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If you fast charge, Tesla will permanently throttle charging

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On a topic like this, which apparently involves Tesla having set some restrictions on the cars' ability to charge without informing the buyers, is there any way the TMC group could formally request a definitive public statement from Tesla?
That would be a very useful public service we could do for the 100s of thousands of current and prospective future owners of Tesla vehicles.
This just cries out for some definitive answers. What little data we have from Tesla dopes not seem sufficient.
 
Tesla has made a public statement ... Tesla explains why it limits Supercharging speed after high numbers of DC charges

In a statement, Tesla explains that it is a software limitation to optimize for the best possible owner experience that’s within the limits of physics. Here’s the statement in full:

“The peak charging rate possible in a li-ion cell will slightly decline after a very large number of high-rate charging sessions. This is due to physical and chemical changes inside of the cells. Our fast-charge control technology is designed to keep the battery safe and to preserve the maximum amount of cell capacity (range capability) in all conditions. To maintain safety and retain maximum range, we need to slow down the charge rate when the cells are too cold, when the state of charge is nearly full, and also when the conditions of the cell change gradually with age and usage. This change due to age and usage may increase total Supercharge time by about 5 minutes and less than 1% of our customers experience this.

Tesla is not slowing down charge rates to discourage frequent Supercharging – quite the opposite. We encourage our customers to use the Supercharger network at their discretion and we committed to doubling the number of worldwide chargers just this year. We also want to ensure that our customers have the best experience at those Superchargers and preserve as much vehicle range as possible – even after frequent usage.”
 
@dhanson865

Since you disagreed with my post, you disagreed with one the world's foremost battery experts. I suggest you watch this video so you can educate yourself ;)

I didn't disagree with Mr. Dahn, and I have seen his videos before so you don't need to point me to them.

I disagreed because you said 70%. Nothing Mr. Dahn says in that video will make your mistake on that number right. A Nissan rep did promote the 70% idea pre sales back in 2010 or 2011 but once the warranty came into play it became 66.25% because the warranty specifies 4 bars lost and the fourth bar drops at 66.25%.
 
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I didn't disagree with Mr. Dahn, and I have seen his videos before so you don't need to point me to them.

I disagreed because you said 70%. Nothing Mr. Dahn says in that video will make your mistake on that number right. A Nissan rep did promote the 70% idea pre sales back in 2010 or 2011 but once the warranty came into play it became 66.25% because the warranty specifies 4 bars lost and the fourth bar drops at 66.25%.

So why did you disagree with my second post when all I did was ask you why you disagreed with the first? Seriously?

And you disagreed with the first post over a 4% difference WITHOUT EVER SAYING WHY UNTIL I ASKED YOU????? Incredible!

The 70% warranty has nothing to do with Nissan being nice to the consumer, this was the result of a settlement between Nissan and CARB. There are more precise ways to determine when the battery capacity has hit 69%.
 
So why did you disagree with my second post when all I did was ask you why you disagreed with the first? Seriously?

And you disagreed with the first post over a 4% difference WITHOUT EVER SAYING WHY UNTIL I ASKED YOU????? Incredible!

The 70% warranty has nothing to do with Nissan being nice to the consumer, this was the result of a settlement between Nissan and CARB. There are more precise ways to determine when the battery capacity has hit 69%.

If you had just asked why, I would have just answered. The disagree was because you said I was disagreeing with Mr. Dahn which I wasn't.

It's not a 4% difference it's 3.75%.

There is no 70% warranty for Nissan to be nice or not nice about. There is a 66.25% warranty. Hitting 69% before the warranty period ends will NOT get you a new battery from Nissan for free.

That you keep referencing 70% says to me that you only have a cursory knowledge of the issue and haven't had a Leaf or used leafspy or know what the actual results of the lawsuits were.

As incredible as it seems to you that 3.75% matters, it seems even worse for those Leaf owners that hit 60,001 miles or 60 months and 1 day before they got below 66.25%. Nissan told people tough luck when that happened. People had to sue to get any response other than tough luck.

To put this in context our exchange started when you replied to this

There is a reasonable limit on what loss should be consider not OK. Nissan knows all about it. Battery manufacturers consider 20% loss of capacity the end of the life of a battery. The number of cycles they claim their battery can do is based on 80% of the original capacity. So there is an industry standard than all agree to.
Eventually every battery will lose capacity and it will drop to 80%. If that happens after 10 years I think we all would consider that reasonable. If it happens after 3 years, not so much. Tesla didn't know how the batteries would hold up after 10 years of use. In fact we still don't know until 2022/23. That's why they didn't make any statement on what amount of degradation is normal.
You need to get your facts straight, both Nissan and Kia consider 70% to be the limit, and their warranty actually falls below that. Due to the use of the 4-capacity-bars metric, a Nissan battery has to degrade below 67% before the warranty kicks in.

