500 miles, I'm leaving the Tesla at home and taking our TDI. It can do 720 miles on a single tank...typically I need to empty my biological tank around the 300 mile mark.

 

[Silicon Desert]

It's a great car. Certainly not as fun to be in as the X, but after putting 52,000 miles on my X, I'm admittedly a bit sick of the creaks and groans. I feel much older in the xc90 tho

I'm not sure how to interpret that comment. Are you saying the car has more "creaks and groans", or maybe your own body is just starting to fall apart. I'm at about 45,000 miles and so far no annoying noises in the car.

 

[Tslacg]

I'm not sure how to interpret that comment. Are you saying the car has more "creaks and groans", or maybe your own body is just starting to fall apart. I'm at about 45,000 miles and so far no annoying noises in the car.

Hopefully it's not my body quite yet! (I'm still quite young).

Ive owned Tesla's since 2012, so I didn't actually notice the creaks and groans until riding in a new luxury vehicle. It was then immediately apparent my car is loud, moaning and groaning.

 

[MDR SEA]

I find SC charge rates seem to vary with the number of cars charging.
Also noticed lower rates when I'm sharing a stall number with another eg. I'm on 1A and someone else is on 1B.

 

[Oil4AsphaultOnly]

I find SC charge rates seem to vary with the number of cars charging.
Also noticed lower rates when I'm sharing a stall number with another eg. I'm on 1A and someone else is on 1B.

That's a well-documented supercharger behaviour that no longer applies to the urban-superchargers.

But this thread is about the actual throttling (where peak charge rates, under ideal conditions, are below 100KW) of cars with the 90kwh and 70kwh (or was it 75kwh?) battery packs. Although, at this point in the thread, it's pretty much a foregone conclusion that anyone with these specific packs will experience throttling with enough DC fast charges.

 

[RIP1]

This was the first I had heard of it as well. The Tesla tech told me that it was communicated many times to Tesla owners. I told him that is simply false... Now I'm waiting on a call back from management.

I will try to get something in writing from them regarding this. I was as flabbergasted as everyone else here seem to be when they first told me... I will definitely be following this up to its conclusion one way or another because my car is not usable in the manner in which I purchased it at this point.

I hope the techs at my SC are misinformed and it's something wrong with my battery or charging system. They seemed pretty confident though.

As to how many DC charges I have:

6,685.603
Energy (kWh)
245
Total Charge Ups

That does not include Supercharging. You can add probably another 50 - 60 Supercharges to that I would estimate (I can get an exact number at some point, I have records). That number above is 99% CHADeMo charging since March 2016.

looking for info as a new owner - does the car have info on charges and energy used that is visible to the drivers? If so where ? or is that a separate record you have kept?

 

[DarkMatter]

looking for info as a new owner - does the car have info on charges and energy used that is visible to the drivers? If so where ? or is that a separate record you have kept?

No. You can track it using things like Tesla Fi. If you're regularly charging at home and only rarely Supercharging, you likely don't need to think about it.

 

[MarcG]

looking for info as a new owner - does the car have info on charges and energy used that is visible to the drivers? If so where ? or is that a separate record you have kept?

You can access lifetime data via CAN bus and an app like Scan My Tesla:

Vendor - Scan My Tesla, a CANBUS reader for Android

 

[LaurS]

No. You can track it using things like Tesla Fi. If you're regularly charging at home and only rarely Supercharging, you likely don't need to think about it.

Not sure if the regen counts, but I only have 900kWh on DC charging, and I only see 30-50kW "super"chaging rate. And this is in 60-70F weather, with the battery at 88F.

 

[DarkMatter]

Not sure if the regen counts, but I only have 900kWh on DC charging, and I only see 30-50kW "super"chaging rate. And this is in 60-70F weather, with the battery at 88F.
View attachment 534174

That looks terrible and says to me something is very wrong with your pack. Your max discharge rate is also barely more than a non-Performance 85. What has Tesla service said? This seems like it could be one of those 85 packs that they 'nerfed', which is a different issue than happens to the 90 packs.

