No supercharge in bitter cold

[Rusty1]

On the way home I supercharged without any problem. The temperature was 45 degrees. Apparently, the bitter cold caused us to be unable to supercharge when it was 16 degrees F.

I have no confidence that I will be able to supercharge when the temp is below 20 degrees F in the future.

 

[Rusty1]

Did you precondition the battery for fast charging? (Ie put the supercharger in your GPS?). I’ve been driving my model 3 often in temps from -5 to 30 Fahrenheit and have supercharged in these conditions also with no problems. I always make sure to enter the supercharger into the GPS before to precondition my battery.

I did precondition. It may have been limited due to my 5% state of charge.

 

[Rusty1]

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?

There were other Teslas charging. The charger was the Brentwood Supeecharger near Nashville TN.

 

[Rusty1]

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.

I was only at 3% the second time, but had been running defrost on high for five minutes in an effort to warm things up.

I am concerned the cold is causing me to have a poor connection.

 

[Randy-12]

Winter driving with a SOC as low as you seem to go, IMHO, is unwise. Just like driving an ICE with the needle below 1/8.

When I did my road trip the nav said I’d make the supercharger at 12% then down to 8% and as I got closer moved up to 10%. I decided to find a ccs charger and get a boast. The only one around was a 50kWh charger. We charged for 10 mins and did a bathroom break. Managed to pull 46 kWh the whole time. Nav said I’d get to the supercharger at 24% and off we went.

As a lifetime winter driver I don’t take chances with running out of fuel.

 

[beatle]

I also traveled and charged on Christmas Eve in the bitter cold. It was in the single digits and low teens with some wind. SoC was 30% when I charged though. Even after driving for 2 hours, the battery pack temp was still only in the low 70s. The car spent about 10 minutes conditioning the pack on the way to the supercharger, and it still charged fine, pulling 140kw.

It seems like there was a catch 22 in that the battery was too cold to SC so it did not want to start the session and allow you to charge. However, with your SoC so low, the car refused to use its own energy to condition the battery. The session should have started and then just piped in enough juice to allow the car to heat the battery, then increase current once a sensible battery temperature is reached. Still, after driving for a few hours, even in the bitter cold, your battery should have been in the 70s which is really not that cold, and conditioning shouldn't be necessary for it to function.

 

[srs5694]

On the way home I supercharged without any problem. The temperature was 45 degrees. Apparently, the bitter cold caused us to be unable to supercharge when it was 16 degrees F.

I have no confidence that I will be able to supercharge when the temp is below 20 degrees F in the future.

Temperatures below 20F are not a problem per se. It's possible you ran into Superchargers that were offline, or you may have some issue with your car specifically. As I posted earlier in this thread, I drove from Rhode Island to Cincinnati and back again over Christmas, and encountered temperatures as low as -4F on that trip (on the outbound leg). I Supercharged in those temperatures with no difficulty. Others have posted similar stories, some with Supercharging at even lower temperatures, in this thread. Although it's true that extreme cold (which +16F is not), or other cold-related weather issues (like Supercharger stalls being buried in snow) can cause problems, I'm skeptical that 16F per se was the cause of your problems. Here in Rhode Island, such temperatures are not uncommon in the winter, and temperature-related problem reports regarding charging are rare.

On my own trip, I did have problems at the Washington, PA Supercharger. The first five stalls I tried to use there were down; only the sixth (of eight total at the site) worked. (I don't know about the two I didn't try.) This was on my return trip, and my TeslaFi logs show the temperature was about 29F, so I don't think this was cold-related. I note this to illustrate the fact that, although Tesla's Superchargers have the best reputation for reliability in the DC fast charging industry, they are not perfect, and finding a site with under 50% of stalls working is possible even when it's not very cold.

@Rusty1, can you provide a link to the Supercharger station where you had problems? Perhaps PlugShare check-ins or some further sleuthing would provide a clue about what happened to you.

 

[mongo]

Watch Deep Frozen Tesla Model 3 Plug Into Supercharger At -14 Degrees

This extreme experiment is relevant to Tesla owners who don't have a charger at home or a garage, and rely on the Supercharger network for charging instead.

insideevs.com

"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."

General question from article (bolded section):
The climate control still works while Supercharging so why does the outside temperature matter?

