Superchargers super-slow

[jsmay311]

Not sure if you were referring to Bjorn?

My understanding is that in Norway a Competition Prize such as a "Free Tesla Car" incurs a tax charge of 50% of the value of the prize So in Bjorn's case not exactly "more or less free"

Gotta love government. But by all means, let's advocate for MOAR! SMH

Totally. I mean, Norwegians might be the happiest people in the world and the richest people per capita of an non-tiny country in the world. But imagine how much happier and richer they could be with less government!

 

[AWDtsla]

You cannot apply this rule evenly to both 90 and 85 since these packs have a significantly different taper profile.

The point of my post was - it's already changed. Can't apply any rules at all unless you have access to their source code.

 

[SeminoleFSU]

Totally. I mean, Norwegians might be the happiest people in the world and the richest people per capita of an non-tiny country in the world. But imagine how much happier and richer they could be with less government!

probably a lot! LOL

 

[zambono]

My experience echos yours. It is, at best, annoying, and in my case, it puts me back in my ICE.

On Wednesday I had to make an emergency trip of about 120 miles each way. I had enough charge to make the first leg of the trip, but was coming close to running out of charge when I had to make a bunch of local trips at my destination. There is a supercharger at the destination, but it was (1) crowded and (2) charging at the significantly reduced rate that you experienced.

We had to abandon our Tesla and borrow my in-laws ICE car for the rest of the day. Later in the day, as we were preparing to come home for the night, we waited for over an hour and a half at the supercharger (combination of a wait for an open spot and then the slow charging).

Since we had to make the trip again the next day, we left the Tesla at home and got into my F150. It had half a tank of gas (36 gallon tank) and I pulled into a gas station on the way to the freeway, filled up in about 5 minutes and then made the 240 round trip plus about 100 miles of local travel at the destination without another thought.

The situation is untenable at this point and if the Model 3 comes out in the numbers predicted, things will be many times worse.

This isn't the first time I've had these kinds of problems when I use the Tesla for a relatively long trip to a destination where I'll have additional miles to drive upon arrival. Before, the superchargers (without crowds and operating at full speed) made Tesla use tolerable.

Our Tesla is being made irrelevant (and unusable) by these very serious problems. Maybe if Musk would spend more time fixing the problems with his existing products and company and less time dreaming of Mars and solar we'd all be better off.

Don't forget digging and neural implants. So yeah charging at Superchargers has become a necessity but nothing wrong with that, but I would say that the Model S currently offered is a great electric vehicle, all it needs is a sub 20 minute full charge on trips.

 

[zambono]

Sorry for the late reply to all the helpful posts on here.

Thanks for reminding me that the dual chargers have nothing to do with supercharging speeds - wasn't sure anymore and just wanted to rule that out.

I totally agree about charging to 100% at the SC not being necessary in most cases - as a matter of fact, I had my charge limit at the regular 230 miles for the majority of our stay in NYC and only changed it that day to see if it would affect anything (maybe tricking the SC into charging faster due to a lower percentage of total charge limit).

My big problem isn't the fact that they seem set on discouraging people from filling up all the way at the SCs, but rather the fact @sorka mentioned above - they're supposed to/used to be charging to well above 50% within half an hour, but lately charging to 150-170 miles of range (charging from 10-25 miles) takes us almost an hour.

And this is despite me making sure I'm not sharing a stall (AB) with another driver and often completely empty SCs (even in NYC).

And I get the point about not charging at 120kW (supposedly some now even put out 140kW, no?) for extended periods of time, but why ramp it down to 50-60 (or on occasions even 30) when you're still well below 100 miles range...

The logic behind the algorithm used to be pretty transparent to me, but lately it all just seems like bullshit hokuspokus essentially serving no other purpose than discouraging us from making use of a heavily advertised feature that continues to be one of the major reasons for buyers to go with Tesla (or an EV in the first place, for that matter).

I just feel like Tesla in general is giving less and less of a *sugar* about existing customers. They used to pick up our car and drop off a loaner for repairs as a courtesy and told us we're just outside the 15-mile range from the service center. Now all of a sudden they claim it's 25 miles...

Same goes for referral rewards. So far, I've referred over 30 MS/X buyers and still haven't seen a single reward (the biggest disappointment being getting NOTHING for 18 refs in round 2). The arachnid wheels were supposed to have arrived in early Oct (after a 2-month wait), then they said 3 more weeks, and that deadline passed 6 weeks ago without another word or a reply to several emails from my end.