And as others have noted, the bolt is warrantied for 60%, so you have to have 59% degradation before you can file that claim. There is zero industry standard on degradation.

Oil4apshualtonly was telling you a much closer number of 67% and you replied that your coworkers got a battery as soon as they dipped under 70%

The correct number is 66.25% so Oil4apshualtonly was closer than you but also high. Why I didn't clarify sooner I'm not sure, maybe a reply got lost by the server or I lost my connection while writing it.

Don't take it personally, I'm just trying be informative since the thread was dancing around numbers that were higher than what it actually takes to get a free battery no questions asked from Nissan.
 
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If you had just asked why, I would have just answered. The disagree was because you said I was disagreeing with Mr. Dahn which I wasn't.

You said nothing with the first disagree. You just marked disagree and moved on. No reply. No correction. No discussion. I think most of on this forum would agree that's bad form.

It's not a 4% difference it's 3.75%.

Yup, you just made my point for me ;) My wife just read your post and said you're definitely within the Spectrum:rolleyes:

There is no 70% warranty for Nissan to be nice or not nice about. There is a 66.25% warranty. Hitting 69% before the warranty period ends will NOT get you a new battery from Nissan for free.

That you keep referencing 70% says to me that you only have a cursory knowledge of the issue and haven't had a Leaf or used leafspy or know what the actual results of the lawsuits were.

As incredible as it seems to you that 3.75% matters, it seems even worse for those Leaf owners that hit 60,001 miles or 60 months and 1 day before they got below 66.25%. Nissan told people tough luck when that happened. People had to sue to get any response other than tough luck.

To put this in context our exchange started when you replied to this



Oil4apshualtonly was telling you a much closer number of 67% and you replied that your coworkers got a battery as soon as they dipped under 70%

The correct number is 66.25% so Oil4apshualtonly was closer than you but also high. Why I didn't clarify sooner I'm not sure, maybe a reply got lost by the server or I lost my connection while writing it.

Don't take it personally, I'm just trying be informative since the thread was dancing around numbers that were higher than what it actually takes to get a free battery no questions asked from Nissan.

That's right, I'm going on the many articles in the press that widely quote the 70% plus the experience of a co-worker who had his replaced *before* hitting hitting the 8th bar.

The written warranty states "below 9 bars" but later on in the warranty statement it also states "approximately 70%". My co-worker was able to get his replaced while still showing 9 bars.
 
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Lastly, how long do you need these packs to last? The utility that they serve you (personally) with the way you use them is far more important that gaining a few minutes or seconds in charge times. I say keep using them as you see fit, and they buy another one when the time comes. It's just a machine and its consumable parts that is supposed to make your life more comfortable. I don't think too hard about how I use my Roomba to keep my floors clean and have gone through a couple of batteries.
Exactly! +1 +1 +1 +7,000

On a topic like this, which apparently involves Tesla having set some restrictions on the cars' ability to charge without informing the buyers, is there any way the TMC group could formally request a definitive public statement from Tesla?
That would be a very useful public service we could do for the 100s of thousands of current and prospective future owners of Tesla vehicles.
This just cries out for some definitive answers. What little data we have from Tesla dopes not seem sufficient.
Or, a useful public service could be to not panic and not spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt ad nauseam. I feel for individual owners who are impacted with worry about pack longevity, however, I also don't have a lot of sympathy for those who complain bitterly they are losing up to 5 minutes per supercharge. I think we as humans waste time immeasurably and we don't even realize it. It puts those 5 minutes to shame.

My original leap of faith to EV in Jan 2014 to purchase a car at a price 4-5 times more than the average of all other cars I have bought previously was predicated on the reasoning that if the battery dropped to 80% over an 8-15 year life span, I'd still have plenty of range (425km new > 340km) for road trips given the anticipated supercharger rollout. Roadsters at the time after 6-7 years were reporting more than 90%, and we knew a lot more R&D had gone into the Model S pack management design. I picked 80% as a reasonable worst-case scenario to ensure I would be ok with whatever happened. And if I had to replace the battery in 15 years, I figured it would cost as much as replacing an engine in an ICE.

So, I'm saying all this, because Tesla obviously took the (minor impact!) 5-minute limiting step to protect the longevity of the pack. For me, in my opinion, that would be the step I would prefer as opposed to no action by the company.
 
