Results from the "350 kW" / 500A DCFC session is finally here!

Results from the "350 kW" / 500A DCFC session is finally here!

To test the charging curve, I drove my Model Y on the freeway to discharge the car down to 5% SoC.
My plan was to go to a "350 kW" / 500A EA DCFC nearby. I navigated to a near the EA DCFC to make sure the battery is preconditioned for optimal charging.

I plugged into the EA "350 kW" / 500A station at 5% and charged up to 95% using the Tesla CCS adapter. Charging that last 5% was going to take way too long, and really isn't important for this test.

It added 67 kWh to the battery in 43 mins (5% - 90%).
Total cost was 67 kWh * $0.43/kWh = $28.81

I saw 191 kW peak power dispensed from the DCFC via EA's screen at 30% SoC.

Now onto the nerdy stuff...

Verification of "350 kW" / 500A DCFC via unit label:

Summary receipt from EA after the charging session:

Interesting to note, they do show in the receipt that the "350 kW" CCS connector was used, and dispensed at a max charging speed of 189.3 kW.

And now for the interesting bits, charging data! Captured and graphed by Teslamate.
(Click for high-res charging curve):



The curve is very nice, except for the first 5% (5-10%) it took a bit to ramp up the power. It then followed a rise in power as voltage rose and a natural decaying curve once it hit peak at 30%, expected as the battery becomes full.

Summarizing stats in text form, for convenience:

5%: 105 kW | 327 V | 321 A
10%: 136 kW | 352 V | 386 A
15%: 182 kW | 362 V | 503 A
20%: 185 kW | 371 V | 499 A
25%: 187 kW | 375 V | 499 A
30%: 190 kW | 380 V | 500 A (PEAK POWER!)
40%: 160 kW | 383 V | 418 A
50%: 124 kW | 386 V | 321 A
60%: 102 kW | 390 V | 262 A
70%: 84 kW | 395 V | 213 A
80%: 59 kW | 400 V | 148 A
90%: 41 kW | 402 V | 102 A
95%: 28 kW | 402 V | 70 A

Remember, these are stats that the car is reporting delivered to the battery. So the power dispensed by the DCFC will be slightly higher.
The amperage is not reported in the stats. It was calculated by me manually by dividing the power by the voltage.


I think my test may not have been 100% optimal, as I've screen screen snaps of other members charging at 200+ kW at 500A EA stations (pulling well over 530A from the station). However those may have been an anomaly with the station allowing the car to exceed the CCS spec temporarily? Either way, I don't think I myself could've done any better, I challenge someone else to give it a try at low SoC %!

Another thing we learned here is that the Model Y is a charging beast! What other car charges from 5% to 95% in just 43 mins?
5% to 80% in just 27 mins! And this is on a 500A-capped CCS DCFC. I believe Tesla superchargers go up to 750A for V3 250 kW ones (250 kW / 350V = 714A).

This car just gulps all the amps it can take. Too bad it can't maintain those high amps beyond 30% (cooling deficiency?). Other 500A / 400V cars like the Rivian and EQC peaks at "only" 500A, but can maintain that for much longer than the Model Y.

 

[bruce4000]

Interesting data. I have done 249 kW peak on my MY so faster than EA “350kW “, unless car can do 800V.

 

[RichAZ/CapeCod]

Great info. Thanks.

Rich

 

[STS-134]

Have you tried this on a "150kW" charger? What was the difference in charge rate at each SoC? I tried to use my CCS adapter for the first time yesterday (Volta CCS charger at a shopping mall) but the charger was broken, so I couldn't get any data.

 

[kishkaru]

Have you tried this on a "150kW" charger? What was the difference in charge rate at each SoC? I tried to use my CCS adapter for the first time yesterday (Volta CCS charger at a shopping mall) but the charger was broken, so I couldn't get any data.

Unfortunately, I don't have the time or the money to charge and plot the curve on a "150 kW" / 350A charging station. Fortunately, these stations are plentiful and I hope someone else will step up and do the deed for the community!