 

[Krash]

All the advice here seems good. Here are a few additional observations:

• Older firmware would sometimes say “not charging” on the screen when the system was heating. Not sure if the outside light would flash green. Hopefully this does not happen on current firmware.
• Even with no ice and snow in the charge plug, extreme temperatures can cause expansion and contraction of materials that cause partial fit or no fit. Make sure it is seated before you walk away.
• Many who live in extreme cold, sparely populated areas carry sleeping bags in their trunk for emergencies.
• Keep the mobile charger with RV, welder and other 220v plugs in your car.
• Some keep a high quality 120v extension cord even though Tesla recommends against using one.

 

[Rusty1]

Temperatures below 20F are not a problem per se. It's possible you ran into Superchargers that were offline, or you may have some issue with your car specifically. As I posted earlier in this thread, I drove from Rhode Island to Cincinnati and back again over Christmas, and encountered temperatures as low as -4F on that trip (on the outbound leg). I Supercharged in those temperatures with no difficulty. Others have posted similar stories, some with Supercharging at even lower temperatures, in this thread. Although it's true that extreme cold (which +16F is not), or other cold-related weather issues (like Supercharger stalls being buried in snow) can cause problems, I'm skeptical that 16F per se was the cause of your problems. Here in Rhode Island, such temperatures are not uncommon in the winter, and temperature-related problem reports regarding charging are rare.

On my own trip, I did have problems at the Washington, PA Supercharger. The first five stalls I tried to use there were down; only the sixth (of eight total at the site) worked. (I don't know about the two I didn't try.) This was on my return trip, and my TeslaFi logs show the temperature was about 29F, so I don't think this was cold-related. I note this to illustrate the fact that, although Tesla's Superchargers have the best reputation for reliability in the DC fast charging industry, they are not perfect, and finding a site with under 50% of stalls working is possible even when it's not very cold.

@Rusty1, can you provide a link to the Supercharger station where you had problems? Perhaps PlugShare check-ins or some further sleuthing would provide a clue about what happened to you.

Brentwood Supercharger in Nashville, TN.

 

[jeremymc7]

Interesting it’s been abnormally cold in California; though obviously no where near as cold.

That said I got a message on the screen stating that charging was slow due to cold battery. I had a 30 min drive to SuperCharger and was preconditioning.

I don’t know if these messages has always exist or was a recent addition to the software. Anyway I thought it was interesting.

I was a 250 charger; battery was below 20%. Charger never got over 75.

 

[gr2020]

Brentwood Supercharger in Nashville, TN.

Interesting - the Plugshare reviews from 12/24-12/26 do mention multiple chargers not working. Attaching a screenshot:

 

[srs5694]

Interesting - the Plugshare reviews from 12/24-12/26 do mention multiple chargers not working. Attaching a screenshot:

Yet people still gave the site positive ratings; it's got a PlugShare rating of 10. I guess PlugShare encourages this -- with the only negative option being "could not charge," technically, if you encounter a 10-stall site with only one working stall, and you actually charge there, then the logical thing would be to report "charging now" or "successfully charged" (or perhaps "waiting," if you had to wait). Still, I'd argue that a scenario like this merits a negative rating, particularly if it's not obvious which stalls are and are not working.

I encountered such a situation (with at least five of eight stalls non-functional) at the Washington, Pennsylvania Supercharger a few days ago. I ended up leaving one negative and one positive PlugShare rating. I was tempted to leave five negative and one positive ratings, but I was too lazy to do that.

 

[Rusty1]

Interesting - the Plugshare reviews from 12/24-12/26 do mention multiple chargers not working. Attaching a screenshot:

View attachment 890599

Thanks for the info. This makes me feel better. I will still be apprehensive about my car charging in frigid weather until I have some successful charges at that temperature again.

 

[OlderThanDirt]

Out of Spec Review's creator Kyle Conner has launched https://twitter.com/RateYourCharge which is intended to rate individual stations at charging sites. It is more applicable to the operators of CCS which are gaming their reliability reports and need their feet held to fire.

In our experience Tesla has done a pretty good job of self policing themselves regarding maintaining their sites.

 

[JetFalcon]

I hope this doesn't happen to me with friends or family because I think this will cause tempers to flair and people be like "why didn't we just drive a gas car, why are you so cheap to drive a Tesla and not pay $5 for gas". If I had to arrive at a supercharger and didn't work, then wait 2.5 hours at a slow charging place.

