Older Teslas limited to 90kW Supercharging

[brianman]

The new technology, which is in beta test mode now and will be fully rolled out to customers this summer, will allow Model S to be charged at 120 kW, replenishing three hours of driving in just over 20 minutes.​

(A) Again, the language is clear. 120 kW was in beta testing as of May 2013 and Tesla's plan was to roll it out to customers in the summer. (B) That doesn't mean all customers, past customers, Sig customers, or anyone who bought before this announcement customers.

(A) Agree.
(B) Disagree.

I guess that means that I now also disagree on (A).

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The early-supporters "sold" a lot of cars because they honestly believed in Tesla. You say they shouldn't expect anything in return. But that's not true. They have a right to expect that the company stay true to their values and retain the integrity and honesty that moved early-supporters to emphatically recommend the company and its products.

Early supporters definitely have a right to be upset when they feel they have been -- I'll be generous -- "treated in a way incompatible with trust".

Speaking for myself, I feel bad now for recommending Tesla to people as an honest, straightforward company. I feel that they've made me a liar.

 

[bonnie]

Ugh. This thread has gotten WAY too dramatic. So for just a moment, let's assume another scenario, one that might be one of good intent gone wrong. Let's pretend at the time of the announcement of 'oh hey guess what we're going to roll out improved supercharging!' that Tesla believed the old batteries would be capable of handling the higher charge rate. K, with me still? So maybe the testing wasn't completed yet, but everyone believed that the older batteries would easily handled the increased charging rate of 120Wh.

And all the announcements were made, the testing was completed ... and there was that 'oh sh** moment' that we've all had, where it was realized the older batteries could NOT safely handle the increased charging rate. And YES, Tesla should have handled communication after the fact better. But personally, I don't think anyone set out to deliberately lie or mislead. If I assume good intent (and I do), it's more a case of 'how do we clean this up now that all these promises have been made, promises we thought were true at the time' and everyone kind of looked around the room and shuffled off to their other projects and everyone hoped someone else was handling it and then the fires happened and it never got handled.

Assume good intent. As irritated as I am over how this whole thing got handled, NEVER once have I believed that Tesla has been anything but honest and straightforward. I know people are upset. I don't have a Model S and I'm extremely bothered by this situation. I am not discounting anyone's emotions here.

I am only saying that there may be another scenario that does not include deliberately misleading people.

 

[Canuck]

Speaking for myself, I feel bad now for recommending Tesla to people as an honest, straightforward company. I feel that they've made me a liar.

Assuming that Tesla is not an honest and straightforward company (and I don't necessarily agree with that) it doesn't mean that Tesla made you a liar for "recommending Tesla to people as an honest, straightforward company". You would have had to have that opinion at the time of the recommendation for it be a lie.

 

[brianman]

@bonnie
At a certain point it becomes outright deception. They still imply "all our cars do 120 kW" on the website with no caveats or conditions. They haven't rolled back Elon's statements. The closest they've gotten to that so far is private replies to owners in e-mail. That doesn't cut it if you're honest and straightforward, IMO.

Sidenote: They appear to have fixed the "170 number with 200-tall bar" graph problem @ Supercharger | Tesla Motors, which is a good start at cleaning up the mess.

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Assuming that Tesla is not an honest and straightforward company (and I don't necessarily agree with that) it doesn't mean that Tesla made you a liar for "recommending Tesla to people as an honest, straightforward company". You would have had to have that opinion at the time of the recommendation for it be a lie.

Point noted. Correction: feel like a liar. Still doesn't make me feel much better. The lack of trust spreads like an infection from me-trusting-Tesla to friends-trusting-me.

 

[dennis]

If I assume good intent (and I do), it's more a case of 'how do we clean this up now that all these promises have been made, promises we thought were true at the time' and everyone kind of looked around the room and shuffled off to their other projects and everyone hoped someone else was handling it and then the fires happened and it never got handled.

Assume good intent. As irritated as I am over how this whole thing got handled, NEVER once have I believed that Tesla has been anything but honest and straightforward. I know people are upset. I don't have a Model S and I'm extremely bothered by this situation. I am not discounting anyone's emotions here.