I'm really starting to get fed-up with this...

Have you compared with another driver at the same Supercharger, maybe its your car? Just a thought.

 

[hill]

yesterday in Costa Mesa tried two separate units & both were only running in the 40 KW's.

 

[David99]

I just read through the entire thread. Definitely too many people reporting the same problem with cars of difference ages. There is something going on. I doubt it's local throttling. That would backfire. It makes people charge longer thus causing more congestion at a Supercharger. I have noticed the reduced rate at stations far away from home so I think it's save to rule out the theory of Tesla trying to punish locals.

I have had my car for three year and 114k miles. I Supercharged about 400 times at 80 different Superchargers. I have a good amount of data to compare. I have been using several Superchargers over and over again over the the years. The recent drop in charge rate is something Tesla has caused directly or indirectly. I assume it is a overly careful safety mechanism. Either the handle temperature or the charge port temperature (Jason H mentioned the limits of charge ports), or treating batteries more careful than in the beginning.

There are two separate issue being reported. One is a very very slow charge rate when arriving at a very low state of charge. That is definitely something Tesla added with a recent firmware. I arrived at very low state of charge many many times. I have never seen a Supercharger start slow until recently.

There is the issue of generally a slower than normal charge rate. That's something I experienced just recently. I highly doubt it's related to battery temperature because I monitor the battery temp from the CAN bus and I don't see a correlation of temperature and charge rate. My battery temperatures are within the same range as they used to be and the car seems to be just as capable to cool the battery as it used to. I also don't see a correlation of ambient temperature and charge rate. I have charged at normal rates over and over in very hot conditions 110 degree F.

Tesla has swapped out the cables and handles at most Supercharger locations. They don't do that without a good reason. Probably the risk of overheating them in some cases. Maybe they have added a too conservative temperature protection into the Superchargers. About 2 years ago many people reported a reduction in charge current in their home charging. Tesla fixed this with a firmware. Apparently it was too conservative, too careful.

Maybe that's what is happening with Superchargers right now. The safety features are set a little too conservative (to be on the safe side).

Here is a graph of a normal charge session and one where I saw the reduced rate.

 

[Nietschy]

wow, just wow thank you for that perfect shiny piece of info.

I guess you nailed it.

I really hope Tesla expands its communication policy, so that those infos flow top down and does not need to be digged up from the mud of guessing, cleaned by some tech and measurements.

 

[sorka]

Ditto here on everything you just said. I'm at the point now where I call the supercharger team before each stop and ask them to tell me which stalls are having issues.

BTW, I've added this to my speed dial under tesla:

18777983752,,,2,,1

This gets your right through the call tree. The commas put the right amount of delay between each call tree branch.

 

[hill]

2B at San Juan Cap was in the 40kW's last night around 12am. Moved over one to the right and bam ... 300+mph. Late night means you got options
.

 

[boaterva]

BTW, I've added this to my speed dial under tesla:

18777983752,,,2,,1

This gets your right through the call tree. The commas put the right amount of delay between each call tree branch.

Excellent, added that to my contact list! Too bad they can't proactively dim the 'Tesla' sign on the stall or something to tell people which are the 'better' ones!

 

[David99]

I just looked through my logs and saw that the reduced charge rate has been an issue for longer than I thought. I looked many more Supercharger sessions and almost all had an unusual reduction in power to some degree. Very annoying.

BTW, calling Tesla doesn't seem to help. When I called them the last two days, they seem rather bored to get yet another call about a slow supercharger. And of course they could not see anything wrong with my car or the superchargers.

 

[trmmcd]

I really think there are two problems that are getting co-mingled. For sure there are problematic SCs that need maintenance - probably more than one would think. I have seen reduced service icons on the nav map which I took as a positive sign that they know where some problem spots are and are alerting drivers. I have also called and they have acknowledged problems at the SC I am complaining about.

Based on the recent three months of reasonably extensive travel though, I have seen improvement in charge rates - apart from bad SCs. A few months ago, I never got a decent charge. Recently I have had charge experiences that are much more like what I saw many months ago.

I think they changed the algorithm to be much more conservative and have now subsequently improved it to deliver the charge rates we expect. That change though doesn't resolve SCs that need maintenance.

 

[David99]

I think they changed the algorithm to be much more conservative and have now subsequently improved it to deliver the charge rates we expect.

