If you fast charge, Tesla will permanently throttle charging

[Ugliest1]

Not a black and white thing at all for me, very few things are. And I have no argument with you to settle, none at all. Just an observation.

I got the impression that your opinion actually aligns, underneath it all, quite a bit with those who say Tesla is withholding information. The only difference is that you give them a pass for that, which some others might consider perhaps dishonest (i.e. withholding something that they should not).

But basically to me it seems you are both saying Tesla is withholding information, right? You are just of the opinion that it is OK and some other may attribute dishonesty/bad intent to it.

If I misunderstood, feel free to correct my understanding.

(BTW: Nobody here - I believe - thinks Tesla intentionally made a product that needed after-sale changes. So I don't think that is in any way relevant to this thread. It is all about how Tesla reacted to changes that were later needed and whether we think those are OK or not and whether or not there was intent to do something clandestinely or not - these are certainly debatable things...)

No, my opinion doesn't align with what you said. The choice of words goes beyond merely trying to find out information: "Tesla is withholding information" implies, in a passive aggressive way, that they are doing something dishonest, and that they are not publishing information that they legally or morally *should*. Saying that "some others might consider Tesla's actions dishonest" is another passive aggressive shot at Tesla. Saying "whether or not there was intent to do something clandestinely or not - debatable" is yet another passive aggressive shot at Tesla.

I don't know whether Tesla *should* publish the details -- I don't know what the details truly are, I don't know how serious the OP's car's situation really is, from a longevity perspective and from an overall EV to the masses perspective. At an individual level (i.e., OP), I get how worrisome it would be in his situation. But I'm not willing to throw Tesla under the bus given how complex and technically difficult what they're trying to do is, being light on their feet, inventing the future, fixing stuff that didn't quite work, and oh yeah, trying to survive all the trolls, Koch cr4p, FUD, poor or dishonest (yes, dishonest) reporting, etc.

So, as I said before, we can agree to disagree.

 

[Naonak]

Their "up to 120kW" covers all those models (and I believe very few people have actually achieved 120kW, pretty much all stars have to align). Tesla never really breaks down by this much detail, so they don't have a explicit guarantee on what each model charges at.

It actually doesn't. It specifically says those apply the the 90D on the Tesla website. Look at the disclaimer at the bottom of the page (apparently it's missing on some pages, but there on others. But in no case does it say something OTHER than a 90D.)

No, my opinion doesn't align with what you said. The choice of words goes beyond merely trying to find out information: "Tesla is withholding information" implies, in a passive aggressive way, that they are doing something dishonest, and that they are not publishing information that they legally or morally *should*. Saying that "some others might consider Tesla's actions dishonest" is another passive aggressive shot at Tesla. Saying "whether or not there was intent to do something clandestinely or not - debatable" is yet another passive aggressive shot at Tesla.

I don't know whether Tesla *should* publish the details -- I don't know what the details truly are, I don't know how serious the OP's car's situation really is, from a longevity perspective and from an overall EV to the masses perspective. At an individual level (i.e., OP), I get how worrisome it would be in his situation. But I'm not willing to throw Tesla under the bus given how complex and technically difficult what they're trying to do is, being light on their feet, inventing the future, fixing stuff that didn't quite work, and oh yeah, trying to survive all the trolls, Koch cr4p, FUD, poor or dishonest (yes, dishonest) reporting, etc.

So, as I said before, we can agree to disagree.

It actually is dishonest to a degree. If for no other reason than we have a slider and are advised to not charge to 100% regularly. There's even a pop-up in the car if you do it too often. Why is that there? It's because it degrades the battery if you do it too often. So, Tesla has already established that they will positively inform the user of a situation where the battery will be degraded if done regularly.

Now, we come to find out that DCFC regularly will ALSO degrade the battery. Yet there is no slider. There is no pop-up. Nobody from Tesla mentions this... ever. Until now.

Couple what I just wrote with the fact that Telsa was obviously AWARE of the issue for at least some months, if not longer, and failed to make any mention of it to anyone, add a warning in the car, on their website, via email, etc... and it is most definitely dishonest, or if you don't want to use that word (I would agree, maybe dishonest is not the word to use), we'll say they certainly have a moral obligation to inform the users and failed to do so.

