“After further reviewing your concern of reduced supercharging rate we
have determined the cause to be due to the high amount of overall supercharging over the
life of the pack. The health of the pack is still as expected however to maintain this
health the rate of supercharging is slightly reduced as you have experienced. This is
also outlined in the on board owners manual. You also had questioned about the total
amount of energy the pack has charged and discharged. Keep in mind that the amount of
energy removed from the pack is not entirely used to drive the wheels. This energy is
used to heat and cool the cabin, power the vehicles low voltage electrical system, and
maintain the vehicle and the background functions like sentry mode when stationary. These
values as follows are as of today.
kWh Charge Counter: 18681.9 kWh
kWh Discharge Counter: 16952.7 kWh
AC Charge Counter: 2922.3 kWh
DC Charge Counter: 11755.1 kWh”
For the first full year of ownership, I had no access to home charging, but Supercharged approximately twice weekly not exceeding 90%. When I inquired during the purchase of my vehicle about this obstacle, I was plainly informed of two pieces of information...
1. Since I live so close, and lifetime Supercharging is included, I was advised to feel free to use as much as is necessary until home charging is established.
2. The Supercharger itself will “balance and protect” the pack from damage and the taper is designed to ensure the longest possible battery life. “It is literally a non-issue”.
Since I have a friend and family member with older 85 packs, performance and standard with almost 100K miles and they seemed to be just fine with regular even heavier Supercharging use, at my approximate 17K per year, it seemed to be a non-issue. I have since established home charging and only Supercharge for daily trip convenience or road trip necessity.
Well fast forward to approximately the 30K mile mark and I notice a max charge speed of 80kW down from the highest I have ever seen on the 350V pack of about 96kW. Other packs had then subsequently been increased to anywhere from 110-130kW and mine was permanently throttled at 80kW maximum.
I inquired and it was not until I was very vocal and adamant that there was a marked change in charging performance that they finally consulted someone in main engineering. The bad news above was returned shortly thereafter. Not until after three or four vocal complaints and a visit did they dive deeper; even local service was surprised and spend the better part of three months trying to convince me it was a normal combination of varying Supercharger performance, shared circuits, cold battery, hot Supercharger handles, lack of ideal temperatures...
The reality is, Tesla goofed on the 75/90 chemistry and are not taking ownership for the failure, but rather intends on reducing my ownership satisfaction to prevent increased warranty repair costs. It is interesting to meet other owners at the Supercharger with different battery variants and even triple the mileage and DC fast charging sessions, who say it performs same as the day they purchased it.
This adds considerable charging time to the 350V pack variants on trips of more than 300 miles and leaves a pretty bitter taste in my mouth especially since I have worked so hard to care for the pack by avoiding deep discharges and above 90% charging and never parking it full ect.
I make decisions with my wallet and I cannot further support a company with such terrible customer service, internal communication, lack of corporate responsibility and such a questionable people culture. I love my Model S despite its growing limitations and nerfs, and will keep it as long as it meets my needs, but I will not purchase another vehicle from the company and will carefully warn others who inquire of the risk involved.
I don’t expect everyone to agree of feel similar, but because you are not impacted, or not yet, does not mean this is not a real and growing concern as these vehicles age.