I am only saying that there may be another scenario that does not include deliberately misleading people.

OK, as one of the affected owners, I'm certainly willing to accept good intent. What I am not happy about is that Tesla made no effort to inform affected owners when they discovered that A batteries needed to be limited to 90kw. They knew, but they did not communicate. Finally, in response to repeated pleadings with Ownership or SC personnel or Jerome complaining owners have been told individually that they are limited to 90kw. Unsuspecting owners are still in the dark. Why? Is Tesla afraid the stock price is going to take a hit if it is discovered that they improved battery technology after delivering 2500 cars?

I've always felt that Tesla and Elon have marketed way beyond the headlights when it comes to the supercharging experience. "150 miles of range in 30 minutes", "fill the battery half way in about 20 minutes", "drive for 3 hours and charge for just over 20 minutes". Completely idealized scenarios, seldom if ever achieved in the real world. And the supercharging experience is good enough that there is no need to exaggerate it. Just give us the facts, we can handle it.

 

[jchangyy]

What Bonnie says makes sense (I mentioned similar scenario earlier in my post) where Tesla genuinely thought the A packs could handle the increase in SC rate, but realized later that it "MAY" lead to more sensational journalism should even one MS catch fire while charging at a SC. So, they decided to limit the upper limit.

As many have said over the past 100 pages, people with A battery are upset with the lack of communication from Tesla and the "defensive" posturing (not my words, but others have said it earlier).

I think its time that we put this thread to rest, unless people have something new to say (new communication from Tesla, etc.)

 

[dennis]

I think its time that we put this thread to rest, unless people have something new to say (new communication from Tesla, etc.)

Everyone has the choice to not read this thread.

Some of us will continue to post here because we still expect further action from Tesla, especially as they see the continuing angst among their earliest supporters.

 

[jchangyy]

@Dennis...yes, everyone has that choice. you can certainly continue to post as you wish and do whatever you want. Jeez...

 

[ken830]

I honestly believe that there was no malice or intentional misleading. And I'm not upset/angry about the situation (just disappointed) because it doesn't make me love the car any less. But I am upset about their defensive position and the way they are handling it right now because it makes me love Tesla Motors a little less. The ownership experience people have changed and the attitude is different. I still own the car, the stock, and even applied for an engineering position there, so I do love both the car and the company behind it a whole lot. This just takes it down a notch.

 

[walla2]

I'll openly admit, I'm a super fan boy. I sell the cars (Roadster and S) at every opportunity and tell people about the X all the time. I've sold likely 2-3 of those and have a low reservation (that I'll likely defer for a while) for an X. I took my Model S to a car show, "sold" it there, and won a prize doing so. This is despite being soured by a very disappointing, delayed 3 times delivery with zero communication. Zero. The only reason I got my car when I did was because I threatened to cancel after being ignored for 3 months. Despite not getting things that were spec'd on my car and other things that were "promised." Despite now getting a beta battery instead of the real battery. The car is amazing. The technology is amazing. The communication is as bad as Tata Motors. Elon could fix this with a wave of his hand. My take is that either this isn't a priority to him, or he doesn't realize communication is such a big problem. Either way, not good. Not good at all.

 

[JRP3]

In some ways the company seems to have a split personality. Sometimes the company goes above and beyond to take care of the customer, other other times they over promise, under deliver, and seem to ignore concerns, or at least mishandle them. Like all companies they are run by fallible people, the best we can hope is that the good outweighs the bad and do what we can to improve that ratio.

 

[jerry33]

Elon could fix this with a wave of his hand. My take is that either this isn't a priority to him, or he doesn't realize communication is such a big problem. Either way, not good. Not good at all.

Elon's enthusiasm sometimes gets away from him, so he's a part of the problem. As I said in a previous post, had he waited to announce it along with the last price restructuring there would have been no issue--and some folks would have had the B packs before the announcement so they would have been super-happy.

With new employees showing up all the time and the better employees getting promoted, it's probably not going to be possible to fix the communication problem anytime soon. Once some employee stability occurs in a few years from now, then communications should improve if any effort is made to do so.