Assuming the battery is preconditioned properly, I expect the charging curve to be simply cut off horizontally at the 133 kW mark (380V * 350A = 133 kW). So the curve will be more or less flat (or slightly rising) from 0% to 45%, then follow the 500A curve, since at that point the car is current-limiting itself.

Since the voltage at a given SoC % is a constant, and we know the max amperage the charger can provide, we can back-calculate the power.
So I expect it would look something like this:

5%: 105 kW | 327 V | 321 A
10%: 123 kW | 352 V | 350 A
15%: 127 kW | 362 V | 350 A
20%: 130 kW | 371 V | 350 A
25%: 131 kW | 375 V | 350 A
30%: 133 kW | 380 V | 350 A
40%: 134 kW | 383 V | 350 A
45%: 135 kW | 385 V | 350 A (peak)

and the rest is the same as the 500A curve, as the current steps down:

50%: 124 kW | 386 V | 321 A
60%: 102 kW | 390 V | 262 A
70%: 84 kW | 395 V | 213 A
80%: 59 kW | 400 V | 148 A
90%: 41 kW | 402 V | 102 A
95%: 28 kW | 402 V | 70 A

So unless you only have v3 "Urban" superchargers (72 kW / 185A) near you, it just makes more sense to go to a v2 (150 kW / 390A) or v3 (250 kW / 715A) supercharger to charge instead, from a charging speed point of view.

Now from a cost perspective, it may be cheaper to charge at EA depending on the time of day, especially with the recent supercharger price increases to $0.58/kWh at peak hours.

 

[STS-134]

Assuming the battery is preconditioned properly

Hmm...interesting point, and this leads to another question. Say you navigate to a 72 kW urban supercharger near a CCS site. Does the battery get preconditioned to allow it to charge up to 250 kW, or is it only preconditioned to charge at up to 72 kW? Of the "350 kW" Electrify America chargers near me, one has a 72 kW urban SC site near it, and the other has both a 150 kW and 250 kW SC site near it.

 

[kishkaru]

Great point, I haven't considered that! I wonder if the Tesla engineers took that into account. No need to cook the battery at high temps, pretending its going to take in 250 kW, if it's only going to actually charge at 72 kW max.

The easiest way to test for this is by someone with a OBD II adapter and the bluetooth app (Scan My Tesla) that shows the realtime metrics from the car. It shows battery temperature, so we can take a look at what degree it maxes out once its done preconditioning. Unfortunately I don't have the OBD II adapter to fit at the port in the back of the center console.

For my test above, I navigated to a nearby v3 250 kW supercharger to precondition, so I hope that takes it out of the equation.

 

[STS-134]

Great point, I haven't considered that! I wonder if the Tesla engineers took that into account. No need to cook the battery at high temps, pretending its going to take in 250 kW, if it's only going to actually charge at 72 kW max.

The easiest way to test for this is by someone with a OBD II adapter and the bluetooth app (Scan My Tesla) that shows the realtime metrics from the car. It shows battery temperature, so we can take a look at what degree it maxes out once its done preconditioning. Unfortunately I don't have the OBD II adapter to fit at the port in the back of the center console.

For my test above, I navigated to a nearby v3 250 kW supercharger to precondition, so I hope that takes it out of the equation.

And this could explain why some people are getting different results when they charge, even if all of them preconditioned.

 

[israndy]

I have one of those OBDII computer monitors (the CanServer) and I have rarely seen a battery get as warm during preconditioning as it gets during charging. Preconditioning makes it a little warmer (or sometimes a little cooler) but it doesn't seem to do as good a job as I get from a second charge during a roadtrip. I typically will see preconditioning get to 85-105°F but the target is more like 120°. It'll get to 145° during the charge and the car will have active cooling kick in when it get over 135°, back on the road it will keep the louvers open and the fan going until about 125° and the closes the louvers at 120°. I think this is to keep the batts from losing any more heat as they won't be hurt sitting at this temp and will make them closer to ready at the next charger. I haven't seen this lots but I think I have seen it cool during preconditioning from 120° down to 115°, but when I plug in it quickly warms back up, this is usually when I see the fastest charges.

