Marriott Rivercenter charger - best to avoid

[garry753]

There is a bad public charger located on the second floor of the public Marriott Rivercenter garage. When you plug into it with a J1772 adapter, it will most likely short out the 12v battery and cause a shutdown of the main battery system. Further, because of the location, it may be difficult to receive a remote reboot code from Tesla. Hopefully, this location will be fixed soon. It is now on Tesla's radar.

Kindest Regards,
Garry

 

[bonnie]

There is a bad public charger located on the second floor of the public Marriott Rivercenter garage. When you plug into it with a J1772 adapter, it will most likely short out the 12v battery and cause a shutdown of the main battery system. Further, because of the location, it may be difficult to receive a remote reboot code from Tesla. Hopefully, this location will be fixed soon. It is now on Tesla's radar.

Kindest Regards,
Garry

Be sure to post this information for the location on recargo.com and plugshare.com. (Also post when you have working locations.) It's helpful for others when planning where to stop.

What a hassle for you.

 

[stephenpace]

@garry753: Bummer! Did Tesla say how this could happen? I would assume that the Tesla would detect such a thing and shut off the charge port before any problem occurred. And wouldn't such a charger affect any EV plugging into it?

 

[garry753]

@Bonnie1194 - will do. And, yes, it was a hassle.

@stephenpace - Tesla is definitely looking into this (we weren't the only ones caught there); didn't want to assume this would be a problem for other brands, but it definitely is for Tesla. The remedy that the Model S has is shutting off the main battery (after followed by a red ring). The combination of a low voltage 12v (as ours was) and a location which shields satellite transmissions (inside an enclosed garage) made it virtually impossible to reboot the car remotely from Tesla, and to tow the car. Tesla road service was fantastic in our case, jumping the battery enough to get the car rebooted when the sporadic 3G signal hit our car.

From what I hear, Tesla is looking at a remedy to this situation (either an external tester that you can attach before hooking up the car, or some firmware update which detects this condition, and warns against using the charger.)

 

[stephenpace]

@garry753: Ah, that makes more sense to me. If the big battery goes away for some reason (for instance, if you pull the cable in front, or in your case, if it does it to protect itself), the 12v drains very rapidly due to the draw of the car. It sounds like instead of shorting out, the 12v just drained normally. You'd have to jump the 12v from the front ports to get back access to the car. What a pain--I like the idea of a J1772 tester. I would buy one if they came out with one.