As I said before, my beef isn't with the fact that they have throttled the car; it's with the fact that they withheld this information and now are covering their butts with the warranty by throttling the vehicle so they don't have a potential battery replacement in their future. If they had simply said from the get-go or when they learned about it, "Hey, we've just determined that using CHAdeMO or SuperChargers will cause your battery to degrade, you should probably not do that unless absolutely necessary." Well then, we'd have a totally different conversation than we are having now. Mostly because I wouldn't have charged my car via CHAdeMO. Instead, the party line has always been "DC Charging is fine, do it as much as you want." Come to find out that's simply untrue and Tesla knew it was untrue.

Even now, Telsa is not informing people that DC charging is bad for the battery. Either it's bad for the battery and they need to let people know, or it's not bad for the battery and the throttling is unnecessary. So which is it?

 

[AnxietyRanger]

"Hey, we've just determined that using CHAdeMO or SuperChargers will cause your battery to degrade, you should probably not do that unless absolutely necessary."

My speculation is that, unlike with 90% charging, there would potentially be a business reason against that kind of honesty.

Asking people to charge to 90% on most days is not a big deal. Asking the number to be 50% could be a bigger hinderance to adoption, though....

But DC charging alongside the large battery is a major part of Tesla's business plan and BEV adoption obstacle removal story. Asking people to avoid DC charging could be detrimental to business as it could add an adoption obstacle.

This potential conflict of interest, of course, is also why the ethics could get messy real fast. The honesty and disclosure angles are problematic if business benefit is guiding them.

I made a similar point here: 100% charge vs. Supercharge?

 

[stopcrazypp]

Variables, understood. I assume most of us who perform charging tests should know about variables. There won't be any problem if the test is done with specific variables.

Dumb to guarantee, a BIG NO. Tesla can easily add a line and set the testing standard on its promise/statement. They just chose not to do it. Why? That's the problem here. No guarantee and no disclosure.

So instead of simply saying "up to 120kW" they say:

"guaranteed to charge at 120kW*"

*85kWh non-A packs only (and maybe 100kWh), ambient temperature 65 degrees, battery must not be heat or cold soaked, socket and connector contacts clean, stall must not be shared, must be a 120kW rated supercharger cabinet, low battery SOC.

What company's marketing division would do that (a really dumb one in my opinion)?

Those of us on TMC love to see and discuss those details, but your general buyer will have their eyes gloss over if you mention those things.

 

[stopcrazypp]

It actually doesn't. It specifically says those apply the the 90D on the Tesla website. Look at the disclaimer at the bottom of the page (apparently it's missing on some pages, but there on others. But in no case does it say something OTHER than a 90D.)

Other than the "Supercharger charging profile" mentioning the 90kWh (which I already pointed out has the disclaimer "actual charge times may vary"), I don't see where Tesla ties that pack to the supercharger speed.
Supercharger | Tesla

Since the 90kWh pack never was able to charge to 120kW (the 85kWh packs are able to and actually have a slightly higher peak charging speed), I don't see how it makes sense for Tesla to use them as reference for the 120kW claim.

 

[AnxietyRanger]

So instead of simply saying "up to 120kW" they say:

"guaranteed to charge at 120kW*"

*85kWh non-A packs only (and maybe 100kWh), ambient temperature 65 degrees, battery must not be heat or cold soaked, socket and connector contacts clean, stall must not be shared, must be a 120kW rated supercharger cabinet, low battery SOC.

What company's marketing division would do that (a really dumb one in my opinion)?

Those of us on TMC love to see and discuss those details, but your general buyer will have their eyes gloss over if you mention those things.

Then again, one of the issues with Tesla in all the recent Tesla-gates has been their desire to push specs beyond a level that has been sustainable and reachable long-term. Ask yourself this: What if Tesla had a conservative streak instead. What if all publicized specs had been underpromising and over-delivering as well as high-end cut-off points adjusted conservatively downwards from theoretical (but unsustainable) maximums.

What if instead of 120 kW, Tesla would have been talking about 90 kWh Superchargers only and optimized for that level, even though technically the stations are capable of more. What if post-D car HP figures were conservative battery level maximums. What if 75 had been called 70. 85 had been called 80. What if 90DL had a quarter of a mile of 11.5 in the specs instead of 10.9. What if Ludicrous cars would have capped off at 1500A always...

Maybe the cars could exceed all publicized specs even, at times, but in marketing Tesla would keep things very conservative.

