If you fast charge, Tesla will permanently throttle charging

[jbcarioca]

I am quite certain that you have been given false information. A good reference to absolutely deny this would be the people at Tesloop
https://tesloop.com
They have the highest mileage teslas that I know of and they use Superchargers every day, generally three times a day or so. They also have in excess of 200,000 miles on at least one Model S. Were there to have been negative impact or reduced charge rates in Superchargers these guys will be more affected than anybody else. AFAIK they have never had an issue, nor any material battery degradation. There is a good deal of reporting about them,

 

[oktane]

Musk has said that the typical Tesla has the equivalent of one battery cycle per week. So about a 10% degradation from charging in 10 years. That performance seems acceptable to me.

I charge 2x/week, so it means about 4-5 years I lose 10% through low c-rate cycling alone. More battery degradation due to high c-rate charging in addition to this, calendar degradation, etc.

 

[thefortunes]

My brother has > 130k miles on his Model S and a LARGE percentage (>95%) of his charges are SuC since he commutes about 300 miles a day.

I asked him whether he has seen a decrease in his SuC speed and he responded "no slowdown - hit 112kW this morning."

I believe the OP has been misinformed.

Edited to add...OP - if you are taking "twice as long to roadtrip" vs. a gas car you may want to do something differently. On my drive home from California I drove 34 hours and charged 11 hours - about a 3:1 ratio which I have also seen others reference in their travels.

 

[jeffro01]

Interesting stuff... I can't really blame the OP for anything nor accuse them of any misinformation as they appeared to relay to us what was relayed to them... I would love to see the follow-up because what the OP said Tesla told them doesn't jive with the data we have all seen to date... Could this be more of a symptom of countergate fallout?

Jeff

 

[thegruf]

I see it this way:

Tesla have informed the OP that charging rates are reduced due to high level of DC charging.
OP has quite rightly queried this.

It is now for Tesla to respond officially acknowledging, rescinding or qualifying this information.

I so hope this is not another scuttling off to lawyers to find weasel words to extricate Tesla from another mess.

 

[Veritas1980]

If this is the case, wouldn't that also ruin Tesla's new inner city super charger concept for people who can't charge at home?

I mean, the resale value of these cars would drop like a rock.

 

[thefortunes]

I see it this way:

Tesla have informed the OP that charging rates are reduced due to high level of DC charging.
OP has quite rightly queried this.

It is now for Tesla to respond officially acknowledging, rescinding or qualifying this information.

I so hope this is not another scuttling off to lawyers to find weasel words to extricate Tesla from another mess.

I'm not sure I agree. If someone (at Tesla) tells me that they are now throttling all charging on blue cars (extreme example, not questioning that the OP was in fact told what he has posted here) do they have to "respond officially?"

Why?

See my post 4 above this for a real world data point that says Tesla is NOT doing this, by the way.

 

[JHuberman]

I have a late 2017 MS 60/75 kWh battery. We just took a long trip in hot weather 80 - 95 F and I never saw input over 95kW. The input varied throughout the charging cycle and the mileage rate varied between 250 and 315 mph once it got up to speed. Also strangely enough the kW and the mph didn't seem particularly connected. I sometimes had higher mph rates at lower kW and vica versa. Bottom line, though, it always finished before the estimated time and we never finished walking the dogs or snacking before it was ready to continue the trip.

 

[thegruf]

I'm not sure I agree. If someone (at Tesla) tells me that they are now throttling all charging on blue cars (extreme example, not questioning that the OP was in fact told what he has posted here) do they have to "respond officially?"

Why?

See my post 4 above this for a real world data point that says Tesla is NOT doing this, by the way.

Yes, I believe they do.

They have made a significant statement, that potentially affect all owners.
The OP has requested they review this statement
a) due to its possible impact and
b)as the wider evidence appears to be to the contrary to date and
c) to establish if this is a recent development by Tesla.

So yes I think Tesla should respond acknowledging, rescinding or qualifying this information due to its potential significance.
I don't see why they would have difficulty in doing so unless ...

 

[AEdennis]

I'm not sure I agree. If someone (at Tesla) tells me that they are now throttling all charging on blue cars (extreme example, not questioning that the OP was in fact told what he has posted here) do they have to "respond officially?"

Why?

See my post 4 above this for a real world data point that says Tesla is NOT doing this, by the way.

I have a late 2017 MS 60/75 kWh battery. We just took a long trip in hot weather 80 - 95 F and I never saw input over 95kW. The input varied throughout the charging cycle and the mileage rate varied between 250 and 315 mph once it got up to speed. Also strangely enough the kW and the mph didn't seem particularly connected. I sometimes had higher mph rates at lower kW and vica versa. Bottom line, though, it always finished before the estimated time and we never finished walking the dogs or snacking before it was ready to continue the trip.

Am I the only one to notice that soon after @thefortunes postulated his "hypothetical" blue car scenario, we see @JHuberman (who according to his signature has a blue car) note that he never saw charge rates higher than 95kW.

Just a thought.

On a serious note, I hope that the OP is mistaken, and believe that he may be. As has been postulated, the guys at Tesloop have at least one car with over 200k mile S and predominantly supercharging.

 

[Rocky_H]

I have a late 2017 MS 60/75 kWh battery. We just took a long trip in hot weather 80 - 95 F and I never saw input over 95kW. The input varied throughout the charging cycle and the mileage rate varied between 250 and 315 mph once it got up to speed. Also strangely enough the kW and the mph didn't seem particularly connected. I sometimes had higher mph rates at lower kW and vica versa. Bottom line, though, it always finished before the estimated time and we never finished walking the dogs or snacking before it was ready to continue the trip.

