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Strange charging behaviour
- Thread starter Rkasper
- Start date
I'm gonna go with "no" and throw a few guesses at you. If you can, since this is predictable, see if your car is displaying anything amiss while it's pulling 16A.
- Guess: It's heat-related, which could explain why it was at 32A longer to start with. Do you have any other chargers you can use to see if it's an issue with your current setup?
- Guess: Loose latch connection due to thermal cycling (somehow). I recall it limits to 16A when the latch doesn't engage, which is my reasoning here. I'm pretty sure there's an alert on screen for this, and/or the color of the Tesla logo near the charge port should change colour in this case.
- Guess: Faulty charging equipment (last resort). If you strongly suspect this, it's just easiest to file a service request. Pretty much all these cases end up in service anyhow.
I'm a bit skeptical of these measuring tools - if you posted a screenshot of you car's charging screen that sometimes said 32A and sometimes 16A, then I'd say to call Tesla for service.
FWIW, it is the pilot that is being recorded at 16A, meaning that the defect would be in your charging equipment. You don't mention what equipment that is.
FWIW, it is the pilot that is being recorded at 16A, meaning that the defect would be in your charging equipment. You don't mention what equipment that is.
I thought about mentioning that too, but I'm 99.99% sure TeslaMate polls the Tesla API - the same thing the app does. Figured if there was an issue with the data somehow, the app would be showing it as well (and then also probably the car, which has to report that information).
Very good point about the pilot though.
If these cases have a related cause, I'd bet some good money it's thermally induced limiting. Yours took longer (implying less of the proposed heating), but also keeps it more on than off when it starts the pattern (perhaps because the heart is, again, a bit less of an issue).
Do either of you have to have an OBD-II port installed? (You would have done this yourself, so if you don't know then the answer is no)
Charging gear is the mobile connector that came with the car plugged into a 6-50 outlet. There is no obd II port. Car will be charged on a different charger in the next few days; interested to see what it does. I’ve scheduled an appointment for the next time I’ll be within a 100km of a service centre. Thanks
push2eject
Member
Not the same issue as the OP, but I have recently started using TM-Spy to monitor a lot more real-time info about the car, and noticed some very unexpected charging behaviour yesterday. I was connected to a 50kW DC fast charger, and I started charging at ~50% SoC. Most of the charge was at ~35kW. Near the end of the charge with SoC~97%, the charge power was ~11kw and the cell temperatures were ~53°C (which seems pretty hot to me), but the car was still trying to HEAT the battery. It was pouring 3.5kW into both the front and rear motors, with a reported stator temperature of 130°C, which was heating the coolant up to 60°C at the battery coolant inlet! I would have expected the car to be trying to cool the batteries down, not heat them up. It also seems like an awful waste to be using 7kW of the "charge" power just to make things hot. Outside temp ~15°C. Anyone have any thoughts on this??
Probably deserving of its own thread, but yes this is normal. The way most assume the temperature management works (including myself, historically) is definitely not how it actually works. Battery gets and stays a lot hotter than you'd expect. Even after driving away from the charger, it only cools it down a bit. Specific to CHAdeMO I have a lot of complaints about what it does, which you can find in my post history or in yours if you start a thread on this and I dump my thoughts/observations
The only thing weird to me is the stator temp. I don't have recent data and I'm not even sure TM-Spy and SMT look at the same thing when reporting "Stator" temps, but I've only seen 99C maximum.
push2eject
Member
Specific to CHAdeMO I have a lot of complaints about what it does, which you can find in my post history or in yours if you start a thread on this and I dump my thoughts/observations
I made a new thread: How hot should the batteries get while charging?
Charged my car while I was awake to do a bit more investigation. Seems that my problem is related to the temperature of the umc plug 6-50. I only got to this near the end of the charge cycle. It appears that merely unplugging the 6-50 connector and plugging it back in again allowed the charging to complete without any more cooling cycles with reduced amperage. When I unplugged it the plug was warm to the touch, maybe 40c, no warmer; this was warmer than air temp of about 15c. Wiring from the e-panel appeared to be ambient temp. I’m going to have a look at the internals of the plug in the next few days.
It's been almost two hours, and no throttling here at work so my UMC & 14-50 adapter are fine. It must either be the wiring or the receptacle in my home causing this.
Edit: I'm contemplating just removing the 14-50 outlet & putting a HPWC with jumper settings to 50A in its place. The added benefit of doing this is I'll always have my UMC in the trunk of my car. Also, I'll be charging at 40A instead of 32A.
Edit: I'm contemplating just removing the 14-50 outlet & putting a HPWC with jumper settings to 50A in its place. The added benefit of doing this is I'll always have my UMC in the trunk of my car. Also, I'll be charging at 40A instead of 32A.
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