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For those who thinks their 90kwh v2 or v3 or whatever are excluded, I can confirm it is not. Lately I have my peak charging limited. At first people suspect the change in chemistry in the first 90kwh pack but I got a v2 or v3. I suspect it affects all cars including the 100kwh given enough supercharging.

The interesting this is when the model 3 comes out and see how people react when about 1-2 years down the road and see their supercharging speed slow down.
 
Yup, you just made my point for me ;) My wife just read your post and said you're definitely within the Spectrum:rolleyes:



That's right, I'm going on the many articles in the press that widely quote the 70% plus the experience of a co-worker who had his replaced *before* hitting hitting the 8th bar.

The written warranty states "below 9 bars" but later on in the warranty statement it also states "approximately 70%". My co-worker was able to get his replaced while still showing 9 bars.

So your wife thinks lawyers are autistic? I'd be fine with calling it a round number if Nissan really did give battery packs away without playing legal games.

To date on mynissanleaf.com and on r/leaf I haven't seen a documented case of someone getting a free pack with 9 bars remaining. Either your coworker was confused or he/she failed to document a major shift in policy by Nissan.
 
Has anyone monitored the battery pack voltage and current of a "throttled" pack compared to a non-throttled pack during a supercharge?

Based on Tesla's response, it sure doesn't sound like they're doing anything but monitoring internal resistance and as it goes up limiting maximum current. Or in other words, following the typical constant current / constant voltage charge profile that is the most common when charging lithium batteries (though the charts I have seen Tesla starts tapering current before max voltage is hit).
 
So your wife thinks lawyers are autistic? I'd be fine with calling it a round number if Nissan really did give battery packs away without playing legal games.

To date on mynissanleaf.com and on r/leaf I haven't seen a documented case of someone getting a free pack with 9 bars remaining. Either your coworker was confused or he/she failed to document a major shift in policy by Nissan.

Let's just assume for a moment that Nissan never replaced a battery until it hit 66.25%.

You still marked my post disagree because I said 70% yet you NEVER replied to that post or pointed out what you disagreed with until I called you on it. Basically, you marked my post disagree because I was off by (in your words) 3.75%. You might have replied to that post first and pointed it out yet you marked disagree without saying a word.
 
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Has anyone monitored the battery pack voltage and current of a "throttled" pack compared to a non-throttled pack during a supercharge?

Based on Tesla's response, it sure doesn't sound like they're doing anything but monitoring internal resistance and as it goes up limiting maximum current. Or in other words, following the typical constant current / constant voltage charge profile that is the most common when charging lithium batteries (though the charts I have seen Tesla starts tapering current before max voltage is hit).

I am pretty sure it is a hard counter. I use to get 110Kw pretty consistently when the car was new on the road trips I did. Then all of a sudden 110kw was hard to hit. It would hit 105kw and maybe a bit higher rarely. Now I don't see anything above 100kw anymore. The most is 98kw. And again it was all of a sudden.

What you are referring to is when the cable is hot or higher resistant of the cable etc. So it slows down. Those protection is really for the safety of charging and nothing about battery charging limits. If it was indeed aging of the charger or cable or battery you would see a slow ramp down like what you mentioned. This is clearly tesla protecting itself against potential battery warranty by limiting battery charging speed.
 
90 and 100 packs probably have some silicon added for increased energy density but it may cause issues with fast charging.
thinking back to when Tesla was messing with water-cooled charge nozzles - ostensibly so they could jack up power /charge speeds even greater? .... or was that simply to make the hose more flexible.
Meanwhile - driving a 2013 85/S loaner yesterday (X is back in the shop), I pulled into the Santa Ana supercharger station 4am yesterday (no one else & 65° temp's), & after trying FOUR different stalls & starting with 20% SOC, I couldn't achieve anything higher than 90kW's - all 4 stalls dropped to sub 70kw's in under 4 minutes - fwiw. Oh - the 85 S had only 26k miles on the odometer. So - with all that in mind it keeps coming back to me that WV started bragging about plans for an 800V infrastructure to run their mission E, set for production next year - touting 15 minutes for a 300-mile charge. Back of the napkin that would be what ... 125 amps presuming a 100kWh usable pack & 3 miles per kWh? So - I was thinking if the car actually does go into production, and they build infrastructure, and you quick charge it frequently like Tesla says some of us are doing, maybe the Audi long range EV will 'only' slow down to 20-25 minutes to charge eventually? That would be acceptable ... but for now, Tesla is the only game in town.
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