Sometimes not saying something is better communications. This is like George B's post about how everyone wants to hear everything until they actually hear it.

So the choices appear to be:

1. Communicate as much as possible as soon as possible, knowing that there will be misunderstandings and hard feelings because some of the announcements will be made before everything is known.

2. Communicate only as much as necessary with few pre-announcements and have the forums fill up with "Tesla hasn't done anything new".

3. A balance between #1 and #2 and hope you read the situation correctly. George B did a lot of this when he was there, but they don't seem to have any real replacement for him--which is too bad.

 

[wycolo]

Older MS produced 7 Dec 2012 with replacement B battery done Aug 2013. SC chart therefore may be of interest. 27*F with car arriving just 300 feet past 0 miles. Readings taken onsite: Minutes, Miles(rated), Amps, and Volts. KW were computed on calculator later to avoid any errors. Car driven 140 miles non-stop down to 4 miles, parked for 12 min, then drove down to zero @SC.

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[AmpedRealtor]

My local service manager told me that Tesla is going to make two very big announcements soon regarding service. He would not give me any details or hints, but said it would blow everyone away and would be the talk of the industry. He could not confirm whether these announcements had anything to do with the battery issues as described in this thread, but they are definitely service related and will impact all owners. The one thing he did say regarding this batterygate: it's a far more complex issue than anyone knows.

 

[apacheguy]

Nice plot, thanks for posting. I think the fact that it took 3 minutes to ramp to 120 is indicative of battery conditioning. It appears as though the new taper supports >= 90 kW for about 20 minutes. By comparison, my car charges at ~90 kW for only 12 minutes.

My local service manager told me that Tesla is going to make two very big announcements soon regarding service.

Great. I'll be looking forward to these announcements.

 

[wycolo]

> took 3 minutes to ramp to 120 [apacheguy]

At 2:00 it is quite close to 120, 117 in fact, just to be fair. It would be nice to see your plot on these same axes. Then we could compare 'areas under the curve' differences to determine just how much time loss you guys are actually suffering.

> my car charges at ~90 kW for only 12 minutes. If Tesla would just give me 90 kW for 20 minutes I would be much happier. [apacheguy]

Wonder why - not like you have anywhere near the heat generated as in the 120 kw cars. Must not be about heat.

This test was all set to be perfect, then charging stopped @11 min to 13 min for NO apparent reason. I simply removed that time period with very little effect on the curves. Then @41 min I had to do another restart due to my having set 'charge level slider' too low (aargh). But this was like 20 sec lost time so no effect apparently.
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[wormhole]

My local service manager told me that Tesla is going to make two very big announcements soon regarding service. He would not give me any details or hints, but said it would blow everyone away and would be the talk of the industry. He could not confirm whether these announcements had anything to do with the battery issues as described in this thread, but they are definitely service related and will impact all owners. The one thing he did say regarding this batterygate: it's a far more complex issue than anyone knows.

As we've all seen in the past, its one thing to announce something (greatest service in the world, loaners for everyone, by year end (2013) travel cross country on SC's for free, yadda yadda) and another to actually follow though.....

Its like the great Seinfeld episode, "Anyone can take a reservation (make an announcement), you just don't know how to hold the reservation (follow through)....

 

[Dave EV]

> my car charges at ~90 kW for only 12 minutes. If Tesla would just give me 90 kW for 20 minutes I would be much happier. [apacheguy]

Wonder why - not like you have anywhere near the heat generated as in the 120 kw cars. Must not be about heat.

If the cells themselves were tweaked to handle 120 kW charging, then yes, it definitely could be about heat. The B-pack cells could have lower internal resistance which would mean less heating under fast charging.

 

[JRP3]

Or they could have materials less affected by heat, like the electrolyte.

 

[davecolene0606]

So, while a little disappointment occurred on discovering that 120 wasn't a software upgradable fix, I'm very happy that when it comes time to replace the pack, it will have the latest capabilities and this bodes well for continued hope that 7 years from now when I replace the pack, the new 220kw/500 mile pack will be compatible with my sig!:smile: