I hope this is just poor wording, but the update description seems to say that your Tesla will not DC fast charge until battery is heated. If this is the case, then are Tesla owners effectively banned from not using SuperCharger or will would have to pay an hour of idle fee at the 3rd party DCFC stall for the battery to warm up before it starts charging?
-
Want to remove ads? Register an account and login to see fewer ads, and become a Supporting Member to remove almost all ads.
Software update 2024.2.7 - battery condition update
- Thread starter eevee-fan
- Start date
It's always been that way as far as I know: the bms will not charge the battery under a certain temperature, it will heat it first. Even then, charging will be slowed down until the battery reaches the target temp. The BMS protects the battery. Heck, even level 2 charging waits until the battery is warm enough before charging, it simply uses a lower target temp.
The period while the supercharger is supplying power to heat the battery should NOT be incurring idle fees.
Sure, I was just clarifying that if the battery is NOT preheated idle fees should not apply.
Third party chargers have no idea if the car is cold, warming up the battery, etc. Their idle fees policy varies as well, so nobody here can give you a 100% accurate answer in all cases
I suspect it would be rare to incur idle fees due to cold battery, though. Keep in mind the battery really has to be cold soaked to not charge at all. During normal driving the car brings the battery up to 85-90 deg F - that's enough (offhand) 50-80kw, so no idle fee problems there.
If it is really cold, the car will pull 5-10 kw of power for heating. That could theoretically be such a low amount of power the third party charger has a policy to charge you idle fees. You'd have to check with them though.
I suspect it would be rare to incur idle fees due to cold battery, though. Keep in mind the battery really has to be cold soaked to not charge at all. During normal driving the car brings the battery up to 85-90 deg F - that's enough (offhand) 50-80kw, so no idle fee problems there.
If it is really cold, the car will pull 5-10 kw of power for heating. That could theoretically be such a low amount of power the third party charger has a policy to charge you idle fees. You'd have to check with them though.
OP was asking specifically about non-Supercharger chargers:
Without knowing exactly what the third party chargers policy is around idling, we can't really answer this question.
I think it'd be weird, but a 3rd part charger could choose to impose "idle" fees if your car is pulling less than (say) 30 kw (in which case a Tesla with a frozen battery would incur fees).
Unlikely and it's not worth worrying about IMO.
Last edited:
Even with a 3rd party charger, it isn't the charger that regulates the charging of the car. The car does the management of charging the car. Also, the Tesla is going to say hey my battery is too cold so I am not going to charge right away but I WILL accept power and just shunt that over to the heating system to heat the battery...so no idle fees because the car will still be accepting power from the 3rd party charger.
