Does the birdie have any advice on how to clean a charge port? I've been using electrical contact cleaner and DeOxit on mine. It's definitely not extremely dirty but it's also not brand spanking new.
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Does the birdie have any advice on how to clean a charge port? I've been using electrical contact cleaner and DeOxit on mine. It's definitely not extremely dirty but it's also not brand spanking new.
FlyingCookie
Member
The birdie doesn't, but I can say denatured alcohol works great... I actually pulled the charge port out of my car (not hard at all, about 15 minutes to do) and disassembled it to clean the contacts as well as possible. Working with many electrical things, I can safely say that contact cleaner isn't anything terrible special, but does the job just fine.
Yes that's what I used to get, but now it's much slower. At 30% I get 89 kW. At 80% I'm down to 37 kW. It also tapers down faster. I do get 116 kW when I plug in and I'm less than 10% SoC, but it starts to go down at 11%.
This did not happen recently. It's not an issue that was introduced with a recent firmware in my car. I have seen this reduced charge rate for much longer. I just looked at my logs from a year ago and my charge rate has been slow already. Not quite as bad as now, but definitely not what you get. I had about 90k miles back then. So it seems Tesla is slowing the charge rate down as the battery ages.
I do use Superchargers a lot, though. 60% of the miles I drive are road trips so 60% of all my charging is done on Superchargers. With that in mind and having 133k miles on the battery, I think that's just what Tesla thinks is right for my battery. Not happy about it as I take my car on road trips a lot and it slows me down quite a bit.
Thanks also for the info about the handles. It's interesting and sometimes it might explain the drop to 60 kW (that a lot of people have been seeing) but looking at my logs sometimes I see that my charge rate dropped to 60 kW only 4 minutes after I plugged in. I don't think that's enough time for the handle to build up that much heat.
I will try to clean my charge port a little more. I use contact spary here and there.
I too used to see the drop to 60 kW within the first 5 minutes of charging. Depending on what the issue was, I think it's completely reasonable that just a couple minutes of pushing 300+ A could cause the thermal condition to trigger. Keep in mind too that the handle may not have been cooled to ambient temperature between the previous session and when you plug in.
Could be. If the temperature sensor is close to where the heat is produced (and I assume that's where they are) it could be. Either way, I wish Tesla would do something about it. Too many people report it and it's been going on for a while now.
FlyingCookie
Member
My understanding of the temperature issue is that they don't want to burn our hands. Apparently the handles are rated to some pretty high (>100C) temps, so I don't think they're worried about melting them. 300 amps can create a lot of heat pretty fast, but It could also be a worn connection in the pedestal itself causing the throttling, as well as possible issues in the cabinets themselves.
I've recently set up TeslaFi, so i'll try and add some logs after my next few supercharging sessions. (Should have at least two, maybe 3 tomorrow)
I've recently set up TeslaFi, so i'll try and add some logs after my next few supercharging sessions. (Should have at least two, maybe 3 tomorrow)
I've been seeing those levels for a good part of a year now too. Note, there was a 6 month period or so when it was much worse because I had a stuck cooling louver but before that and after the louver was fixed.
Currently charging. 52% = 72KW, 75% = 46KW, 77% = 44KW, 78% = 41K, 79% = 42KW, 80% = 40KW, 81% = 39KW, 82%=38KW, 83%=37KW
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SeminoleFSU
Voluntaryist
SeminoleFSU
Voluntaryist
I would rather charging speed be my choice. If I'd rather get a quicker charge to get to my destination because of emergency or because I just feel like it- it should be my choice. Changing taper for safety is one thing but it should be our choice otherwise. Give me a charging speed slider with a warning just like the charge level works
I wonder, this increased tapering. How does the system work?
When the car asks for current it gets what it asks for if available from supercharger. So at any given % SOC the car is allowed to have a certain voltage while charging? That is the obvious way to control it. The amount of amps to get to that voltage is what changes as batteries get older.
No doubt if you supercharge 60% of the time you will experience negative effects of that.
My tapering is nowhere near as bad as yours but I do see it start to taper earlier now than before. It will hold 116kwh to 22%
Above 60 ish % SOC I find it is pretty much as it always has been.
When the car asks for current it gets what it asks for if available from supercharger. So at any given % SOC the car is allowed to have a certain voltage while charging? That is the obvious way to control it. The amount of amps to get to that voltage is what changes as batteries get older.
No doubt if you supercharge 60% of the time you will experience negative effects of that.
My tapering is nowhere near as bad as yours but I do see it start to taper earlier now than before. It will hold 116kwh to 22%
Above 60 ish % SOC I find it is pretty much as it always has been.
Yeah, I specifically checked and verified that both my louvers and condenser fans are operating normally.
Thing is, I supercharge <5% of the time. I only have ~600 total DCFC kWh on this pack. FWIW, a new car should hold 116 kw to about 30%.
