If you fast charge, Tesla will permanently throttle charging

[Evbwcaer]

If this information is true, I actually appreciate it, although reluctantly.

A 90kw cap, vs. a 115kw cap, means very little in terms of charge time, possibly excepting the 100kwh.

You're charging about 20% slower for about 30% of the charge time....a trade worth making to protect the battery, in my opinion.

On a 100 minute charge, you are looking at about 6 minutes extra. Denser Supercharger placement wipes this concern away.

Tesla should publish this info if true regardless.

 

[AnxietyRanger]

Outside of this being total fake, or the tech confusing the customer's issue with the Ludicrous counter/limiters, the story is awfully specific to be someone just not knowing what they are saying.

Also, the Ludicrous limiters came with 8.0. Could this also have come with a late firmware and thus new to many?

 

[SmartElectric]

DC charges I have:
6,685.603 Energy (kWh) 245 Total Charge Ups
That number above is 99% CHADeMo charging since March 2016.

First, this validates Tesla quality control in making a CHAdeMO adaptor which has been used daily to pass >6MW through to the car over that time. Very impressed. Makes me more confident to buy this adaptor.

To the OP, looking forward to the Tesla reply with slight interest. But honestly, our 2013 Tesla S85 only charges at 88kW maximum due to the limitation of the original "A" battery pack, and we haven't found the savings of a few minutes of charging per stop every two hours on road trips we could theoretically get with a newer pack to be of any big concern.

 

[NYCR160]

Could this be a launch counter issue and not have any relationship to DC fast charge. Given that this is a 2015 P90DL and from the OP, “The Tesla tech told me that it was communicated many times to Tesla owners” …

My guess is that there is communication error here. My fear would be that the SC is really saying you hit the limit on your launch counter and now we have to limit your charging rate.

 

[No2DinosaurFuel]

Or this could be tesla's new way of getting people to stop supercharging. We really don't know the motive and until we have actual data or some official statement, we can't come to any conclusion. Like others have said, there are examples of people supercharging all the time and seeing no major effect on the supercharging rate.

But then this might be what tesla is saying because of the huge problems they are having at the supercharging stations and the major issues of slow supercharging.

Personally I have not seen anything critical on my car, and all seems normal. But I can't really tell because of all the slow supercharging issues popping up.

At the end of the day, all we customer ask of tesla is to shorten our wait time at the supercharging stations and right now, they are not really do a good job of it.

 

[Naonak]

I just got off the phone with upper management over this issue. I have some mental processing to do... I am on mobile right now, but as soon as I am at a computer I will post my RO that confirms what I said here.

That's not to say the technicians are wrong, but between the phone call and the detail on the RO, my worst fears are confirmed. If anyone has access to the Tesla technical blog, this issue is apparently up there and describes the counter.

The manager I talked to said he couldn't cut and paste it, but would put the gist of it in the RO. But if someone else has access that would be willing to cut and paste, that would be awesome.

Bottom line, there is a new counter that will permanently restrict your charge speeds once you exceed a fast charge threshold count. I want this info to be wrong and if someone can disprove it, via official statement otherwise, great.

But right now, the official word out of Tesla is that the car is operating as designed and it has passed a counter threshold for fast charging and is permanently restricted.

RO will be posted in a couple hours when I get to a computer.

 

[SomeJoe7777]

As was noted earlier in the thread, the ideal everyday charge rate for the Lithium-Ion chemistry is about 0.8C. On a 90kWh battery this corresponds to a charge rate of about 72 kW.

72 kW exceeds the maximum rate that Chademo can put out (50 kW), and a lot of Chademo stations can't reach 50 kW anyway (or sustain it very long even if they can). 50 kW charging rates in my opinion are not at all harmful to the Tesla battery.

Max regen in the Tesla frequently exceeds 60 kW, and certainly that isn't supposed to be harmful for the battery.

 

[Johann Koeber]

Just one data point:

My P85 is little over 3 years old now and was driven close to 150,000 miles. The battery degraded about 7 %. Today I supercharged (as I do several times a week, given my mileage): It started at 114 kW, as the battery filled it throttled down to about 20 kW as the battery was over 90 % full and I unplugged and left.

So no, Tesla did not dial down the power I am seeing at the SC. Sometimes when the battery is cold though, the power is reduced until the battery heats up.

 

[Naonak]

I just want to point out they very specifically told me that my car has seen significant fast charging confirmed by the logs and is explicitly restricted from maximum rate fast charging going forward. The verbiage in the RO is very clear about it.

 

[oktane]

I just want to point out they very specifically told me that my car has seen significant fast charging confirmed by the logs and is explicitly restricted from maximum rate fast charging going forward. The verbiage in the RO is very clear about it.

Shocking and I feel you are owed a new battery pack with restoration of your charging speeds. Counters are fine for internal QC but should not be used in a punitive fashion to save Tesla money on warranty claims. They charge waaaay too much for the car already.

 

[Naonak]

Here is text from the RO:

Concern: Customer states: speed of charging at Superchargers is topping out at lower
speeds then previously observed. This has happened at multiple superchargers recently.
Pay Type: Goodwill
Corrections: Supercharger General Diagnosis Conclusion: No Trouble Found
Review vehicle logs and verify charging is topping out a lower rate than observed on
earlier DC charging sessions. According Tesla engineers once vehicle has been DC fast
charged over a specified amount, the battery management system restricts DC charging to
prevent degradation of the battery pack. According Tesla engineers, this vehicle has seen
significant DC fast charging and is now has permanently restricted DC charging speeds.
Important to note, supercharging will always still be available to the vehicle and the battery
pack has not yet experienced significant degradation due to the amount of DC fast
charging performed on the pack up until this point in time. Vehicle is operating as
designed.

I will share the actual RO with a mod or trusted member, I just don't want to post it unredacted with my personal info. I will post the redacted version when I get home.

 

[SageBrush]

Are there additional derate points as DC charges accrue ?

 

[TexasEV]

As this is new to all of us, and hasn't happened on older cars that supercharge constantly (like Tesloop) I wonder if this is just for the newer battery chemistry. How old is your car and what battery size do you have?

 

[gabeincal]

As this is new to all of us, and hasn't happened on older cars that supercharge constantly (like Tesloop) I wonder if this is just for the newer battery chemistry. How old is your car and what battery size do you have?

OP drives a 2015 P90DL

 

[thegruf]

Well I for one have a Tesla-Semi load of questions about the uncovering of this new charging information/parameterisation.

In summary without even starting to list them is my guess is that

all of us will want to know what the parameters are that affect charging and to what extent, so that we can make informed decisions as to how to ensure the optimum care and longeivity of our vehicles, and further how we can identify the status of these parameters when sourcing a used vehicle.

I for one would not wish to go and buy a used P100D only to find out that the power is restricted and the charge rate is restricted because the previous owner had quite legitimately but unknowingly used up a good chunk of the goodness.

 

[thefortunes]

As this is new to all of us, and hasn't happened on older cars that supercharge constantly (like Tesloop) I wonder if this is just for the newer battery chemistry. How old is your car and what battery size do you have?

Another data point to note here - the OP charges exclusively via CHAdeMO. Others who have posted not having reduced rates (like my brother with over 120k miles of supercharging) have used Tesla SuC. Shouldn't matter, but who knows?

 

[EV-lutioin]

It's not a theory, this was direct from Tesla. They told me because I had so many DC charges, the car has limited the charging capabilities. Virtually all of my miles are DC charges. I very rarely charge AC. They did not specify exactly what the limit was, but I will try to get that information.



So are you saying Tesla is lying to me? To what end? Why would they do that?

In my experience Tesla Service Center personnel know less about their cars than the owners. They are probably not lying.... just clueless.

 

[CSFTN]

So, anyone other than OP can report with any validity of this restriction? NOT TRYING TO START A FLAME WAR -- I can't help but recall that *someguy* who posted in another thread that he/she goes out of his way to charge on free Chademos almost every day ... and then ridiculed another user when they suggested he was freeloading. Posted something like "why should I pay to charge at home when I can charge for free elsewhere?" Kansas City, right? {edit: here's the post Forbes says CHAdeMO is bigger and better than Supercharger network....}

I do wonder if there's more to it than number of kWh in DCFC or even the frequency of DCFC. Maybe he made his bed, and Tesla specifically wrote a limiter to deal with people they felt were abusing free DCFC, in order to encourage them to charge at home? Maybe they even include in their algorithm if you do have access to AC charging at your home or place of work? Would that be wrong?

 

[Skipdd]

I have a couple of concerns and thoughts
1) I bought and regularly use a Chademo adapter because until Tesla's recently announced plan/policy SuCs were supposed to be used for long distance trips not for commuting. In the DC area it is common to live in MD and work in VA and vice-versa. Some days, I also drive to many other parts of the DMV. On these days using Chademo based service (EvGo), is the only practical solution. I am nowhere near OP's total, but if there is any threshold, I want to know what it is
2)Agree with other poster that this is now a required piece of info on any CPO car
3)In general, I think Tesla needs to disclose any internal threshold limiters, so a buyer/owner can make informed decisions
4)This reinforces my view around not counting on owning the car for an extended timeframe (5+ years) with high mileage. I'm not mad about this - to some extent it's expected as it's still leading edge technology. But, again it informs acquisition decisions (purchase vs lease for example)

I will be interested to see how this evolves over the next few days/weeks.

 

[Electroman]

I am glad Tesla is doing this to protect the battery.

The alternative is of course to reduce SC charging to 90 kW to everyone. You see, Tesla never guaranteed that their SCs will give 120 kW output. To protect the battery, reduce the charge to those that exceeded fast charging beyond a limit, or they could simply reduce it for everyone.

Then OP would have no issues.