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No supercharge in bitter cold

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We had a bad experience this weekend on Christmas Eve when the outside temperature was 16 degrees Fahrenheit. We arrived with only 4% range left. After plugging in, the indicator stayed blue and the inside screen said “starting to charge.” After 60 seconds, our Model 3 screen said “Charging Stopped- unplug and try again.” We tried this on five different plugs. After all this, our range was down to 2%. We looked for another nearby charger. In desperation, we went to a slow Level 2 charger to charge at 32 amps. We called Tesla Support and the helpful person on the phone suggested running defrost for five minutes, and we tried supercharging again with no success.

We ended up charging for 2.5 hours at the Level 2 charger to get to 25% and barely make it to a relatives house with only 3% left. Very stressful. We are slow charging at their house.

Has anyone else experienced this in the bitter cold?

We will continue troubleshooting and update our experience.
 
We had a bad experience this weekend on Christmas Eve when the outside temperature was 16 degrees Fahrenheit. We arrived with only 4% range left. After plugging in, the indicator stayed blue and the inside screen said “starting to charge.” After 60 seconds, our Model 3 screen said “Charging Stopped- unplug and try again.” We tried this on five different plugs. After all this, our range was down to 2%. We looked for another nearby charger. In desperation, we went to a slow Level 2 charger to charge at 32 amps. We called Tesla Support and the helpful person on the phone suggested running defrost for five minutes, and we tried supercharging again with no success.

We ended up charging for 2.5 hours at the Level 2 charger to get to 25% and barely make it to a relatives house with only 3% left. Very stressful. We are slow charging at their house.

Has anyone else experienced this in the bitter cold?

We will continue troubleshooting and update our experience.

Sub-freezing Supercharging can be a challenge as told by Radio Celebrity experiences:

A Tesla owner says his car wouldn't charge in freezing temperatures, leaving him stranded on Christmas Eve

However, Tesla owners have been doing fine in arctic regions like Norway for more than a decade. They learn to keep their battery warm for cold weather charging and avoid near-depleted levels.
 
I was out and driving at -15 C with a very stony wind bringing temps down to -25C or so.

As soon as I started the nav system I added the supercharger where I was going. The car immediately started to preheat the battery. I was parked inside a warm garage and the supercharger was 2 hours away. When I got to the supercharger the car said that charging could be faster it I would have preconditioned the battery! Lol

So 2 hours at that temp was not enough to get the battery to the temp it wanted to be. I even saw 3 bacon strips while charging in the app.

I still managed to pull 113kwh for a few minutes at the charger but went quickly down to the mid 80’s

2022 Model 3 RWD with the LFP
 
Did you precondition the battery for fast charging?

OP is a different problem, of not being able to connect. If he had been able to connect and the battery was too cold, power would have be spent on heating until the battery was warm enough to accept charge.

I think the common issue is poor contacts in bitter cold. Sometimes it is ice on the plug, sometimes ice in the port. I suppose it is possible that plastic parts warp enough to cause poor contact. I get the impression that Superchargers where prior users have not been careful handling the plug are more prone to problems.
 
I drove from Rhode Island to Cincinnati via Pennsylvania in the recent cold snap, with temperatures of -4F. I Supercharged several times and had no problems with the charging. (Keeping my windshield clear was another matter.)

My suspicion is that @Rusty1 ran into a Supercharger that was offline or malfunctioning. It's also conceivable that the car has developed a fault. I recommend Supercharging ASAP at a nearby Supercharger, even if just briefly, to test this hypothesis; it would not do to start out on a return trip only to have problems with the battery at a low SoC.
 
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We had a bad experience this weekend on Christmas Eve when the outside temperature was 16 degrees Fahrenheit. We arrived with only 4% range left. After plugging in, the indicator stayed blue and the inside screen said “starting to charge.” After 60 seconds, our Model 3 screen said “Charging Stopped- unplug and try again.” We tried this on five different plugs. After all this, our range was down to 2%. We looked for another nearby charger. In desperation, we went to a slow Level 2 charger to charge at 32 amps. We called Tesla Support and the helpful person on the phone suggested running defrost for five minutes, and we tried supercharging again with no success.