Marketing and limiting to sustainable figures as well as at times underpromising and overdelivering is certainly possible and one could argue Tesla would have avoided many of their controversial episodes had this been their approach. I partially blame the quarterly games. The need to find demand levers (because they are too stubborn about marketing and discounts) and do constant changes has driven them to push specs beyond what is tested for the long-term...

 

[ChadFeldheimer]

Maybe the cars could exceed all publicized specs even, at times, but in marketing Tesla would keep things very conservative.

Reminds me of my favorite joke about salespeople and marketers.

What is the difference between a salesperson and a marketer?

The marketer knows he is lying.

No offense to the marketers and salespeople out there. I put on those hats too!

 

[YauKwan]

Hi David,

Noobie question. How are you getting this information on your ipad? Would love to get that going in my car so i can monitor the battery better.

Thanks!

Nonsense. I have been monitoring balance over an entire year and even in my 3 year old battery (115k miles) there is never a significant difference. Not even close to 6%! Even if there was, you would not be able to drive because the lower modules would be empty! So balancing cannot explain this behavior.
There is a 5% buffer to protect the battery. When and how much of that you can use is unknown. Many have been able to drive significantly beyond 0 miles. Some have had the car shut down. We do not know why it works most of the time and not at other times.

Whatever it is, balancing is never so bad that you would even lose 1 rated mile.

View attachment 226424

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[Benjamin Brooks]

Hi David,

Noobie question. How are you getting this information on your ipad? Would love to get that going in my car so i can monitor the battery better.

Thanks!

TM-Spy. Search the TMC forums for it...

 

[Electric700]

It actually doesn't. It specifically says those apply the the 90D on the Tesla website. Look at the disclaimer at the bottom of the page (apparently it's missing on some pages, but there on others. But in no case does it say something OTHER than a 90D.)



It actually is dishonest to a degree. If for no other reason than we have a slider and are advised to not charge to 100% regularly. There's even a pop-up in the car if you do it too often. Why is that there? It's because it degrades the battery if you do it too often. So, Tesla has already established that they will positively inform the user of a situation where the battery will be degraded if done regularly.

Now, we come to find out that DCFC regularly will ALSO degrade the battery. Yet there is no slider. There is no pop-up. Nobody from Tesla mentions this... ever. Until now.

Couple what I just wrote with the fact that Telsa was obviously AWARE of the issue for at least some months, if not longer, and failed to make any mention of it to anyone, add a warning in the car, on their website, via email, etc... and it is most definitely dishonest, or if you don't want to use that word (I would agree, maybe dishonest is not the word to use), we'll say they certainly have a moral obligation to inform the users and failed to do so.

As I said before, my beef isn't with the fact that they have throttled the car; it's with the fact that they withheld this information and now are covering their butts with the warranty by throttling the vehicle so they don't have a potential battery replacement in their future. If they had simply said from the get-go or when they learned about it, "Hey, we've just determined that using CHAdeMO or SuperChargers will cause your battery to degrade, you should probably not do that unless absolutely necessary." Well then, we'd have a totally different conversation than we are having now. Mostly because I wouldn't have charged my car via CHAdeMO. Instead, the party line has always been "DC Charging is fine, do it as much as you want." Come to find out that's simply untrue and Tesla knew it was untrue.

Even now, Telsa is not informing people that DC charging is bad for the battery. Either it's bad for the battery and they need to let people know, or it's not bad for the battery and the throttling is unnecessary. So which is it?

I thought it was already established by multiple people here who have far more miles than you do, with Supercharging, that there is no problem (at least for them)? Do you have an official letter from Tesla stating that using only CHAdeMO to charge (or Superchargers) is not advised? Can you also provide the location of the Tesla Service Center that you went to?

This is what I posted earlier in this thread:

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+).

 

[Matias]

Low SOC = Terrible Supercharging

Is there a new ramp up curve ?

 

[MP3Mike]

Is there a new ramp up curve ?

Yes, it has been widely discussed that Tesla changed the curve to start Supercharging very slowly before ramping up to full speed when the SoC is very low. Such that people were actually moving to a L2 charger to get it up to 5-10% before going back to the Supercharger as the L2 was faster than the Supercharge. (Not that that makes any logical sense.)