 

[LaurS]

That looks terrible and says to me something is very wrong with your pack. Your max discharge rate is also barely more than a non-Performance 85. What has Tesla service said? This seems like it could be one of those 85 packs that they 'nerfed', which is a different issue than happens to the 90 packs.

That image is at 50% state of charge after sitting in the garage a day. Last time I charged at 100% it said 358kW discharge or 480HP. My voltage looked OK to at 4.19 per cell. Range looks good. Is just the charging rate that sucks. I will do another 100% this weekend, here the 100% SOC from Jan 19:

 

[DarkMatter]

I trust that the rates are still low if you are navigating through a Supercharger station with a properly warm battery, yes? And you have checked for louver function? It still seems a bit on the low side. The ABRP curve from real data shows a warm battery (not just sitting, actual driving warm, since the ideal Supercharging battery temperature is somewhere in the 40C+ range) at 50% SoC should be in the 50-70 kW range. Tesla Supercharging - Summer 2019 Update That rate did get dropped by a software update after the fires.

 

[LaurS]

....the ideal Supercharging battery temperature is somewhere in the 40C+ range.
.

That is the info I was looking for. I only had ScanMyTesla for 3-4 months. Before last weekend I supercharged before Christmas. On Wednesday I could plan to reach a supercharger after 40 miles freeway driving and at about 10% SOC. Does "range mode" affect louver position or battery temp?

 

[DarkMatter]

Range mode doesn't change that. Make certain you have the supercharger set as a destination or on a route that automatically adds it as a destination. Louver problems mostly show up as an early taper, much like connector problems.

 

[tga]

Range mode definitely disables the battery heater. I've used it for that reason on weekends winter trips in northern NH where I don't have charging available and need to preserve as much battery as possible for the trip home. So with range mode on, you won't see en-route battery warmup, but 40 minutes of highway driving should warm your battery enough for a supercharging session.

 

[SilverString]

SOC and battery temp are no doubt the major factors but I also believe there is a degradation in the V2 superchargers over time.

This is purely anecdotal on my part but In the last year I have seen more and more failures and low supercharge speeds especially in the higher use locations. Yes there are more Tesla's out there and more failures are a natural outcrop of more use, there are software issues too, but over time it stands to reason that the DC conversion circuitry might begin to degrade especially with heavy use. There are rectifiers and capacitors in these among other parts that no doubt can degrade without failing. It certainly occurs in other types of charging and high voltage supply equipment. I seem to get the best rates at out-of-the-way lower use superchargers.

I do believe Tesla is addressing this issue too, the recent out of service supercharger update is great. But it is something to consider beyond always looking to the vehicle as the cause..

 

[DarkMatter]

It's possible but unlikely. They are made of the same charger units that are in the cars. When was the last time you saw someone report that the charger in their car was not running at full power? There are plenty of people with heavy usage cars and I've never seen a report of anything other than a totally failed charger.

 

[SilverString]

It's possible but unlikely. They are made of the same charger units that are in the cars. When was the last time you saw someone report that the charger in their car was not running at full power? There are plenty of people with heavy usage cars and I've never seen a report of anything other than a totally failed charger.

They are certainly not made of the same parts, or chargers that are in our cars, If they were we would not need DC fast chargers.

 

[joltheadq]

March 11th 2020 study found Panasonic NCR 18650B batteries are damaged from Fast-charging. Article suggest improved "industrial" to "adaptive" charging based on internal resistance.

Fast-charging damages electric car batteries

According to their research, my car battery is fried. Industrial fast charging fell below 80% capacity after 25 cycles and 60% after 60.

 

[Duke-U]

Well, my car is at approx 100.000 miles and supercharged an estimate of 300 times, probably a lot more. So I think these researchers have no clue how a Tesla manages that.