My experience is the opposite. I have detailed logs of all Supercharging sessions over the past 8 months and at least for me, it seems to be getting worse.

 

[animorph]

Slow Charging Rates and Times

 

[hill]

My experience is the opposite. I have detailed logs of all Supercharging sessions over the past 8 months and at least for me, it seems to be getting worse.

when you say 'logs' - are you talking individual stalls? Checking each one (especially w/ traffic on many of them) can be quite difficult.
.

 

[namlio]

I just read through the entire thread. Definitely too many people reporting the same problem with cars of difference ages. There is something going on. I doubt it's local throttling. That would backfire. It makes people charge longer thus causing more congestion at a Supercharger. I have noticed the reduced rate at stations far away from home so I think it's save to rule out the theory of Tesla trying to punish locals.

I have had my car for three year and 114k miles. I Supercharged about 400 times at 80 different Superchargers. I have a good amount of data to compare. I have been using several Superchargers over and over again over the the years. The recent drop in charge rate is something Tesla has caused directly or indirectly. I assume it is a overly careful safety mechanism. Either the handle temperature or the charge port temperature (Jason H mentioned the limits of charge ports), or treating batteries more careful than in the beginning.

There are two separate issue being reported. One is a very very slow charge rate when arriving at a very low state of charge. That is definitely something Tesla added with a recent firmware. I arrived at very low state of charge many many times. I have never seen a Supercharger start slow until recently.

There is the issue of generally a slower than normal charge rate. That's something I experienced just recently. I highly doubt it's related to battery temperature because I monitor the battery temp from the CAN bus and I don't see a correlation of temperature and charge rate. My battery temperatures are within the same range as they used to be and the car seems to be just as capable to cool the battery as it used to. I also don't see a correlation of ambient temperature and charge rate. I have charged at normal rates over and over in very hot conditions 110 degree F.

Tesla has swapped out the cables and handles at most Supercharger locations. They don't do that without a good reason. Probably the risk of overheating them in some cases. Maybe they have added a too conservative temperature protection into the Superchargers. About 2 years ago many people reported a reduction in charge current in their home charging. Tesla fixed this with a firmware. Apparently it was too conservative, too careful.

Maybe that's what is happening with Superchargers right now. The safety features are set a little too conservative (to be on the safe side).

Here is a graph of a normal charge session and one where I saw the reduced rate.
View attachment 220957

I would be interested to know if the scale on the x-axis is the same on both charts, and if so, what the difference in time is to get to 90% in both cases. While the peak power is higher in the first plot, the plateau lasts longer in the second case, so I wonder if there is a real difference in the time required to get to 90%. The real issue is not the peak rate, but the total amount of power provided over a given period of time required to get to a specific SOC.

 

[David99]

I would be interested to know if the scale on the x-axis is the same on both charts, and if so, what the difference in time is to get to 90% in both cases. While the peak power is higher in the first plot, the plateau lasts longer in the second case, so I wonder if there is a real difference in the time required to get to 90%. The real issue is not the peak rate, but the total amount of power provided over a given period of time required to get to a specific SOC.

Good point! The x-axis is percent, not time. It of course does take more time to charge to 90%. I'll combine more charging sessions when I get some time.

 

[David99]

when you say 'logs' - are you talking individual stalls? Checking each one (especially w/ traffic on many of them) can be quite difficult.
.

I don't have logs from the Superchargers. I have logs from my car (Teslafi.com) and I have supercharged many many times since I started recording these.

 

[trmmcd]

I don't have logs from the Superchargers. I have logs from my car (Teslafi.com) and I have supercharged many many times since I started recording these.

Do you have any recent SC charges that you would consider to be favorable or are they all sub par. For sure some of my recent charges have been poor charging experiences but others have been very favorable. I have started to call Tesla when the charge rate is low and they have confirmed known issues with those specific chargers.

I also use TeslaFi but don't have as much history so I don't have as rich a dataset as you likely have.

 

[huzz1970]

We have been using the Phoenix-LA I-10 corridor a lot in the past year. We have seen noticeably slower charging at Quartzite, Indio, Carbazon and Fontana. Have not been to Culver City chargers since last year. We were in Palm Springs when Carbazon was vandalized. Two weeks ago a colleague was stuck in Indio because someone cut the cables off the stands. Is there a listing of "out of service" sites? I know some of the information is available in EVSE and others, but a current list would help- anyone have a link or information?