Model S limited to 16A charging with new Wallbox charger

[gizmonty]

I’ve just installed a new (single phase) Wallbox Pulsar Plus at my holiday house. It seems to have been correctly installed and is set to 32A internally. However, when I plug my car in (2014 P85 Model S) it will only charge at 16A (The car reports 16A as the max available. ie the display reads 16A/16A). I called Jetcharge about this (I bought it from them) and a tech support person blamed my car. Reading around, this might actually be correct, as apparently this has occurred with other Tesla vehicles after particular software updates.

I only have the mobile charging cable in use at my regular house at the moment (due to renovations) and any public AC chargers I have access to are 3-phase so I don’t have the ability to test what my car will do with another single phase AC charger. Supercharging works fine.

I only come to this location every month or two, but when I do I sometimes need a quick turnaround, which is why I installed it. I’m wondering if anyone else in Australia has encountered this, and whether I should be directing my attention at the wall charger or at my car to get it fixed. My infrequent access to the charger makes it difficult to spend time fiddling. I suspect I will end up in a situation where Jetcharge/Wallbox and Tesla both blame each other and I get stuck with a slow charger.

 

[Onshore]

I’ve just installed a new (single phase) Wallbox Pulsar Plus at my holiday house. It seems to have been correctly installed and is set to 32A internally. However, when I plug my car in (2014 P85 Model S) it will only charge at 16A (The car reports 16A as the max available. ie the display

How many kph does the car say it is charging at? Can you post a pic of the screen?

 

[[Zombie]]

I’ve just installed a new (single phase) Wallbox Pulsar Plus at my holiday house. It seems to have been correctly installed and is set to 32A internally. However, when I plug my car in (2014 P85 Model S) it will only charge at 16A (The car reports 16A as the max available. ie the display reads 16A/16A).

Hello gizmonty

This was a known limitation with the early Model S, and is not software related but a limitation of how the chargers inside Model S work.

The onboard "charger" is actually three 16A single phase chargers, so it can do up to 16A per phase.

The gen 1 wall connector as supplied with the car (which is single-phase only) worked around this by connecting the input phase to all three phases on the car side, so all three chargers could work together.

If you had the optional "dual charger" Model S then the car would bridge internally, so you could do 32A on single phase.

They fixed this for Model S delivered from ~mid 2015, I think, so even "single charger" cars can charge up to 32A on single phase.

In the UK there were government incentives for third party charging stations at home, so Tesla could not get away with having the "bridging" done inside the HPWC, instead they supplied all UK cars with dual chargers even if people only ordered single, then later added a software fix to limit people to the charging rate they paid for, which may be what you refer to.

 

[raynewman]

I got this fixed under warranty many years ago. Tesla added a 'bit' behind the plug that split the input and solved the problem.
Here is the Tesla 'invoice' for the job.
I also remember having to tie the L1, L2 and L3 terminals together in J1772 to Mennekes adaptor.

 

[gizmonty]

Thanks for that information. I did confirm that the charger provides 32A with somebody elses car. So I need to get Tesla to fix this with hardware. Very annoying. The more I think about it the more annoyed I am in fact. Tesla really should have treated this as a recall. Somebody could get stuck somewhere because they can't charge at the rate they expect.

 

[raynewman]

Thanks for that information. I did confirm that the charger provides 32A with somebody elses car. So I need to get Tesla to fix this with hardware. Very annoying. The more I think about it the more annoyed I am in fact. Tesla really should have treated this as a recall. Somebody could get stuck somewhere because they can't charge at the rate they expect.

If you do much AC charging out and about, it's worth investing in the second charger to bring AC charge rate up over 100 kmh.

 

[gizmonty]

If you do much AC charging out and about, it's worth investing in the second charger to bring AC charge rate up over 100 kmh.

I don’t. I’m really just driving back and forth to this 32A charger. The house it’s at only has a 40A power connection anyway so I’m definitely not getting higher than 32A without having some trenches dug.

 

[gizmonty]

Tesla confirmed that this was the issue today. They are going to perform the 'upgrade' free of charge but I will have to wait a couple of weeks for parts to arrive.