brkaus, thanks for posting. I had the exact same problem earlier at Van Horn during spring break. It took me a while to get on TMC to post about the incident - today by chance I saw your posting. I wish i had posted my experience earlier to save y'all some problem. I'm surpised Tesla has yet to fix that stall 3A - that's where my problem occurred.
Here's my story:
On 16-Mar, while eastbound, we pulled our Model S at stall 3A. I inserted the SC cable in the charging port and the color did not change from dark blue to green to indicate charging. The car dash was indicating “charge port ready for charging”. It was as if the car was waiting for the SC to send charge. All connections seemed ok but no charging. I tried removing the cable but it won’t budge. Tried many times- kept the button on the cable pressed for about 30 sec but the cable would not release. It was stuck in the car and not charging. Even tried nudging the cable around with force in the port with button pressed.
Called Tesla customer service, the rep on line suggested that I bring the key fob near charging the port and press the key fob as if opening the rear trunk for 10 sec. That should hv normally unlocked the port, but it didn’t work for me. I tried it few times. Tried the steering wheel buttons reset, powered off the car and powered-back on, nothing worked. The charge port color remained blue all the time.
It was late in night about 11pm CST, and luckily we were staying that night at the Hampton Inn, next to the SC. The customer rep on ph was unable to help unlock the cable the whole night. He tried accessing the SC, but his system showed that the SC stall was not connected to the car; whereas in reality it was. He was trying to get a mobile service from nearby El Paso but to no avail. He had to wait till the service centers opened in San Antonio or Austin to reach service reps. The options looked bleak - either we had to wait till morning for a mobile service rep to be available from El Paso, SanAnt or Austin that could come; OR - leave the car in place and take a rental ICE (arranged by Tesla) back home to Houston, and Tesla reps would remove the car later and tow it to Houston for servicing.
Next day, early morning, I got a call from the Tesla Florida (I believe Miami) service center rep, who walked me thru the steps to resolve the issue. He texted me a picture of what to do (see below). Basically, I had to open up the truck and access as small hatch opening right behind where the charge port is located. There is an orange colored panel, below which there is a small switch like lever that needed to be pushed to the right. The lever is behind some cables and not easily visible; had to use my phone light. The solution was to push the lever to the right, and be ready to pull the SC cable out of the port when port color turns white. It didn’t quite work for me – maybe my hands were numb due to the cold weather or I was not pulling hard or the switch was not unlocking it. Anyway, on the fourth try after moving the switch all the way to the right, and instead of pulling the cable I pressed the button in the port next to the cable. That turned the color white, the cable got unlocked, and I was relieved to remove the SC cable out of the port.
I moved the car to the next stall – 2A, and let it charge fully while we had breakfast, before leaving for our next stop eastwards – Ozona, 227 miles from Van Horn.
The service rep did indicate that he was going to put a note out for the Stall 3A to be serviced and/or temporarily take it out of service. But seems it didnt happen. I'll call Tesla again and indicate this.
We had read about the above solution on the TMC forum, but the service rep on the phone strongly recommended us not to do it, due to high voltage issues and without explicit instructions from an authorized service center personnel.
This was a scary experience, and it would have been a much bigger issue had we not planned to stay at Van Horn.
I'm glad you guys sorted it out much faster.