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Supercharger charging at half the speed it was the previous day
- Thread starter TANGO SUKKA
- Start date
eprosenx
Active Member
Have you tried another stall? Could be a bad unit.
Also, reporting these to Tesla is probably a good idea. I don’t know if they have any good telemetry to tell when things are broken.
Just moved over a stall 3b to 2b and no preceievable difference.
How does one report? (Without being on hold for 15 mins)
First off, thank you for using kW and not miles and also SOC, the use of miles is very annoying and inaccurate for conversations like this. Petaluma was recently expanded however I was there about 2 weeks ago and got 120 in high heat. Perhaps they are doing work or added even more stalls again?
I still have not seen you mention what state of charge % you have. Are you somewhere up around 70 or 80%?
OK, thanks. Yeah, 35kW at only 40% full sure isn't right since you weren't paired either. I would say that is worth reporting to them. Sometimes some locations do have power supply problems.
Just making sure to check the obvious stuff, since new folks get their brand new Teslas and go out to try a Supercharger for the first time at 85% full, and then create a forum thread about how the Supercharger or their car isn't working right because the charge rate is so low.
Kermee
It's Not Easy Being Green
If the ambient temperature is low and the battery pack is still relatively cold, it may explain the slow charging rate also.
eprosenx
Active Member
It seems like Tesla needs to give us geeks more diagnostic info of why a given charging speed is selected. Things could be done like showing how much power the supercharger is offering but also showing what other things are limiting the charge speed (SOC, temperature, etc...)
Bingo! Cold temperatures are setting in around the country and lithium ion batteries charge slowly when cold. Your best bet is to Supercharge after driving for a while... try not to charge it up first thing in the morning, as it will take forever. Preheating will improve the situation, but it will still be slower than normal.
Oh yes! Jeez, I can't believe I forgot that part. @ElectricCanuck don't call Tesla yet. Yeah, lithium ion batteries can be severely damaged if they are charged when cold, so every electric vehicle is careful about that. My electric motorcycle has a temperature monitor in the battery, so it just won't charge if it's too cold. There's no battery heater on my motorcycle, so I just have to have it in the garage until it gets warm enough for charging to start. It's a gradual scaling effect with temperature, though, so at really REALLY cold temperatures, it's terrible, and they just shouldn't be charged. If they are a little less cold, you can safely use low power charging, and a little warmer, you can use a bit more power, etc.
So yes, if the battery pack is cold like if it has sat out overnight, when you first plug it in, you may get very slow charging rates for a while, while it is also using some of that power to run the battery heater. As some time goes by, and it gets a chance to warm up the temperature inside the battery pack, it will continue to raise the charging power.
That does make sense then, what it probably was, since multiple stalls were all showing the same charging power. And yes, as @Big Earl mentioned, if it's well below freezing, that can kind of suck if you arrive on a trip, and then plan to do most of your charging in the morning. It can be 20 or 30 minutes doing almost no charging, but just running the battery heater to get it warm enough to turn up the charging speed.
On my really long 5,000 mile trip in February, I did this. I was just staying at random AirBNB places, so I wasn't planning to have any overnight charging. I would still go straight to the Supercharger when I got into the city and get in about 20 minutes of really fast charging while the battery was still really warm. That could get me up to about 70%, and then I would go to my AirBNB and go to sleep. Then, in the morning, I would pick up some coffee and breakfast sandwiches to go and head back to the Supercharger and eat while it charged up some more. It was pretty time-efficient that way.
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