I've experienced the reduction many times, but in no instance have the handles been hot to the touch.
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Some California Superchargers not providing maximum charging rates
- Thread starter Tony8489
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- California Supercharging USA
I've experienced the reduction many times, but in no instance have the handles been hot to the touch.
I've been wondering for a while about the conductors in the cables themselves. Copper suffers a lot of stress hardening. So wiring in your house, that gets put in place once, uses a single cylindrical wire. But extension cords use stranded wire, basically a bundle of little wires, so that the current can be carried without much degradation even if some of them fracture. Does anyone know what the inside of the supercharger cables looks like?
I'm sure it's stranded wire. Solid core cables would not flex at all and would stay in whatever shape it was in.
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I'm also sure it must be stranded, but are they fine wires, or relatively thick wires? Do they run parallel or are they braided somehow for strain relief? Mostly just wondering if anyone has seen the inside?
The strands would always be braided in some way. The cable wouldn't hold together when the insulation was stripped off for mounting a connector unless there was at least some twisting together of the wires.
This video shows some of the internals of a supercharger:
Video: Here's How a Tesla Superchargers Gets Tested - Inside EVs
This video shows some of the internals of a supercharger:
Video: Here's How a Tesla Superchargers Gets Tested - Inside EVs
whttiger25
Member
It sounds to me like there isn't really a reliable condition that will predict slow charging. Sometimes the handle is hot, sometimes it isn't, sometimes it's hot outside, sometimes it's not, sometimes is a packed sc, sometimes it's deserted....
Sure. The wear and tear on the chargers is gradual. First they may slow down only after being in continuous use for several hours. Then they may also slow down when it's hot outside. Eventually they get worn out enough that they slow down nearly every time they are used.
whttiger25
Member
Well until Tesla actually tells us something we are stuck in a world of speculation and assumptions
aesculus
Still Trying to Figure This All Out
Was at the Folsom Outlet superchargers today around noon. Arrived about 50% and my wife wanted lunch so we parked the car in the only available stall (two others occupied but did not see any drivers). The 4th stall paired with ours was getting it's charging cable replaced. The estimate to go from 50% to 90% was 1 hour. We were hungry and did not even look at the charging rate when we left. I just mentioned to the technician that it appears everything needs maintenance and he just smiled and said yes.
We had lunch and came back and our car was at 90% within 45 mins. Not sure when it actually topped off because neither of us got a warning or notification on our phones. Maybe the network was down?
When I disconnected the car I noticed that the cable was brand new so ours must have been swapped just before we got there. The technician was having his lunch and he had the first stall coned off so no one could pull in.
So not much definitive info and I did not feel that the technician was doing anything more than what he was told to do, swap charging cables on all the stalls. So maybe they are just systematically replacing cables for whatever reason. I have charged here in the last few months and never noticed the cables being worn nor had any issues with them.
We had lunch and came back and our car was at 90% within 45 mins. Not sure when it actually topped off because neither of us got a warning or notification on our phones. Maybe the network was down?
When I disconnected the car I noticed that the cable was brand new so ours must have been swapped just before we got there. The technician was having his lunch and he had the first stall coned off so no one could pull in.
So not much definitive info and I did not feel that the technician was doing anything more than what he was told to do, swap charging cables on all the stalls. So maybe they are just systematically replacing cables for whatever reason. I have charged here in the last few months and never noticed the cables being worn nor had any issues with them.
In the past 24 hours I used the Gilroy, Harris Ranch, Bakersfield, and Tejon Superchargers. I never experienced a charge rate less than what I expected based on almost 3 years of ownership and 50K miles of driving across multiple states in the western USA.
That's what the tech was doing at Manteca when I was there. He was a relatively young guy with red hair, we had a nice chat.
Khatsalano
Member
Unless 1/2 of the problem is the degraded plug on the car. Perhaps replacement of the plug will be necessary every 50K miles or so as regular maintenance? I believe that the software algorithm that has been tweaked to be overly sensitive is a part of the problem also.
Yes, I think this is likely firmware related too.
As to the charge port, I'm not quite convinced. For one, why hasn't service spotted this issue already? I don't recall a single post regarding service replacing a charge port in relation to slow charging. Additionally, I only supercharge 10-15 times per year. I know there are others that supercharge much more often than me and it seems like many cars would be experiencing these symptoms all over the world. This has largely been a CA phenomenon.
Furthermore, what feedback does Tesla have on the charge port itself? Is there even a temperature probe?
As to the charge port, I'm not quite convinced. For one, why hasn't service spotted this issue already? I don't recall a single post regarding service replacing a charge port in relation to slow charging. Additionally, I only supercharge 10-15 times per year. I know there are others that supercharge much more often than me and it seems like many cars would be experiencing these symptoms all over the world. This has largely been a CA phenomenon.
Furthermore, what feedback does Tesla have on the charge port itself? Is there even a temperature probe?
Just because it was serviced in the last 6 weeks doesn't mean it's "like new". When I was at Manteca, I was getting very slow charge rate on 1A which he had just worked on. I was the first to use it after he changed the cable (he moved the cones to 1B when I came in and directed me to use 1A.
He switched me to 1B when he got that cable replaced, then tore apart 1A and found some wires in the control circuitry at the top of the cabinet had gone bad.
The entire supercharger installation ages faster when they don't get a chance to cool down after use. This is most likely end to end from the transformer to the end of the charge cable. The charge cable may show the most heat damage, but the rest of the hardware is aging quickly too. The control circuitry in the top of the cabinets may be seeing unexpected aging due to heat transfer from the cables just below.
California is seeing the worst aging because the superchargers there see more use than anywhere in the world. The tech said they are seeing some problems in Arizona because of the ambient heat doesn't help and cooler regions don't see as many problems, but California has the highest supercharger usage, plus with most CA locations also seeing high temps most days the last 6 months has accelerated the wear on the SpCs.
Essentially a number of CA superchargers are getting decrepit from over use and high ambient temperatures. The two in combination are burning up all the components in the SpCs.
Tesla has a serious problem here and it looks to me like they are quietly trying to solve it. The problem is that copper is the best material we have as a conductor short of exotics like superconductors (the best of which need to be chilled to the temps of liquid nitrogen to work). Copper has a very low resistance, but when pumping high current through it, I^2*R heating is still a problem.
High tension power lines step up the voltage to 40 KV to reduce the current as much as possible and still the losses for long distance power transmission are an issue. One of the tricks Enron would do to run up electric rates was to pump electricity through much longer routes than necessary to increase transmission losses because they were charging for how much got put on the line rather than what came out the other end.
With AC it's easy to convert from high voltage and low current to low voltage with higher current. Transformers are low loss (though not zero loss) and do a good job. To get from a high tension line to your house they step down the power twice, once to medium voltages at a transfer station, then to 240V at your neighborhood transformer. At your house, the 240V is split to two 120V circuits for most things, though in other parts of the world it isn't split.
DC is harder to step up or down. DC to DC converters can do it, but it's a more complex thing than a transformer. DC/DC converters were also uncommon until about 25 years ago because they were expensive. Better semi-conductor tech has made them cheaper, but they are still more complex than a transformer. Tesla converts the AC to DC as close as possible to the SpC, but they still need to run high voltage and current from near the transformer to the car.
That's a bit of a false positive.
It's very plausible that tesla has implemented some software limiting in an effort to contain hardware degradation.
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