We ended up charging for 2.5 hours at the Level 2 charger to get to 25% and barely make it to a relatives house with only 3% left. Very stressful. We are slow charging at their house.

Has anyone else experienced this in the bitter cold?

We will continue troubleshooting and update our experience.

What type of Model 3 do you have? Most particularly, is it an SR with LFP?

What was the state of charge when you tried to Supercharger for the 2nd time?
Is Supercharging working now in normal temperatures? Have you charged at the same location again?

Cold-weather charging isn't consistently reported to be a problem for Tesla, so this is a potential issue with your car. Yes, cold battery means initially slow charging, but if not preconditioned, the car generates heat in the stator to heat up the battery and once it warms up it charges at normal levels.
 
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We had a bad experience this weekend on Christmas Eve when the outside temperature was 16 degrees Fahrenheit. We arrived with only 4% range left. After plugging in, the indicator stayed blue and the inside screen said “starting to charge.” After 60 seconds, our Model 3 screen said “Charging Stopped- unplug and try again.” We tried this on five different plugs. After all this, our range was down to 2%. We looked for another nearby charger. In desperation, we went to a slow Level 2 charger to charge at 32 amps. We called Tesla Support and the helpful person on the phone suggested running defrost for five minutes, and we tried supercharging again with no success.

We ended up charging for 2.5 hours at the Level 2 charger to get to 25% and barely make it to a relatives house with only 3% left. Very stressful. We are slow charging at their house.

Has anyone else experienced this in the bitter cold?

We will continue troubleshooting and update our experience.
Sounds like a bad Supercharger. Even when the pack is freezing, it should still put some energy in at a trickle until it warms up. I have never seen a total failure like you had.
 
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Sorry I did not notice what station this was associated with, Tesla? Did you call them? With EA this is common, not so much with Tesla. Were other Teslas charging fine?
Earlier today, I was stunned to discover that the Washington, PA Supercharger had at least five of eight stalls down. The sixth one I tried worked, but I didn't try the other two. I posted a negative and a positive check-in on PlugShare, since trying six stalls to find one working is way too much effort; and of course if enough cars showed up, that would pose a big problem. Somebody else posted on the 24th that two of the eight stalls were functional.
 

"After about 45 minutes of the Tesla Model 3 being connected to the Supercharger, no energy whatsoever had made its way into the battery pack. That's because the system used all the electricity supplied by the charger to heat the battery first. It's worth noting that the battery had a state of charge of 35 percent when Kyle first plugged it in, and he set the charge limit to 90 percent SoC. It took about an hour and a half for the battery to reach 90 percent, which is a lot of time to wait for your EV to charge, especially in freezing cold conditions."
 
From 12/21 to 12/27 I put 1000 miles on my 2023 Tesla Model 3 RWD. I went through North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Nebraska, and Minnesota. I ran into a few Dead at the charger Y's where we had to help them jump the low volt battery so that the charging port would accept a charge to the HV system. Though at the hotel I would use my Mobile Charger on 120v 12amp outlets. In the -20F to -14F with -30F to -40F windchill, it would not gain any % but it wouldn't lose either.

I supercharged multiple times a day Just to keep myself around 50% with all of the trips and efforts we had going on, almost always using 500-600 watt per mile for heating the battery. Though The supercharging cables would be extremely hard to bend, when you hook up the cable after using it the wind would then blow it off and then land in the snow. We used plastic spoons/knives to get the packed snow out and that seemed to save us when charging with the superchargers.

Near the end of the trip the temps finally reached 4F and that is the point where I started getting battery % from overnight mobile connector charging. Then by 18F I was back down to 270 watt per mile at 80mph.

In all of this I have yet to see the Blue Snowflake, but almost all of the times even with multiple miles spent preconditioning it would still show the battery temp low on the charging screen. Just wanted to share my 2 cents of experience so far. In the -22F weather at 60-70mph I get around 155miles 100% SoC. Around 22F at 80mph close to 200 miles from 100% SoC.