Supercharging not so super

To get the fastest charging, plan so that you end up with about 25% SOC. For me (in an S85), this means I charge till the estimate indicates about 13% remaining. This typically means I gain a few percent over the driving section and end up with 22-28%. The power delivered algorithm starts dropping immediately. Actually, I never worry about the actual numbers because most charging stops are 15 minutes unless there is a long distance (more than 100-150 miles) to the next charging stop.

 

First, if you have your charge set to 100% or even 90%, it’ll say an hour to charge.

Which Supercharger are you at? It could be ‘broken’.

Also make sure you haven’t set your charging rate accidentally to a reduced rate.

And if all these things check out, then you have a problem. The Model 3 is a beast at supercharging. I can do from 20%-80% in under 40 minutes.

 

What do you mean by this?

 

The battery must be warm (70F) for fastest Supercharging. Your garage must be that warm or you need to drive it for it to warm up. In winter conditions that can easily be more than an hour of driving.

 

Super Charging is very super!

Last weekend I took a trip from the Toronto area to Quebec City and back. I saw charge speeds of 770 km/hr at 117 kW. The temperatures ranged from -6C to -24C. I was very impressed. We did need to stop every few hours but the stops were quick. Very little difference in stop time compared to an ICE car.

The charge rate is driven by both State of Charge and the temperature of the battery. Unfortunately, in cold temperatures, the only way you are going to get the battery temperature up is to drive it for 2 or 3 hours or slow charge it. The lower the State of Charge is, the faster the charge rate. Charge rates are fast up until 70-80% if the battery is warm. For this reason on a road trip more frequent stops where you charge to 70-80% reduces overall charging duration.

Charging at a nearby supercharger in winter makes zero sense if you have other options. The battery will be cold and charge rates slow. As you have pointed out it is very expensive with rates being charged by duration. It is best to charge at home or work or any other free slow charging station where you park your car. The supercharger network is designed with long trips in mind. For this purpose it is amazing.

 

Disregard that advice. There is no way to manually set or override supercharging speed.

OP, sounds like your battery is cold. This is expected behavior.

 

I'll second these tips:

A cold battery can charge slowly at first. I was charging at about 35 kW for half an hour at an urban Supercharger when it was 40F out. In the morning I drove right to the charger with a cold battery and TeslaFi indicated the battery heater was active. It's better if you can Supercharge at the end of a long drive with a warm battery. I arrived at a Supercharger after a long drive in the 20F's and had a normal charge rate.

Charging to 100% takes a long, somewhat indeterminate, time and is not what Superchargers do best. 100% is ICE thinking. If an 80% charge is feasible for you go with that. Supercharging is great for long distance driving, staying between 10% and 80%. Home charging is better for topping off or charging to 100% to start a trip. Paying for Supercharging and not having home charging would be a drag.

Sometimes a Supercharger just doesn't seem to work very well. Try a different pedestal. Try not to be the second car at a charger pair (same number) in a non-urban (72 kW) Supercharger. If that fails, try a different location. I've had some strangely low-rate charges at warm temperatures. The original Supercharger is actually a stack of multiple chargers that serve two pedestals. It is possible one or more of the chargers aren't working, reducing your charge rate. Tesla isn't the fastest at fixing them, so try something different. Other potential problems are limited power due to high temperatures due to poor/worn connections or demand limiting at times when electricity is especially expensive and the Supercharger is heavily used even if you're not paired.

 

From my experience Supercharger locations vary significantly in their performance. It seems, here in Michigan anyway, that the newer Superchargers charge at speeds as advertised. While older Superchargers lag significantly.

 

Sorry your experience is less than ideal. The tiered pricing scheme is really a bummer, much less equitable than where they can charge by the kWh.

What is “not cold” to you? What was the ambient temp? How long, and in what temperature, had the car been sitting before heading out? An hour of driving isn’t going to guarantee a warm battery dependent on conditions.

 

What temperature was it outside? People are reporting that it takes ~2 hours of driving to heat a cold soaked battery to the point that they get full speed Supercharging.

 

It sounds like you are using supercharging as your daily charging...which you aren't supposed to.

Anytime you are supercharging in excess of 50% SOC, it will be greatly reduced. There's plenty of curve examples on this site that show how supercharging is very effective from 0% up to about 50%, and then once you hit 70% or so it's pretty slow.

Ambient temps of 0C also reduce the rate (due to your car and simply due to the rest of the equipment). It takes 1-3 hours of driving to get the battery warm enough for full supercharging rates, well in excess of what's required for no regen dots (think about how much more power supercharging is than regen).

Also, it's partly Canada's law that is a problem since they are the ones that enforce that kind of pricing. Most places Tesla charges by the kWh used. So complain to your local lawmaker to get that changed, nothing Tesla can't help you there.

If you want to actually test this properly, get down to around 40km or less range left on the car on a warm day (10C+) and see what the rate is. If you are still less than 100kW then either go into the service center or call Tesla about that station.

 

I need to contact my state legislator to ask them to change the laws in Kansas. State laws are what prohibit Tesla (a non-utility company) from charging consumers by the kWh. These laws are why we pay the odd per minute rates. As public charging for EVs becomes more prevalent, this will impact more and more people.

 

That's normal. The car drops to 72kW at around 50-60% SOC which only takes 10-15 minutes unless you are really low.

here's a guy who put a bunch of curves into a paper

http://www.roperld.com/Science/TM3LR_SCChargingCurves.pdf

you can see all the ones that start at 15-30% (aka around 100km of range left) only take about 10-15 minutes to hit 50% SOC+ and drop to 70ish kW.

It's unfortunate that your government doesn't allow charging by the kWh but there really isn't anything Tesla can do about that.

 

Super charging was pretty Super for me.

Drove to AC last weekend, got to a supercharger with 20% supercharged for 10 minutes to 50% SOC. More than enough to get to the hotel that had a destination charger.

No complaints here.