I am trying to get an app that will graph those numbers, I purchased TesLax that has a graph mode, but it seems to lose the connection during the critical start of charging. I may just have to log it directly in my CanServer and output it to a graphing app...

 

[kishkaru]

Preconditioning makes it a little warmer (or sometimes a little cooler) but it doesn't seem to do as good a job as I get from a second charge during a roadtrip. I typically will see preconditioning get to 85-105°F but the target is more like 120°.

That has been my experience as well, preconditioning on route to a supercharger. It takes about a minute (lets say 5% at low SoC %) to ramp up to the full potential of the supercharger. Even in my test above, we can see that the first 5% (2m 10s) was spent heating up the battery, despite me preconditioning.

I think on-route battery conditioning was an afterthought by Tesla, that was added later as a software update, to use the existing hardware of the car. Rather than built into the design of car from the start. Either that, or the combination of the heat pump and stalling the front motor in reverse just doesn't generate enough heat to reach that 120° target temp while driving.

 

[miimura]

A Model S Plaid has a higher voltage battery pack, so it will take more power at the same max amperage (350A or 500A) than other Tesla models. I'm not sure if the refreshed S Long Range has the same pack arrangement as the Plaid or not.

 

[SageBrush]

VERY nice report. Thanks for sharing !

and the rest is the same as the 500A curve, as the current steps down:

I think I've seen enough reports to say that if a charging session is at a '150 kW' charger, the early kW will be lower than a 250/350 kW charger but the amperage taper will be delayed. The result is that the time to charge from a low SoC to 80+ is about the same. The higher peak kW chargers shine in cases where you show up with a low SoC in a pre-conditioned pack and only want to charge up to 20 - 55% SoC

Bjorn Nyland put up a very interesting video on youtube this week comparing two charging sessions in his LFP Model 3: One where the SoC was low at the beginning, and the other started at a much higher SoC (perhaps 50% -- my memory is vague.)** At the same SoC, the latter session had much higher kW rates. The lesson here is that charging rate is determined by more than SoC.

My rule of thumb for these cars:
3C for short sessions starting from low SoC
2C for 1/2 pack charging starting from low SoC, or 2C for 1/4 pack charging from 50% to 75%
1.5C for 3/4 pack charging starting from a low SoC

^^ This is just empiric; I don't know the physical reasons

** packs were about the same temperature, and had been pre-conditioned

 

[STS-134]

I tried this at a 500A ("350 kW") EA charger. Maxed out somewhere close to 180 kW. Started at 10% SoC and stopped the session at 36% SoC after ~7.5 minutes. Averaged about 165 kW during the session.

There were two 350 kW chargers at this site. One of them was not working; I tried several times to start the charge with that one and it failed. Then I tried the other one and it worked. If this had been a busy site with 800V vehicles waiting, I'd have simply used one of the "150 kW" (350A) chargers because I don't think it saves that much time vs. the "350 kW" (500A) chargers, while a 800V vehicle could take full advantage of the faster charge rate from one of those units.

 

[STS-134]

VERY nice report. Thanks for sharing !



I think I've seen enough reports to say that if a charging session is at a '150 kW' charger, the early kW will be lower than a 250/350 kW charger but the amperage taper will be delayed. The result is that the time to charge from a low SoC to 80+ is about the same. The higher peak kW chargers shine in cases where you show up with a low SoC in a pre-conditioned pack and only want to charge up to 20 - 55% SoC

Bjorn Nyland put up a very interesting video on youtube this week comparing two charging sessions in his LFP Model 3: One where the SoC was low at the beginning, and the other started at a much higher SoC (perhaps 50% -- my memory is vague.)** At the same SoC, the latter session had much higher kW rates. The lesson here is that charging rate is determined by more than SoC.

Now that I think of it, this is absolutely true and you can see it in situations that don't involve using a charger at all. We know that regenerative braking is limited above 90% SoC and is non-existent at 100% SoC. But I have seen regenerative braking get throttled back below 50% SoC as indicated by the dotted line on the regeneration graph and inability to get the green bar to extend into that area, when descending a steep hill for a long time. The longer you descend and the more energy you push into the battery, the more limited it gets. So it's not simply a SoC vs max power algorithm but the recent history of how much energy you've pushed into the battery and how quickly you've done it plays a role.