My friend on our trip he got so angry about charging at 2am New Years Day (we went to SF to watch New Years fireworks) and accused me for being cheap trying to get the off peak rates because he was like lets do it tomorrow. I told him if we did it during the day time, there is a huge risk a bunch of other Teslas that want to charge thus causing a queue to wait to charge and a packed charger with slower energy distribution.

And he got even angrier I unplugged from a 150kw to drive to a 250kw supercharger, not understanding I'm trying to get the charging done faster by going somewhere else (that's faster charge) that was on the way to our hotel. The 150kw station was only 10 chargers and all full at 2am, so those factors were going to make charging slower, the 250kw had more stations and we arrived there were less Teslas like 5 cars for 20 spots. But explaining all this to him, he hates it, he won't accept it and thinks its about being cheap.

Because of this I have to really reconsider if I will do a Tesla road trip with him because he will just accuse me of being cheap if I tried to find free charging at a mall or try charge off peak hours. He doesn't get mad for local trips because I never need to supercharge because the car already topped off at home. So he is unaware of this factor.

If I was in this situation and maybe the house owner was in my car, and he started getting mad about the situation, I will be like "well if you had a wall connector at your home, I could top off there and have enough for daily driving". Especially on Christmas Eve, people be like this is the worst Christmas ever.

 

[Werecow]

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.

That sucks. I can say when I used that SC on the 1st, there were several of us charging, so seems to have been repaired.

 

[GSP]

Yet people still gave the site positive ratings; it's got a PlugShare rating of 10. I guess PlugShare encourages this -- with the only negative option being "could not charge," technically, if you encounter a 10-stall site with only one working stall, and you actually charge there, then the logical thing would be to report "charging now" or "successfully charged" (or perhaps "waiting," if you had to wait). Still, I'd argue that a scenario like this merits a negative rating, particularly if it's not obvious which stalls are and are not working.

I encountered such a situation (with at least five of eight stalls non-functional) at the Washington, Pennsylvania Supercharger a few days ago. I ended up leaving one negative and one positive PlugShare rating. I was tempted to leave five negative and one positive ratings, but I was too lazy to do that.

In a recent YouTube video, Branden Flasch recommended to post “could not charge” on PlugShare for each stall that did not charge. If you find a good stall, then post “charging now” or “successfully charged.” He also mentioned that you must check in while you are still at the charging site for PlugShare to include your post in their rating.

Of course, this applies to both CCS and Tesla superchargers, and to L2 destination charge points as well.

GSP

 

[OldEVDude]

On a recent trip at -4 F I had the car (2021 Model Y LR) precondition the battery and heat the car before leaving while still plugged in at home. The first leg had terrible "mileage" (437 Wh/mile). After two hours of driving I reached the Supercharger in Irwin, PA with 17% SOC. No problem plugging in and getting a full 150kW charge. Subsequent legs of that trip had better mileage as the temperature rose (350 Wh/mile at 18F, 303 Wh/mile at 28F), and again no charging problems. The car usually gets 270 Wh/mile in the summer, so there seems to be a big drop off below 30F.

Interestingly, on a later trip a week later with warmer (20 F) weather I did have a connection problem with the Supercharger at the Westbound Somerset Travel Plaza. The plug kept giving me a connection error. Moving the car to a different plug solved the problem.

Back in my flying days, there was a rule that if you are flying on instruments you leave enough fuel to reach your destination, then to an alternate, and then 45 minutes beyond that. I have a similar rule for winter driving. Since any manner of weird things could happen (general blackouts, equipment failure, damage to a charger from an 18 year old snow plow driver, etc.), I like to make sure I have the range to reach the target Supercharger and the next one after that, just to be sure. (Besides, at my age the bladder really doesn't like to go too long between stops...)

 

[lowercase]

I've also failed to supercharge when it was very cold (-35C and below). It plugged in and drew power, but after 30 minutes of "warming the battery to charge" I gave up, since I was paying $/min for it. So, it's possible. (Model 3 RWD with LFP pack).

Also, supercharging just sucks in general when it's very cold, my fastest was 50kW. Even preconditioned, the extreme cold is very difficult to deal with for EVs. I get 40% of my summer range, and supercharging is 1/4 as fast, if it even charges at all.