There are a couple of specific things I can explain about what you're seeing.
The lower capacity battery packs, like 70 and 75kwh operate at 350V. The larger ones, like 85 and 90 and 100kwh packs operate at 400V. So at Superchargers, the 70/75 cars can only maybe barely get to 100kW on a good day. The bigger ones can get to about 110 or 115kW because of the higher voltage.

The other thing is that the kW and mph you are trying to coordinate are not the same type of measurement. This is a weird thing Tesla has done ever since the beginning. The kW number is instantaneous, like reading it directly off a multi-meter. The mph number is an averaged value over the whole charging session, so they can drift off up or down from each other, depending on whether there was quicker or slower ramping up or down from the beginning to later in the charge session. The mph number is pretty vague and ballpark for that reason and shouldn't be used to tell if a Supercharger or your car is getting the right level of power.

 

[Electroman]

I simply would not have purchased this car if I was informed that it would lose the ability to charge the battery over time

You will lose the ability to charge? as in, you cannot charge and it will be an expensive heavy paper weight?

Oh, I get it.. the MAX speed at which you charge might be reduced in some circumstances in a supercharger. This essentially means on the few occasions that you would supercharge, your max cannot go over 90kW. Which essentially means on a zero to full charge, you will take about 5-10minutes longer than a new car.

Tesla is providing a lot of information on their screens, and if they didn't and only gave you a rough time-finish-charging value, you would not have noticed anything.

IMO it is fraudulent for Tesla

There you go.. Mr. Hyperbole is attracted to this topic like flies to *sugar*..

 

[thefortunes]

Am I the only one to notice that soon after @thefortunes postulated his "hypothetical" blue car scenario, we see @JHuberman (who according to his signature has a blue car) note that he never saw charge rates higher than 95kW.

Just a thought.

On a serious note, I hope that the OP is mistaken, and believe that he may be. As has been postulated, the guys at Tesloop have at least one car with over 200k mile S and predominantly supercharging.

Lol. I actually posted my extreme hypothetical since I have a blue S.

Again, as I noted above my brother has a red S with 130k miles (mainly supercharged) and hit 112kW charging this morning.

 

[thefortunes]

Yes, I believe they do.

They have made a significant statement, that potentially affect all owners.
The OP has requested they review this statement
a) due to its possible impact and
b)as the wider evidence appears to be to the contrary to date and
c) to establish if this is a recent development by Tesla.

So yes I think Tesla should respond acknowledging, rescinding or qualifying this information due to its potential significance.
I don't see why they would have difficulty in doing so unless ...

I still don't understand why a singular statement, obviously made in error (see my and others direct evidence to the contrary), now requires an official corporate response.

I agree that the OP should get clarification from his service center, since that was the source of his erroneous info, but if companies were required to officially respond to statements made in error by each employee they wouldn't get anything else done

 

[AnxietyRanger]

Given the performance limitations related to launch and acceleration counters, this does not sound impossible.

Pack Performance and Launch Mode Limits

Unfortunately this sounds more like the Tesla way of solving architectural issues...

Who knows, I guess we need more data.

 

[AnxietyRanger]

Given that Tesla is not telling us the whole story here, I'm very skeptical of the story you got about permanent changes in the software.

Yet Tesla did exactly that same approach with Ludicrous cars with too many high-performance accelerations under their belt, employing silently permanent limiters based on counters. We only found out when some particular owner noticed and talked to a talkative service center about it and Tesla amended that policy somewhat (basically limited all cars outside of launch mode which is another story...).

 

[Bighorn]

Color me dubious as well. 2013 P85+ with 126k miles, 274 unique superchargers and likely over 1000 supercharges. I've used my personal metric of summing the SOC% and kWs provided by the supercharger--usually runs 125 +/- 7--this has not changed and I routinely see power between 110 and 120kWs on arrival. Newer cars (100s, at least) show a much shallower taper rate, generally providing about 50% more power at a particular SOC.

 

[Electric700]

My car is a 2015 P90DL. At the battery level, all charges are DC (they have to be), but DCFC (Superchargers included) bypasses the converters and directly charges the batteries at a high charge rate. L2 and HPWC chargers go through the AC to DC conversion at a much slower rate.

I would say that, based on the information others are reporting, it's not a Supercharger rate limit due to high usage. Some of the Tesla technical people are new and so are not fully aware of the Supercharger capabilities. That might explain what I think is the incorrect information that you received. Can you clean your charge port's electrical contacts?

Also as it's starting to warm up in some areas, I'm wondering if the slower Supercharger rate issue that was reported last year is coming back. I really hope Tesla is in the process of implementing a fix for that, part of which might involve the next generation Supercharger Version 3 (350 kW+).

 

[SageBrush]

Is a ChaDemo DC charger Amp limited by the car ?
I'm asking if Tesla has the same ability to protect the battery by altering charger rates regardless whether the station is a Tesla Supercharger or another vendor.

OP: Since almost all your charging is ChaDemo, itself IIRC limited to ~ 50 kW, I don't see how this materially affects you even if true. And if true, consider the alternative: reduced range due to accelerated battery aging from frequent ChaDemo use.

 

[Lloyd]

We know that at least part of what they told you is false, and I would be suspect of the rest as well. Sounds like someone was making this up as they went along.

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.

.