I did a SC on my old 85 with 10% SOC the other day... but it started at about 70 kW and then warmed a bit and almost made it to 90 kW then by that time SOC was high enough that tapering was happening and just rode it out...
But I think this is what to expect and happens when ambient = battery pack temp and it's around 10*C.
SC likes batteries when it's not too hot, and not too cold, but juuuuust righht.
But I think this is what to expect and happens when ambient = battery pack temp and it's around 10*C.
SC likes batteries when it's not too hot, and not too cold, but juuuuust righht.
gabeincal
Active Member
Stand in front of your car while supercharging. As the pack heats up (provided it is somewhat warm outside), you should see the louvers open. Place a Kleenex over the vents and check for proper circulation. The condenser fans should also be audible and hot air will exhaust from the wheel wells.
SeminoleFSU
Voluntaryist
mine felt like the hot air was seeping out of the wheel wells but blowing from out of the front air dam....
FlyingCookie
Member
This is a charging session from last week. This is fairly typical for me, though sometimes I'll see it start to taper sooner if I arrive at a lower SOC.
I've supercharged several times since then, but they've all been at junky superchargers, so they're bad datapoints. (One starts out at 80kw and then tapers to 40kw within 60 seconds at 7% SOC... and sits there. Another suffers from hot handles... Another was a paired charge... etc)
I've supercharged several times since then, but they've all been at junky superchargers, so they're bad datapoints. (One starts out at 80kw and then tapers to 40kw within 60 seconds at 7% SOC... and sits there. Another suffers from hot handles... Another was a paired charge... etc)
Yeah, I think the sooner taper is dependent on initial SOC. In other words, if you start out with 30%, you're unlikely to experience it (because the normal taper kicks in immediately at 30%). But if you start out closer to 10%, I'm pretty sure you will notice it.
Today, I got a rebound on the charge curve before taper on my car... due to cold weather.
Arrived at 5% SOC, initially got to 103 kW (promising!) ... but over just a couple minutes settled down to about 82 kW.
..then after about 5 more minutes, started to pickup to hit 94 kW and then began a normal kind of curve on the journey to my setpoint.
I think the battery was too cold to accept the 100+ kW, detected that and scaled back, and by doing some battery heating, or just charging at ~80 kW for a while warmed the battery enough to urge the rate back up to 90+.. It's nice to know SC follows the battery conditions closely during charge and is so responsive to changing conditions.
There was nobody else at the 8 station SC.
It was -12C outside. I had city/hwy driven 25% charge and gone through some battery warming cycles while driving before reaching the SC. The yellow line bottom limiter had been warmed right off the gauge by the time I arrived at SC.
I sure enjoy cranking the cabin heat to max while SC'ing... sucking that free heat from the cord.
Arrived at 5% SOC, initially got to 103 kW (promising!) ... but over just a couple minutes settled down to about 82 kW.
..then after about 5 more minutes, started to pickup to hit 94 kW and then began a normal kind of curve on the journey to my setpoint.
I think the battery was too cold to accept the 100+ kW, detected that and scaled back, and by doing some battery heating, or just charging at ~80 kW for a while warmed the battery enough to urge the rate back up to 90+.. It's nice to know SC follows the battery conditions closely during charge and is so responsive to changing conditions.
There was nobody else at the 8 station SC.
It was -12C outside. I had city/hwy driven 25% charge and gone through some battery warming cycles while driving before reaching the SC. The yellow line bottom limiter had been warmed right off the gauge by the time I arrived at SC.
I sure enjoy cranking the cabin heat to max while SC'ing... sucking that free heat from the cord.
I used data from @blincoln in this thread (A Better Routeplanner) which seem to confirm my suspicion in the OP - Tesla has modified the taper algorithm on older 85 kwh packs. I suspect that the change occurred within the past year, well after Tesla stopped producing these packs.
I'm not really buying the argument that this change was implemented to save our batteries from accelerated degradation. I've CAN logged numerous supercharging sessions, and the cooling system has always been able to keep up with the limits enforced by the thermal controller - even with the original taper curve. It would be nice to see a detailed explanation from Tesla on this change.
There is some scatter in the data, obviously, but the overall trend seems to agree with what I am observing. It's possible that there is some dependence on initial SOC, which could also explain some of the variation.
Legend: My data (black and red points), Fleet data (small purple points)
I'm not really buying the argument that this change was implemented to save our batteries from accelerated degradation. I've CAN logged numerous supercharging sessions, and the cooling system has always been able to keep up with the limits enforced by the thermal controller - even with the original taper curve. It would be nice to see a detailed explanation from Tesla on this change.
There is some scatter in the data, obviously, but the overall trend seems to agree with what I am observing. It's possible that there is some dependence on initial SOC, which could also explain some of the variation.
Legend: My data (black and red points), Fleet data (small purple points)
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