 

[Fourdoor]

Results from the "350 kW" / 500A DCFC session is finally here!

To test the charging curve, I drove my Model Y on the freeway to discharge the car down to 5% SoC.
My plan was to go to a "350 kW" / 500A EA DCFC nearby. I navigated to a near the EA DCFC to make sure the battery is preconditioned for optimal charging.

I plugged into the EA "350 kW" / 500A station at 5% and charged up to 95% using the Tesla CCS adapter. Charging that last 5% was going to take way too long, and really isn't important for this test.

It added 67 kWh to the battery in 43 mins (5% - 90%).
Total cost was 67 kWh * $0.43/kWh = $28.81

I saw 191 kW peak power dispensed from the DCFC via EA's screen at 30% SoC.

Now onto the nerdy stuff...

Verification of "350 kW" / 500A DCFC via unit label:

Summary receipt from EA after the charging session:

Interesting to note, they do show in the receipt that the "350 kW" CCS connector was used, and dispensed at a max charging speed of 189.3 kW.

And now for the interesting bits, charging data! Captured and graphed by Teslamate.
(Click for high-res charging curve):



The curve is very nice, except for the first 5% (5-10%) it took a bit to ramp up the power. It then followed a rise in power as voltage rose and a natural decaying curve once it hit peak at 30%, expected as the battery becomes full.

Summarizing stats in text form, for convenience:

5%: 105 kW | 327 V | 321 A
10%: 136 kW | 352 V | 386 A
15%: 182 kW | 362 V | 503 A
20%: 185 kW | 371 V | 499 A
25%: 187 kW | 375 V | 499 A
30%: 190 kW | 380 V | 500 A (PEAK POWER!)
40%: 160 kW | 383 V | 418 A
50%: 124 kW | 386 V | 321 A
60%: 102 kW | 390 V | 262 A
70%: 84 kW | 395 V | 213 A
80%: 59 kW | 400 V | 148 A
90%: 41 kW | 402 V | 102 A
95%: 28 kW | 402 V | 70 A

Remember, these are stats that the car is reporting delivered to the battery. So the power dispensed by the DCFC will be slightly higher.
The amperage is not reported in the stats. It was calculated by me manually by dividing the power by the voltage.


I think my test may not have been 100% optimal, as I've screen screen snaps of other members charging at 200+ kW at 500A EA stations (pulling well over 530A from the station). However those may have been an anomaly with the station allowing the car to exceed the CCS spec temporarily? Either way, I don't think I myself could've done any better, I challenge someone else to give it a try at low SoC %!

Another thing we learned here is that the Model Y is a charging beast! What other car charges from 5% to 95% in just 43 mins?
5% to 80% in just 27 mins! And this is on a 500A-capped CCS DCFC. I believe Tesla superchargers go up to 750A for V3 250 kW ones (250 kW / 350V = 714A).

This car just gulps all the amps it can take. Too bad it can't maintain those high amps beyond 30% (cooling deficiency?). Other 500A / 400V cars like the Rivian and EQC peaks at "only" 500A, but can maintain that for much longer than the Model Y.

The cars I have seen get to 200+ KW were model S, pack voltage profile for the S is different, so the charging amps were still 500. If you saw the 200KW+ results on a Y then yes, that station was exceeding the CCS charging standard.

Keith

 

[Fourdoor]

Great point, I haven't considered that! I wonder if the Tesla engineers took that into account. No need to cook the battery at high temps, pretending its going to take in 250 kW, if it's only going to actually charge at 72 kW max.

The easiest way to test for this is by someone with a OBD II adapter and the bluetooth app (Scan My Tesla) that shows the realtime metrics from the car. It shows battery temperature, so we can take a look at what degree it maxes out once its done preconditioning. Unfortunately I don't have the OBD II adapter to fit at the port in the back of the center console.

For my test above, I navigated to a nearby v3 250 kW supercharger to precondition, so I hope that takes it out of the equation.