 

[torvalstrom]

I thought it was already established by multiple people here who have far more miles than you do, with Supercharging, that there is no problem (at least for them)? Do you have an official letter from Tesla stating that using only CHAdeMO to charge (or Superchargers) is not advised? Can you also provide the location of the Tesla Service Center that you went to?

This is what I posted earlier in this thread:

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+).

Just to confirm this software based throttling is being rolled out by Tesla. It's not something happening based on actual battery cell degradation.

I've also had this confirmed by Tesla here in Denmark who is expecting that this new supercharger "curve" with a cap around 96-98 kW will be rolled out across all models. The 90 kWh packs are just having it done first.

The guy I spoke with at the service center added that to the best of his knowledge this isn't a DC-fast-charge counter based decision. It's simply a change in the way superchargers operate and since it requires modifying the BMS in each car, it's being rolled out gradually.

Obviously this is just his statement and from the data we have from multiple owners it does appear that only (or almost only) 90 kWh packs are limited thus far.

But, I guess we'll find out sooner rather than later...

Tor

 

[Max*]

I've also had this confirmed by Tesla here in Denmark who is expecting that this new supercharger "curve" with a cap around 96-98 kW will be rolled out across all models.

And before there is another outrage thread, I just wanted to add this here:

For typical/most supercharger usage, the cap is somewhat irrelevant. It's about the shape of the curve. To be exact, the area under the curve is more important than the peak of the curve.

 

[torvalstrom]

And before there is another outrage thread, I just wanted to add this here:

For typical/most supercharger usage, the cap is somewhat irrelevant. It's about the shape of the curve. To be exact, the area under the curve is more important than the peak of the curve.

Forgot about that supplemental info for new/potential owners... Thanks Max!

 

[AnxietyRanger]

@torvalstrom That statement is completely at odds with what JonMc said as a statement about the 1% ~5min...

But then it is 100% in line with what happened the last time when JonMc made a statement (about fixing Ludicrous counters).

The fix was limiting everyone.

So certainly this would fit the precedent. Unless you were joking?

 

[Max*]

@torvalstrom That statement is completely at odds with what JonMc said as a statement about the 1% ~5min...

Math doesn't work that way. See post 1246.


Theoretically, I could cap all superchargers at 97kw, and not taper them, and would do a 0%-100% charge faster than what we have now (120kw peak, but tapered)

 

[AnxietyRanger]

Math doesn't work that way. See post 1246.


Theoretically, I could cap all superchargers at 97kw, and not taper them, and would do a 0%-100% charge faster than what we have now (120kw peak, but tapered)

But JonMc specifically said the DC charge high peak rate throttling was causing less than 1% of users to experience ~5min delays in Supercharging.

That story does not suddenly turn into, hey, it was just a taper change for the entire fleet... not with any kind of non-creative math at least.

JonMc/U.S. SCs last week vs. Danish SC now are giving wildly different explanations for this.

 

[Max*]

But JonMc specifically said the DC charge high peak rate throttling was causing less than 1% of users to experience ~5min delays in Supercharging.

That story does not suddenly turn into, hey, it was just a taper change for the entire fleet... not with any kind of non-creative math at least.

JonMc/U.S. SCs last week vs. Danish SC now are giving wildly different explanations for this.

That's the magic with math, it doesn't take creative math to change the area under the curve! It can easily be done.

I'm not going through 63 pages of this thread, about half of which are your posts, to find the 2 supercharger curves where the taper curve and peaks did change. Someone recorded it, there was a change in one of the firmware updates.

You're sticking to every word that JohnMc said at that point. This isn't the first time he hasn't given you all the info. In addition, this could be a work in progress. "Hmm, we reduced the peak to save the 90kwh batteries, maybe this will help all the batteries? We also have a lot of data now on supercharging and the taper, maybe if we further reduce the taper, people wont notice total charge time NOT changing, but this will allow us to cap the peak to preserve battery life". Just one example. I could think of many more ways this played out within Tesla.



Here is an example of how taper changed, and the red curve would have a higher AUC than the green curve, even though the peak on the green curve is higher.

 

[AnxietyRanger]

@Max*

Oh I know this is not the first time JonMc has not given us all the info.

I find it perfectly possible Tesla decides to limit the peak rate in all cars.

After all, that was their solution to fixing the Ludicrous launch counters.

What I don't agree is that the fleet taper is the whole story like the Danish SC has now reported.

But it may be the NEW story. Possibly.