Super slow super charging

[tls]

Traveling through Quebec this past week. Have been carefully preconditioning the car every AM and following the nav's recommendations for supercharger stops. Car has been spending a lot of time preconditioning before each SC - maybe an hour of drive time - and burning a fair amount of charge doing so, too.

Charge rates have been...low. Here I sit at the St. Eulalie SC - notionally a 250kW station - not paired with any other vehicles and it seems unlikely the whole station is having some kind of capacity limit as it's under half full as is the adjacent CCS station, and charging is chugging along at about 130kW instead of the expected 200-250.

Is the car simply unable to heat the battery adequately in these temps? It was about 0F when we set out (preconditioned and at 100% charge) this morning and it is 12F now.

 

[jcanoe]

The St. Eulalie SC shows as 150kW on the Tesla Supercharger site.

8 Superchargers, available 24/7, up to 150kW

Find Us | Tesla

 

[tls]

130 is considerably lower than 150. But in the car, the older Drummondville SC shows as 150 while the newer, nearby St. Eulalie shows as 250.

Or so I thought - double checking now but the V11 UI has AFAICT removed any way to show chargers on the nav map! Infuriating.

Either way, we travelled 10 hours starting with a warm car that had just preconditioned, hitting each SC at 20% charge or less, and never saw a charge rate higher than 137kW at any station. Seems wrong.

 

[Gaige]

127kW is still pretty good!

Even at 250kW you will only be close to that rate for a short percentage of the charge..
- is: 20-30%
- then it falls off.

I don't think I've ever seen 200kW+ for longer than 5 minutes of charging. Then I'm down at 100-150 kW.

I care more now a days that I'm at a V3 supercharger.. not for the 200kW of charge speed but so that I can guarantee I'm not splitting the charge with someone else down to 70kW on V2 split.

I would guess cold weather, even with the precondition is why it's not getting maximum charge rates.

 

[GtiMart]

That's the Madrid 2.0 supercharger, it's 150kW max. Getting 127kW isn't bad. Your battery was probably still warming while charging, using another 7kW (dual motor) so you were pulling 134 or so. These SCs are getting old. We don't have many around here so they get a lot of usage.

 

[Big Earl]

Very few Superchargers in Quebec are 250 kW, although more are being built. Most are 150 kW and there are even a few 120 kW sites.

Keep in mind that “150” is nominally 144 (gross power coming from the charger). A dual motor car will use 7 kW of that for battery heating plus whatever climate control is using. I typically see 134-137 kW on the car display (net power going into the battery) from these stations. 120 kW sites typically give me 106-110 kW net.

Sometimes these V2 stations are slow due to equipment issues - if it’s much slower than expected, try moving to a different stall.

If you do find yourself at a 250 kW V3 charger, actually getting 250 kW requires ideal conditions. During my winter travels, getting 250 kW doesn’t usually happen until the second or third charge of the day after the drivetrain and battery are fully warmed up.

 

[Jillmark99]

charging is chugging along at about 130kW instead of the expected 200-250.

If you think 130kW is bad try being a legacy S or X owner sitting at a supercharger “chugging along” and getting 40kW speeds.