Both times I tested my CCS (on 350 KW and 150 KW Electrify America) I navigated to a nearby Supercharger... neither time did I get the "battery preconditioning" notification on the screen. I don't know if this is because the supercharger was a V2, or if it was because it was avoiding additional load on the battery due to my low state of charge (I aim to arrive at or near zero when testing). My results are here:

CCS Adapter - ? post 329

CCS Adapter - ? post 574 and 575

Later,

Keith

 

[STS-134]

Both times I tested my CCS (on 350 KW and 150 KW Electrify America) I navigated to a nearby Supercharger... neither time did I get the "battery preconditioning" notification on the screen. I don't know if this is because the supercharger was a V2, or if it was because it was avoiding additional load on the battery due to my low state of charge (I aim to arrive at or near zero when testing). My results are here:

CCS Adapter - ? post 329

CCS Adapter - ? post 574 and 575

Later,

Keith

You can get a link directly to a specific post by clicking on the post number itself.

 

[kishkaru]

The cars I have seen get to 200+ KW were model S, pack voltage profile for the S is different, so the charging amps were still 500. If you saw the 200KW+ results on a Y then yes, that station was exceeding the CCS charging standard.

Keith

Here's an example of someone pulling 538A from the CCS connector (see starting 1:58). This person is also testing out the CCS adapter on his Model Y:

6%: 196 kW | 365 V | 538 A

At a later higher SoC %, it pulls higher power due to higher voltage:

16%: 203 kW | 378 V | 538 A

It's interesting to see the difference in voltage at SoC % for his Model Y compared with mine. I wonder if he has a Model Y with the newer 82 kWh battery. Mine is an older 76 kWh battery before the refresh.

>>>> Mine His
6% : 330V 365V (10.6% higher)
16%: 366V 378V (3.2% higher)

If the newer 82 kWh battery pack does indeed have higher voltages, then that's great news for anyone wanting to use the CCS adapter, especially at low SoC % (higher voltages on newer battery).

As an aside, it's so nice that EVgo station shows the voltage and amperage directly on the charger's screen. Saves all the guesswork. EA, your move!

 

[dbldwn02]

Can't wait to get my new Ioniq5 down to Pueblo, CO for a 350kW charging sesh. (700-800V battery). Should be interesting to see if I can hit 300kW! Might be time for a trip to the Sand Dunes.

 

[Fourdoor]

Here's an example of someone pulling 538A from the CCS connector (see starting 1:58). This person is also testing out the CCS adapter on his Model Y:

6%: 196 kW | 365 V | 538 A

View attachment 810621

At a later higher SoC %, it pulls higher power due to higher voltage:

16%: 203 kW | 378 V | 538 A

View attachment 810622

It's interesting to see the difference in voltage at SoC % for his Model Y compared with mine. I wonder if he has a Model Y with the newer 82 kWh battery. Mine is an older 76 kWh battery before the refresh.

>>>> Mine His
6% : 330V 365V (10.6% higher)
16%: 366V 378V (3.2% higher)

If the newer 82 kWh battery pack does indeed have higher voltages, then that's great news for anyone wanting to use the CCS adapter, especially at low SoC % (higher voltages on newer battery).

As an aside, it's so nice that EVgo station shows the voltage and amperage directly on the charger's screen. Saves all the guesswork. EA, your move!

Wow, good information! Last I knew the CCS standard maxed out at 500 amps... either they have upgraded the standard, or that station is putting out current in excess of the CCS standard... I would love to learn that they have updated the standard, do you have any information on this?

Also, I have the new 82 kWh pack, and at 6% my voltage is 342, and at 16% my voltage is 367 on my 450 amp charge, but on my 360 amp charge my voltage at 6% was 350 and at 16% was 361. I think that the BMS reporting of your actual SOC makes a difference as well. I did one charge to 100% and when the car reached 100% it was still charging at 20 KW... no way in hell was it actually at 100% SOC if it was still capable of accepting 20 KW of power! I could have probably kept charging for another half hour or more if I had the patience.

Keith